SLJ Reviews the AVerPen Starter Pack Collaborative Classroom Tool

AVerPen systems aspire to combine the functionality of an interactive whiteboard with the mobility of wireless tablets and the real-time, formative assessment capabilities of classroom response (clicker) systems.

The expandable starter pack includes a teacher pen and four student pens. The teacher pen is connected, via a USB cradle that both charges it and receives RF signals from all the pens, to a computer running the supplied AVer+ software. All the pens can write and navigate, but the teacher pen calls the shots. It can access and control just about any digital content, including lessons and quizzes created in AVer+ and—using the software’s transparency mode—favorites such as PowerPoint and Word documents, PDFs, Web sites, databases, videos, almost anything you can digitally display. Got an AVerMedia brand document camera? The software lets you incorporate its output, too. Connect any projector and all five pens can write, navigate, and annotate on the big screen, once each student pen has been invited.

The teacher can split the screen up to six ways, creating little work spaces for each student pen.

Unlike interactive whiteboards or wireless tablets, any activated AVerPen can write and navigate from any flat surface within a 50-foot range, thanks to a clickable pen tip that uses a light beam and pickup, just like an optical mouse. That’s the appeal: you don’t need to be next to a whiteboard or tablet to get in on the game.

Student pens can act as a group response system, allowing pen holders to send responses to multiple choice questions with up to six possible answers. The cradles store and charge four student pens simultaneously; daisy chain them and charge up to 20 student pens from a single AC power source.

The AVerMedia site states that “up to 6 student pens and 1 teacher pen can interact at one time while up to 60 student pens can be registered to a single teacher pen.” I take that to mean that, while up to 60 pens could send quiz responses to a teacher pen, only six can work together onscreen at once, which brings me to my first of a couple of caveats about AVerPens: don’t expect to do too much handwritten teaching with them; the AverPen’s tough to write with, even on the full screen. (If you’ve ever tried to sign your name with a mouse, you have an idea of what that’s like.) The AVerPen’s best used for simple stuff like underlining and highlighting. Split the screen six ways, and pen users will have a tough time writing anything decipherable in their spaces. Lastly, because the AVerPen kits do so much, there’s a pretty steep learning curve to overcome.

On the other hand, the mobility and features AVerPens bring to the table may make that climb worthwhile.