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Earlier this week, we reported Microsoft’s commitment to educational change through it’s reestablished partnership with New York City Public School district. Well, continuing on the trend of utilizing Microsoft software and devices to transform traditional forms of education, Victor Cervantes, IT director for a public high school system in the Mexican state of Puebla has committed to introducing Ubi Interactive into the system’s 37 high schools.
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Ubi Interactive is an innovative, Kinect-based system that turns virtually any surface into a touchscreen. This dynamic allows teachers to project teaching materials onto their existing classroom whiteboard, turning it into a fully interactive touchscreen. Teachers and students can then page through the content with simple, intuitive touch gestures.
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With another page taken out of a fevered sci-fi fantasy, Ubi Interactive also developed the Ubi Pen, a stylus that runs on the Ubi Annotation Tool software. This stylus allows teachers and students to make notes, highlight content and mark suggestions on whatever surface the giant touchscreen is displayed upon and then save those annotations to a digital life.
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Cervantes had been previously looking into other solutions like interactive white boards but found the steep learning curve and high prices a bit of turn-off. His objective was to find a solution that was pedagogically sound and user friendly while also maintaining a reasonable budget. While conducting his search Cervantes had also been exploring the potential of Kinect for Windows as a possible alternative and decided to reach out to Anup Chathoh, co-founder and CEO of Ubi. The two of them worked out a month long-trial of the software and Cervantes immediately realized Ubi Interactive was the solution he was looking for.
\n\nFurther reading: Kinect, Mexico, Microsoft, Schools, Touchscreen