Prosthetic Pen?

So which statement is most accurate? A smartpen is an intellectual prosthetic. A smartpen is more flexible than a computer. A smartpen redefines non-linear organization. Roll the tape (and don’t forget to click the back button to read the rest of the blog!): The Livescribe paper-based computing platform

I just bought smartpen number two from livescribe for my son who begins high school in two weeks. Smartpen number one is mine. Bet on that. I use it for teaching and for interviewing.

Here’s the deal. Say you’re in a lecture, and you whip out your smartpen. Naturally, you begin taking notes. Your smartpen uses “special” paper (same price as “regular” paper), which allows the pen to simultaneously capture every word on the page as the pen’s microphone records every word in the lecture. Or, in my case, the interview. Back at your desk, you slip the pen into its “cradle,” and everything flows into a free software package. Now for the magic.

Every word in your funky handwritten notes is searchable! Pulse smartpen from Livescribe

And more, if you don’t understand those inky gobs others call your handwritten notes, there’s remedy. You simply touch the pen to the scrambled words and the pen replays the lecture/interview from the garbled blob of cursive in question. Word! Watch how University of Kansas professor, cool Mike Wesch and his class, use the pen: SmartPen as Digital Ethnography Tool

This is serious stuff with lots of opportunities for those in search of intellectual prosthetics, and we haven’t begun to address the opening questions raised by this blog. Not to mention one or two improvements and a problem-O…

To be continued…