PRTLI_INTERORG:

"Hewlett Packard tablet PC's at NUI, Galway."

Project Leader:

Participants:

Overview
Hewlett Packard tablet PC's at NUI, Galway.

Nine Hewlett Packard TC 1100 tablet PC�s and two TC 1000 tablets are in use by the commerce faculty at the National University of Ireland, Galway. These tablets have had the series of Microsoft Office 2007 (Office 12) beta releases installed on them including the Office 12 suite (Word, Excel, Access, Publisher, InfoPath) as well as Visio 2007, Project 2007 and OneNote. The tablets are connected to college resources and the Internet through a wireless local area network.

In addition the tablets are members of a Microsoft domain, on which sits an installation of the beta two technical refresh version of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). Each student in the third and fourth (final) year of the Bachelor of Science in Business Information Systems has been issued with an active directory account for the domain.

Usage and Classroom Integration.
Tablets use in Student Presentations

At the simplest level, students use the tablets while making presentations. The tablets are used to run PowerPoint 2007 and connected to the classroom�s projector displays the presentation to the class. Other students in the class may use the tablets running OneNote to take handwritten notes while the presentations are occurring. Lecturers also use tablets to present lectures to the students.

Use with Classroom Presenter

Classroom Presenter is a program which enables the transmission of presentations, as �slide decks� over wireless LAN�s. The lecturers and students at NUI, Galway use Classroom Presenter along with Hewlett Packard tablet PC�s to deliver presentations wirelessly to the audience. The audience, typically students from the BIS course receive the broadcast presentation on Hewlett Packard tablet PC�s and may write notes over the slides, draw or add to diagrams presented and even submit slides back to the presenter wirelessly using the tablet PC�s

Tablets and SharePoint Integration

Students may use the tablets to connect with the courses SharePoint 2007 portal where they can share documents, schedule meetings and create a lasting repository of their work in their project teams. Similarly, rough notes and diagrams from their project meetings can also be saved directly to their project site on the portal.


After using the tablets to take notes during a lecture or a presentation, the students can save their personal notes directly to their SharePoint �My Site� and retrieve or share them at a later time without the need for USB hard drives, SD cards or other time consuming transfer mechanisms.

VPDT overview

Hewlett Packard tablets are being used in a ground breaking project involving the development of a product by student teams located in four geographically dispersed locations. The NUI, Galway students form the Information Systems speciality of the �Virtual Product Development Teams� (VPDT) with students from University of Massachusetts, Amherst providing the Management speciality; students from University of Ulster, Derry providing the Engineering speciality and students from Bentley College, Boston, the Marketing speciality.


The students are using Hewlett Packard tablet PC�s along with MOSS 2007, Microsoft Office 12 suite, Groove Virtual Office and Conference XP to co-ordinate and collaborate to create an international virtual team to conceive, analyse, develop, manage and market a complete product. We believe this is the first University programme of it�s kind in the world.

Conference XP Meetings

While communicating with the other functions using conference XP as the video-conferencing backbone, the students use Hewlett Packard tablet PC�s to collaborate in real time with each other on documents and presentations. The tablet PC�s allow and encourages a level of interaction which would be impossible without these technologies and their integration and use as collaborative tools.

Conclusion

The introduction of the tablet PC�s to the students and faculty serves as an important step in their acceptance of the tablets and the associated software which take advantage of the tablet PC�s features as day-to-day technologies which they can find further uses for.


The displays of the tablets as presentation tools, both in an academic setting by faculty members lecturing with the aid of tablet PC�s and by students leveraging the tablets as presentation tools in a similar manner as they would in a business meeting increases the students comfort level with the technology and it�s use.


The use of the tablets in an integrated environment, i.e. with the MOSS portal and Office software suite, allowing the students the experience of paperless note-taking, digital storage and retrieval coupled with wireless connectivity of the technologies used to access the data displays a role of the tablet PC in a setting which translates to the business environment.


The introduction of the tablet as a further tool used in video-conferencing sessions supporting the communication and collaboration of the virtual team members displays the possible uses of the tablets as an enabling technology by teleconferenced workers in globally distributed teams.