Trying new things: LiveScribe Pens

As a part of our TLC grant, we budgeted money to buy a couple of LiveScribe pens for the math department (however, thanks to a generous donation (from another MSS!) of pens that weren't being used, we were able to put the same money toward an extra tablet). We just received the pens last week, and have started to play with them.

Play the piano, that is: 

Seriously though...

We initially wanted to try out the pens because as we move more and more of our content online, we wanted to give the students access to solution sets that were more than just "the answers" - we wanted an easy way to have full, written solutions available for students to follow along with. 

The bonus with the LiveScribe pens is that you can also record your voice as you write, so not only can the students read your full solutions, but if they like, they can listen to you guide them through the steps.

I made a couple of solution sets on the weekend for one of my courses in D2L's vLE, and really like how easy it is to transfer the note to the computer and share as a PDF. I've played around with recording voice, too, but haven't yet added it to a solution set. I'm hoping to do that this week.

The one thing I find tricky, though, is the inability to erase what you've written if you make a mistake (and I tend to make a lot of mistakes!). I made one last night, about half way through the solution set:

Oops! I can't erase a mistake...

I was devastated! What can be done?? My options were to 

• scratch it out (too messy), 
• redo the whole page (way too time-consuming), 
• or......admit to making the mistake, HIGHLIGHT the mistake, and then work through the correct solution.

If I'm making a mistake to begin with, I imagine other students might make the same mistake, too. And what better way to model problem solving and resilience than to not be perfect in front of the students (and I am far from perfect!). 

This is definitely something I'll be doing more often (both perfectly and not perfectly) with all of my classes as they work through content online and from a variety of resources. Stay tuned to both see AND hear me make mistakes in future documents!