Scanners and Visualizers

Scanners and Visualisers

Document cameras have advanced rapidly over the last decade. They are the modern-day equivalent of a device that many older lecturers, and their pupils, may remember: the overhead projector. One type of document camera is the scanner which was previously used as a device for just projecting a single piece of transparent plastic with black ink. However, modern scanners can display normal documents, reports, student work, drawings, photos and even small objects. By allowing teachers to present live footage in the classroom, both scanners and visualisers can help teachers to overcome presentation fatigue keeping their students engaged for longer. They are also a useful and time saving piece of equipment for schools, colleges and higher education establishments.

Scanners

Scanners differ slightly from visualisers as they are often a higher resolution and often have the convenient ability to auto sequence pages in a document. Scanners such as the ones from Czur contain features including smart paging, auto alignment, correct position, multi target scanning and the ability to clean up document backgrounds making the words easier to focus on.

The scanners are also useful for school libraries using their ability to capture uneven documents. Handy for running OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on bound books.

Czur scanners also enable users to transfer scanned pages into editable files, ideal for teachers to send work to students for them to complete and send back.

Visualisers

Visualisers have also come a long way since the heavy pieces of equipment with a wide base and somewhat inaccurate projection onto a whiteboard that if touched would be impossible to line up again. They are now compact devices with an accurate, high resolution projection beam onto a board.

The visual display device such as those from Adesso can capture images and video recordings and can be used as a visual presenter. Using auto-focus, real time images of 3D objects, books, documents, sketches and photos can be presented through a monitor or projector. Anything presented using the Adesso visualiser can also be recorded and played back later for students to refer back to whenever they need to.