I was chatting to my nephew, 8yrs old, who had done podcasts in p3. Shocked by this, I asked more questions and learnt they used a webcam for looking at discovery Items, eg they bring in any dead insects and flowers etc and show them to the class using the webcam.
We have two £1000 visualisers, not in the room I use, they are ok, they can't move and don't fit A3 paper so have limited use. I have a new school but a small interactive whiteboard sized space for projection, whereas in the old school I had a full size, 10ft by 8ft roller blind that was a huge area for projecting on. I don't want an interactive board, casts shadows when touching, small image, small buttons when teaching software etc.
My laptops built in webcam has poor focussing and video, so a £14.99 webcam from logitech was a good test option. Me, and my AdvHGC class, were blown away by the image quality. The pupil sat at the back of the room saw my normal handwriting appear on the projector screen clearly. It is slightly slow-mo when rendering fast eg ,markers but has great potential. Ideally I get the HD Logitech £50 webcam with 3000pixels resolution and 30fps video. Ideally I can get a bluetooth camera for using in the workshop as well. Pupils could take the camera to their desk as well to interact/show.
Here is a link to Tom Barrets 13 ways to use a visualiser
Here is a link to a free website that shows the image and you can snapshot, capture video and right over the image. It can be made to go fullscreen in IE.
