A business tool aimed at sending flip charts to the scrap heap is helping visually impaired pupils to work in class without a learning support assistant constantly available to copy down what is being presented by the teacher.

The Mimio, developed by the Virtual Ink company in the United States is a simple piece of kit (by present-day software standards) which can reproduce the handwritten contents of a whiteboard on a PC laptop screen. The results of brainstorming sessions can be written up on the board and stored electronically.

A regular marker or special eraser is inserted in a stylus. Using ultrasound and infrared technology, the movements of the writer are tracked and sent to the student’s laptop.

Using a projector (priced separately), the teacher can write on screen dumps (for example, make entries on an Excel spreadsheet). These are fed back to the student’s laptop or PC. Then, with a hand-held stylus and tablet (a mouse can be used, but is slower) the student can work collaboratively back on to the whiteboard display. The method can also be used to hook-up with a remote teacher or student The software is available in the UK at pound;399 plus VAT. It needs 64 MB of ram and can run on any Windows platform. However, there is no Macintosh version.

John Siret, a peripatetic teacher working with visually impaired children in north-west Kent, has been testing it with some of his students.

“If a visually impaired pupil has very poor distance vision, even as little as a metre, with good near vision they can still see the words being written on the whiteboard. These are the ideal conditions and there is no need for an LSA to write for them,” he says. “If near vision is also poor then the image can be enlarged. The technology can be used by any pupil for whom a lap top would be appropriate in normal circumstances - say Year 4 or 5.”

Training for the pupil can take as little as 30 minutes depending on ability.

“It gives the pupil much more independence. They can erase the material, alter it, store and print it out.”

John Siret acknowledges that some pupils might feel self-conscious about using the equipment.

On the other hand the appearance of a Mimio can be quite a talking point. “I set it up for one Year 7 boy. Once the CD-Rom was inserted it was not a problem. But we had quite an audience who thought the idea was great and were thoroughly engrossed.”

UK Supplier: Mimio, Unit 3, Heathgate Place, 75-87 Agincourt Avenue, London NW3 2NU. Tel: 0800 980 2880