The future of classroom tech at BETT

If there has been one resounding theme throughout BETT so far, it has been collaborative working, and an important tool for this is a kind of electronic whiteboard which allows you to draw and amend your work and send it to your colleagues.

This version was being demonstrated by Smart Technologies, one of the leaders in the market.

Smart was demonstrating how you could annotate a web page to describe a concept to someone, in this case how you could travel by Tube.

You could expect to pay upwards of £600 for a board like this, or £2,300 for Smart's giant 77-inch "Smart Board".

The board comes with a projector so you can carry out presentations, and it even knows that you're writing in red because the red pen has been removed from its tray. This capability depends on the pens being put back in the correct tray of course.

The equivalent of a left mouse click is performed by touching the screen lightly with the pen, and a right click by holding the pen to the canvas for several seconds.

ZDNet.co.uk asked Smart if they would demonstrate the technology with a route diagram from Elephant and Castle to Baker Street. It should require one direct train on the Bakerloo line.

The offered route of walking to Waterloo and then changing twice didn't quite meet expectations, but then the beauty of the technology is that you can always rub it out and start again.