Controlled and collaborative presentation via tablet PCs for classroom and meeting room uses

We propose a simple yet effective controlled and collaborative presentation system using tablet PCs for a classroom or meeting room use. The system does not require the Internet to be functioning, but simply needs a local Wi-Fi connection via an access point. This makes our system invaluably suitable for the classroom uses, especially in some rural parts of the world where the Internet accesses are impossible. It allows a presenter to synchronously change presentation slides of viewers in the control mode where the presenter has the control of a current page. The viewers, on the other hand, can get out of the control mode and be in the edit mode where they can add annotations or choose to view other pages asynchronously different from the presenter. The viewers could choose some or all of their annotations to be shared and shown to public through the presenter. The presenter could select and allow any annotations from the viewers to be shown on a projector's screen. This would help facilitate collaboration among the viewers. Each viewer can save the presenter's annotations, allowable other viewers' annotations and his annotations altogether in one file for a further review or later use. The system had been evaluated on three key aspects, including usefulness, user interface, and performance, by 26 participants. On the usefulness, 81 percent of the users agreed or strongly agreed with the system. On the user interface, only 56 percent agreed or strongly agreed, while 64 percent agreed or strongly agreed on the system performance.