My department has a small budget with which to purchase and evaluate new technologies, and recently I got the chance to evaluate the Livescribe Pulse pen. The pen uses special paper and a special pen which hides a camera and microphone inside. The camera records the pen’s motions against a special dot pattern on the special paper. The pen has ink of course, but the ink is really only for the user; it is irrelevant to the technology. The microphone is available to record the pen user’s voice, allowing for what Livescribe has dubbed “pencasting” – real time recording of writing or drawing along with an audio description of what is going on.
Some excellent possible uses for the pen include writing out and demonstrating math equations, formulas, and graphs, and also possible pen and ink drawing. Any of these uses would be useful for providing the “chalkboard” type experience to distant learners.
There are some drawbacks, however, of course. The output is a proprietary format that is hosted on the Livescribe site – not good if you’re thinking of doing in-house enhancements to the pencasts (like adding captioning for accessibility purposes). Also, though students can use the pen to demonstrate and submit their work, it does not produce a file that can then be marked up and returned by the professor.
All in all, a nice way of demonstrating problem-solving techniques, but not a great way of providing a true two-way or social experience.