A good tablet input device to use with connect

[Greatrex77]

Our University has only recently signed up to use Adobe connect so I am a new user but have run a couple of tutorials for external students and they seem to go quite well.  I am teaching chemistry and so the tutorial requires a lot of structural drawing which can be done using the line functions in the whiteboard but this is slower than hand drawing the structures and inserting atom text onto line drawings is also slow. We have smartboards but these tutorials are held at night and ideally i would be able to run them from home so wont be able to use a smartboard. I am a pc user and am wondering if there is anyone out there that is using a tablet (adroid or ipad) with a stylus and the whiteboard functionality of connect (or some other method) on a pc to input drawings.

If you are, could you tell me what type of tablet you are using and the software you use to connect the pc and tablet or if there is a recommended way of doing this.

I am aware that there are mobile versions of connect but unsure if running as host would be effective from a tablet with the mobile version of the program.

[stylish_Flair01AC]

I looked at the title of your post and found it interesting as I will have to give a presentation soon in Acrobat Connect from my desktop workstation.  I am curious how I will be able to annotate the meeting by drawing into the window using the drawing tools.  I know they are available.  I am wondering how the hosting team for whom I will be giving the presentation will use mark-ups to put notes and drawings and highlights into my presentation.  I am also wondering how I will be able to integrate a PowerPoint presentation into Acrobat Connect.

That being said if you are a poweruser such as the teacher who is hosting, I would invest in a stylus-enabled slate tablet such as the HP Slate 500 available from the small & medium business store.  Any device similar to it which runs Windows 7 32-bit will be able to install a full host-version of Acrobat Connect as you would have it on a laptop.  You could optionally get a tablet-laptop convertible which also comes with a stylus and you could use the physical keyboard at the same time.

You could opt to get a Mac and convert it into a tablet for a service fee from a website which I don't recall at the moment--you will find it in a web search.  But that is twice the cost of getting a tablet-notebook running Windows 7.  As for the students you could recommend them investing in Android tablets as I saw that these had the Adobe Connect software available on the Android Market for free.  Android tablets are superior in one way over iOS tablets in that they are Flash-enabled and this would be an advantage if you had a Flash presentation that you wanted to show your students.  That goes without saying for the Windows 7 Slate tablets but those are much more costly and wouldn't be advisable for the average student.

[Greatrex77]

Thanks markerline, I think a touch enabled laptop would probably be a good option for me. This will be University wide eventally so this could mean a lot of new laptops for academic staff. I haven't shared powerpoint slides with students over connect, as lectures are loaded online as slides with animated annotations but this might be something to do in the future.

[DHMerritt]

Greatrex77- We work with numbers and figures a lot. Doing mathematical calculations seemed to create a need to purchase a tablet i.e. we purchased a Wacom product. To get it to work with AC (Adobe Connect) is a simple process of installing the dirvers (this comes with the product). Once the drivers are installed one can use it with AC. It is really that simple. The difficult part is working with a tablet. This is not as easy as we thought it would be. Our tablet is the bottom of the  range i.e. one writes on the tablet but one has to look at the screen where you are writting (i.e. not the tablets with a screen on it) so the hand/eye co-ordination was something to get used to. At the end of the day we do not use it so often. I think the best tablet to buy is one that one can actually see the screen on the tablet. Hope this helps.

[Guest]

Hi. I work for a corporate training company and we also have a need for ad-hoc drawing tools.

We've had great success with the Genius G-Pen tablet. This has a 6x10 tablet and can be used for drawing and it is integrated with many standard office applications. It takes some practice but at $99.00 or so, it is a good option.

We've had terrific adoption with the HoverCam Document Camera/Scanner (http://www.thehovercam.com/11-hovercam-document-camera-scanner-x500.html). This device is particularly useful if your instructors need to show three dimensional objects.

Hope this helps!

[JGTiii]

I realize this is an old post but hopefully I will get some answers or I'll start a new post. I'm attempting to use either a graphic pad  (Wacom external on my desktop with Win7) or Wacom built into my ThinkPad W700 running Win8 or my Samsung Note 8 with the VirtualTablet app  (see http://www.sunnysidesoft.com/virtualtablet/) The app and the Note 8 works on my desktop and the laptop. If I'm using an application running on the laptop (any paint/photp/powerpoint application) the pen response is right on however if I use either the tablets or the Note 8 with Adobe Connect the pen response is very slow and unusable because of the slow response. If I use the mouse on the PCs with Adobe Connect the response is right on. The issue I'm trying to resolve is the poor pen response with Adobe Connect. Any suggestions?

[Greatrex77]

Hi JGTiii,

Thought I would reply to this although I don't have any suggestions. In my institution we are all using DTF wacom tablets now and adobe connect is used extensively in combination with screen capture software. The lag seen in input is irritating and makes the product less enjoyable to use but in my experience isnt too bad and so is generally just tolerated. If you use screen share and annotate in powerpoint (crtl-p) or on a paint whiteboard does it still happen?

[JGTiii]

AH, gee wiz I don't know why I did not think of that option. It seems to work! I'll have to do more testing but with my first test it seems to be great. Big thanks for the suggestion.

[MrDB2]

Am new to the Adobe Connect environment, and am wondering if most people use pen devices with it?   Am not too coordinated with the mouse, so for those times when I want to annotate on a presentation was considering a USB tablet (like Wacom or Huion).  

Just looking for advice and experiences.

Thanks in advance.