EdCircuit StaffBy Ji Shen, Founder, Pathway Innovation
The slate blackboard was invented by James Pillans in Edinburgh in 1801. The greenboard, a less-fragile steel and enamel iteration, gained prominence in the 1960s. In the 1980s, the whiteboard made its debut. While each represented a leap forward for education, they were all inhibited by a basic flaw.
The teacher had to turn their back to the students to write. This, in three important ways, blocked the transfer of knowledge:
1. Each time the teacher turned away from the students, they broke the spell of connection. (Anyone who has ever passed notes while the teacher’s back was turned can attest to the mischief-making potential of this broken connection).
2. The teacher’s body blocked the words they were writing, making it difficult for students to connect the spoken instruction with what was being written.
3. When the teacher finally finished writing and explained the words on the board, students frantically had to copy what was written on the board while they tried to listen. More often than not, the writing or the speaking was ignored.
The key to closing the learning gap is raising student engagement in the classroom, quickly. The blackboard, greenboard, whiteboard, and even interactive flat panels fall short because they block the transmission of knowledge.
Embodied learning with eGlass
We created eGlass to end knowledge blocking in the classroom, and raise student engagement. eGlass is a transparent glass board with a built-in camera. The teacher, positioned facing their students through the eGlass, can write their lessons on the glass while maintaining critical eye-to-eye contact. Glass boards have been DIY’d by teachers in the past. But they were a far-from-perfect solution, forcing teachers to improvise with off-the-shelf (and often expensive) third-party products.
Projected onto a screen or panel, eGlass flips the teacher’s writing. Their face, their gestures, their eye contact are all embodied in the visual – in the same frame as handwriting that reads normally.
More than writing, you can digitally interact with any document
I see teachers reading this and rolling their eyes, thinking this new tech is going to obliterate all their carefully crafted lesson plans, quizzes, illustrations, slides, and browser bookmarks. Quite the opposite. eGlass starts as a transparent writing board. But the magic is that instructors can pull any digital video, image, or document onto the screen, and actually interact (that is, write on) the content on-screen.
How to write on an opaque white word doc in a transparent medium? eGlass does it by automatically ‘flipping’ the white into transparent, and the black writing into white writing. The document ‘pops’ off the screen, and the instructor can use their markers to circle, scribble, and write over the text. The same goes for photos, drawings, slides, videos, and web browsers. Any element of any lesson plan can be shown, and interacted with, on eGlass.
How eGlass ends knowledge blocking
• Teachers and students working with eGlass testify to its efficacy in preventing knowledge blocking.
• Teachers never break eye contact with students, ensuring the spell of engagement is never broken.
• Board writing is never obscured by the teacher’s head or body. Quite the opposite. The teacher’s gaze, gestures, and body language reinforce keywords written on eGlass.
There is no more ‘turn and explain’. Written and spoken words reach the students simultaneously, reinforcing the knowledge being transferred.
Necessity. The mother of innovation
eGlass was originally developed as a response to the tragic disconnection between students and teachers in pandemic online learning settings. As we’re seeing today, eGlass works as well in classrooms as it does in virtual settings. As McKinsey highlights, students are facing learning gaps of four months or more. eGlass is one tool designed to do just that.
The only way to close the gaps is by raising engagement dramatically. More than ever, we need to stop knowledge blocking. eGlass is one tool designed to do just that.
About the Author
Ji Shen is the founder of Pathway Innovations. In addition to creating eGlass, Pathway innovated the HoverCam, a high resolution document camera at a breakthrough price, that can be found in over 400,000 North American classrooms. Ji would love to hear from you. Drop him a line at ji.shen@thehovercam.com.
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