Posted by Simon of www.anseo.net
I haven’t reviewed an interactive whiteboard for some time now and after visiting the BETT show in London last week, I found some new boards to play with including this one, the IQBoard. Sourced by a company called Mediascene who are working in partnership with Sight and Sound, (who sell the excellent Teamboard), I had high hopes for this board. It promised my three criteria – one you can use a magic pen with it, two you can use your finger or any other pointy device on it and three you can use a dry wipe marker on it.
From playing around with it, it is an excellent board. It’s sturdy, accurate and has everything I could ever want with an IWB. I don’t find this minor issue a big problem but only one user can interact with the board at a time so I wasn’t bothered by this admission from the salesperson. The most important factor was the price. You can get the board for around €2,900, which includes a full installation including a short-throw projector. This is a good price in my opinion. However, Mediascene are doing a promotion so if you buy two boards, you’ll get a €1,000 discount. This amounts to approx €2,400, which is the best value I’ve seen for a short-throw solution of this quality. (IQBoard note: The Discount no longer applies. However, currently prices are exception)
Essentially the IWB market is starting to go in the same direction with touch-based and dry-wipe solutions becoming the norm. The differences between them are minimal. You’ll have to check out prices, guarantees, servicing and all that other stuff now as that’s becoming as important. In the IQBoard’s case, standard guarantee is 3 years with a 5 year option available. The other thing that’s driving the IWB market right now is all-in-one classroom solutions. By this I mean companies are creating IWBs, slates, visualisers and other materials designed for interactivity. The IQBoard does have accompanying slates but I’m quite happy to use different brands with different IWBs.
Mediascene have been around for many years selling computers in the early 90s and are now embarking in the IWB world with many partners. I don’t think they’re going to disappear anywhere so you’re looking at an established company. They have big ambitions to get the IQBoard to be the 3rd biggest selling IWB on the market within two years.
Notes from IQBoard following this review
No doubt we are pleased that one of the leading active reviewers says that our board is the best value for a high end Interactive Whiteboard.
If you are purchasing the IQBoard and using it alongside other IWBs that do not have the dry wipe facility we would not recommend you use this facility as a teacher would be likely to forget and use the dry wipe marker on the promethean board thus destroying the board.
However, we would certainly not purchase any more boards like this that do not have the dry wipe facility because “touch-based and dry-wipe solutions are becoming the norm”
So, in the scenario in future years where you replace the older boards with less facilities you want to be able to use dry wipe markers on all boards. Why would you contantly want to have 2 whiteboards in the class?
You may well look back in 2014 at your purchase today in 2010 and someone will comment
“Why didn’t the decision maker in 2010 have the foresight to buy an Interactive Whiteboard with the Dry Wipe facility? Now we have to replace them if we only want 1 Whiteboard in the room!”
Over the years with computers we have always been asked about longevity, ungradeability and every question to ensure that the purchase made by the school will last as long as possible. Now is the time to make the correct decision and buy the IWB which is the most up to date and just happens to be available at about the lowest cost.
