Towards an innovative application of the Wii Remote to facilitate interactive discussion

Vincent W L Tam and S T Fung
University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR, China

With the recent advances in pen-based computing technologies and tabulate or ultra-mobile PCs, pen-based input has significantly reshaped interactive discussion and presentation during classes. Some initial feedback from students on several of our undergraduate courses showed that they often prefer their course instructors to write their explanations or examples directly onto the original course notes using the stylus pen for tabulate or ultra-mobile PCs. This increases interactivity in discussion as it allows the instructors to use handwriting to show flexibly how to tackle specific problems during class. In addition, all the handwritten notes, together with the course notes, can be saved as digital images for students to download for later revision. However, the instructors need to learn how to write skillfully and smoothly on small touch-screens -- so it would be much more convenient if they could write on the projected image when standing at a distance from the projector screen, without relying on the touch-screen technology.

Inspired by a recent YouTube video demonstration on head-tracking for desktop virtual reality displays with the Wii Remote, we devised a working mechanism using the precise infrared receiver of a fixed Wii Remote together with a BlueTooth-enabled desktop/ notebook PC pre-installed with an intelligent software written in C# to localize the position of a moving infrared pen/emitter -- thus allowing free handwriting onto the projected images of course notes without any touch-screen. More interesting, we intentionally made the use of the Wii Remote and the infrared pen reversible. With a fixed infrared pen, the Wii Remote can act as a wireless mouse pointer to draw/write on the original course notes. Clearly, this opens up numerous opportunities for various platforms/systems to foster interactive discussion. Our system is easy to implement, and ready for any course instructor or presenter to use without the need to learn how to write skilfully on the small touch-screens of tabulate or ultra-mobile PCs. We have demonstrated our working prototype to several students and colleagues who showed strong interest in using it for interactive discussion in the future. Currently, we are working to improve our prototype by filtering out the noisy effect of the infrared light contained in other sources and the background sunlight reflected or refracted through windows. The challenge is to make our prototype more adaptive to different lighting conditions without much fine-tuning. A more thorough testing and evaluation of an improved prototype will be conducted around the end of the autumn semester. There are many interesting areas for further investigation, such as: the integration of multimedia files into our improved prototype; the integration of our improved prototype into a simulator or e-learning software; and a thorough study of the pedagogical changes brought about by our improved prototype or the integrated system for interactive discussion.