Chalk: A Digital Solution to Collaborative Learning

The current educational paradigm is centered on a ‘lecturing model’ - teacher lectures and student note-taking - due to its efficiency, especially in large classrooms. Yet, with rapid pacing and large amounts of information covered in curriculums, students are forced to copy lecture notes without understanding concepts; they learn material afterwards, using whatever notes gleaned from the lecture. To summarize the problem in a simple quote: "The classroom is a place where a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the students’ lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either.” Chalk solves the problem by taking advantage of increasing classroom technology use. Chalk creates a group “whiteboard” that allows teachers to real-time transfer notes to students’ digital notebooks. Students can then annotate with a personal overlay; this ensures that each student can personalize his or her notebook while simultaneously automatically receiving any relevant information. Chalk uniquely combines flexible notation features - such as inserting images or shapes, undoing mistakes, or copying sections of the page - with real time group sharing. By reducing the amount of attention needed to record accurate, personalized notes, Chalk allows students to actively engage with the lecture. Importantly, though our experience is related to classrooms, we believe Chalk has applications in the workplace, conferences, and online tutoring - essentially, it can revolutionize personal information sharing in a digital world by replacing the pen and paper.

Built With

• css3
• html5
• javascript
• jquery
• mac
• web
• windows