Handwriting Capture

If you are familiar with using handwritten content in your teaching, such as lecture notes written on a chalkboard, whiteboard, poster board, or overhead projector, you may benefit from using digitizer tablet when creating materials for your distance learning course.

Popular Culture Use

Telestrator mockup — Popular uses of digitizer tablets include John Madden’s famous Telestrator drawings during live broadcasts of NFL games. This mockup of telestrator diagram (not from official NFL broadcast) shows handwritten illustrations annotate an image of a football play.

Academic Use

Digitizer tablets are used in academic settings to create recordings similar to the Khan Academy math tutorials.

The SPS DL Video Recording Studio is equipped with a Wacom Intuous Pro digitizer tablet. Documents, images, presentation slides, PDFs and more can be annotated with handwritten comments and illustrations while you simultaneously capture your voice and image using the studio microphone and camera. This is a great way to quickly produce a video that would otherwise be difficult to replicate using the characters and symbols available in word processing programs.

Not local to Chicago but want to produce a handwriting capture video?

The Evanston campus is home to the Lightboard, an analog version of the digitizer tablet that uses neon dry erase markers and illuminated glass.

Options for remote faculty

If you are not in the Chicago area or can not visit campus, you may have options in your own home or office. Touchscreen devices, such as smartphones or tablets, can often be used for handwriting capture. If you have an Apple iOS, Android, or Windows device with touch enabled input, contact distanceeducation@northwestern.edu to ask about the available options.