Exploring the Exhibitor's Hall

Today was such a busy, crazy day. We started out with a visit to the exhibitor’s hall. There are over 500 booth on the giant convention hall. Exhibitors representing every educational technology company you can think of. I was looking for three things in particular. I wanted to learn more about interactive whiteboard technology, wanted to learn more about classroom microphone and speaker systems and I wanted to learn about instant feedback “clicker” technology. Plus I wanted to win free stuff. I can report that I was not a winner.

The four companies that had interactive whiteboard technology were Promethean, Smart Technologies, Mimio and Ebeam. All four were very cool and I wish I could just buy all of them. Promethean and Smartboards require that you buy and mount a complete board in your classroom, where the Mimio and the Ebeam had portable sensor technology that allows you to turn any regular whiteboard into an interactive whiteboard. I was most impressed with Mimio because it was very versatile and you can move it from room to room and it is really easy to calibrate in seconds. You could even move it from different whiteboards within the room with great ease. The Ebeam had similar capabilities but it was more suited to business meetings rather than in a classroom.

There was only one speaker/microphone system. It was called FrontRow. Very simple and practical. However, very expensive. There were too many companies to list selling the instant feedback “clickers”. There was not much difference between the various companies. I am just going to look into which one will ship for the cheapest (if we decide to buy a set).

A really cool bonus was I got to take my picture with the star of the Brain Pop educational series
The exhibitor’s hall was very overwhelming. There was so much to see and learn about. I will have to go back tomorrow morning before I head to the airport.