Joint work between Becta and industry has made good progress towards establishing a common file format for interactive whiteboards. An associated development is an open source file viewer. (25 November 2008)
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Common File Format for Interactive Whiteboards
Great, we really need this facility in schools!
Steve
Is there any progress on this? RM have gone very quiet about it - I can't find any news since Becta in July '08.
Yes, the file format itself is available from the Becta site, http://industry.becta.org.uk/download.cfm?resID=37722&download_url=/content_files/industry/resources/Specification_key_docs/common_file_format_draft_specification_jul08.doc
tinyurl: http://preview.tinyurl.com/9slufy
and work on the code library to help manufacturers implement the common file format (CFF) in their products is underway. This library will be released with a FOSS licence, later this year, as will the viewer tool, which is chiefly to allow tech testing of conformance, and also to allow teachers to preview content.
I've recently moved to the Strategic tech team and am working on this, I'd be really interested to talk to some IWB users about it.
When I have some more info I'll set up a thread here to keep the information flowing, and get your feedback.
Cheers
Rob
It's good to see that Promethean look set to join Smart in providing their proprietary interactive whiteboard flipchart/notebook software for Linux powered computers, overcoming one further obstacle to the use of Linux in many UK classrooms.
Interestingly, Promethean are describing the trial edition of their Activesoftware Inspire as having 'been designed by teachers for teachers, creating our very first user-generated solution', drawing on the community involvement that has long been a feature of open source development, although it doesn't look as though they've gone so far as releasing the software under an open source licence, nor is the Linux edition available as a trial download yet.