Ubi takes a “bottoms up” approach to deploying interactive whiteboard solutions to classrooms. We want teachers and IT heads to love our product first, before the principal or district heads decides to deploy our technology into classrooms. This is exactly how The Bear Creek School in Redmond, Washington deployed Ubi in 40 classrooms in their lower school.
The Bear Creek School recently outfitted their upper school with interactive projectors but does not have any interactive solution in their lower school (grades K-6). All the lower school classrooms have regular projectors and whiteboards – a perfect setup to use Ubi to turn their existing technology interactive. They decided to give Ubi a try in one classroom before deciding whether to deploy it in all 30 lower school classrooms. Headmaster Patrick Carruth decided that the perfect candidate to test Ubi and decide whether it was a good fit for Bear Creek was Cheryl Joyner, a third grade teacher.
Patrick B. Carruth President and Headmaster
Cheryl has had limited experience with interactive whiteboard solutions in the past, but has tried Mimio which she could never really get to work. After Ubi was setup, Cheryl spent the next few months incorporating Ubi into her daily routine in the classroom.
Lunch Count!
Every morning, when Cheryl walks into the classroom she docks her laptop, starts her machine and Ubi auto-starts so that interactivity is available right away – there is no setup or calibration time at all. As soon as her 3rd graders walk in the door, they go up to the whiteboard which has a Lunch Count Excel sheet projected and tap which lunch option they would like for the day. After everyone has entered their information, Cheryl can just tap to save the file and send it to administration in a matter of seconds. With Ubi, Cheryl has found a way to automate and streamline (and make engaging) a time consuming morning routine.
Maintaining Focus in the Front of the Classroom
Ubi has helped Cheryl maintain her students focus on the content being presented in the front of the classroom. Cheryl uses her document camera A LOT – she uses it to display passages from texts, worksheets, physical objects, etc. Before Ubi, she would always have to return to her desk to every time she wanted display a new image or rotate the an object – losing her students’ attention in the process. Plus, she never has the capability of annotating directly on the image she projected – capturing all the insights her students made during the learning process. With Ubi, she can display images from her documents camera with a single tap. She can zoom in and out, rotate and control the image right from the whiteboard using her fingers or the Ubi pen. Better yet, she can annotate directly on the large images, save them and distribute the notes to her students – all without ever having to go to her desk.
So what’s next for Bear Creek?
After a few months of Cheryl experimenting with Ubi, she saw its value in her lower school classroom. The school decided to go ahead and put Ubi in all of their 42 classrooms in the summer of 2016. With such a minimal investment in hardware, Ubi is a cost effective way to bring interactivity to all students at Bear Creek. The school was able to outfit all their classrooms with Ubi at a fraction of cost, they would have otheriwse spent. Cheryl is eager to see what other teachers can do with Ubi