AI is reshaping the education landscape, and teachers and students alike are now using it to enhance learning experiences. Seven AI tools are built right into BenQ Boards and their software, allowing for better classroom accessibility, inclusivity, and safety. This article explores these features and their benefits.

1. Turn printed pages into editable text

If you’re a teacher who relies on textbooks and printed handouts for lessons, the BenQ Board can help you digitise them so you can still use them during class. With optical character recognition (OCR), you can even extract the text from the printed page without having to manually type it up, saving you time and effort. This is especially useful if you regularly use a document camera in class with printed materials.

For example, let’s say you’re using a textbook in class. If you want to easily share its pages with students as editable text, you can start by scanning or taking photos of the pages with a document camera and then importing those images into the board’s EZWrite whiteboarding software. Tapping the OCR button will automatically extract text in the image and paste it into an editable text box. You can then edit this text, highlight it, and even have the board read it aloud by combining OCR with the next feature on this list.

2. Let the board read to your students

Text-to-speech (TTS) on BenQ Boards can read text aloud for the whole class to hear clearly. TTS was originally developed to help visually impaired people to read but the synthesised voices offered were robotic and lacked intonation. Nowadays, TTS services offer more natural-sounding and accurate voices, making it easier to focus on and learn from. For students who have reading challenges, TTS is a valuable tool that can help them participate fully in lessons.

An estimated 3 percent of US children under 18 have visual impairments,¹ while 6-7 percent experience learning disabilities,² with 85 percent of these difficulties relating to writing or reading. With an estimated 49.4 million students enrolled in US public preschool and K-12 schools as of 2021, that’s more than a million students who could be facing reading challenges.³

To help these students, TTS functionality is incorporated in EZWrite on BenQ Boards. You can use this feature to highlight text in EZWrite and have the board read it aloud with a tap of a button. This approach fosters inclusivity and accessibility for students in the classroom.

3. Make handwriting perfectly legible

Imagine this: your whiteboard is covered with annotations, from notes and numbers to shapes. You want to make them easier to read and edit, but you don't want to type them all out. This is where EZWrite's handwriting recognition tool comes in to make your notes more legible while saving you time and effort.

Simply select your handwritten content, tap the Handwriting Recognition button and EZWrite transforms your writing into fully readable, editable text. Adjust the text’s size and boldness for clarity, use TTS, translation, share it with students, and search for it after class. This feature supports multiple languages and even converts numbers into text too.

EZWrite's handwriting recognition feature also works with shapes. Draw a shape on the board, select it, and tap the Shape Recognition button to convert it into a perfect digital shape. You can then resize it, change the line weight, outline and fill color, duplicate it, and more.

As mentioned above, using the handwriting recognition tool not only enhances your annotation but also improves its searchability. After exporting lessons to your cloud storage, such as Google Drive, a quick keyword search retrieves all the relevant lesson files. This makes it a breeze to find and review your class notes whenever you need them.

4. Cross language barriers

Translation tools can help teachers and students access and learn from materials in foreign languages, as well as support students who are non-native speakers of the classroom's main language. In fact, about 10.3 percent of students in US schools, or 5 million students, were English learners as of 2020, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.⁴ 

This is why the new BenQ Boards feature a Google Translate tool. To use it, simply set up the languages you’d like to use from a selection of 59 languages. Then, just like with TTS, highlight the text you want to translate in EZWrite and press the Translate button.

Easy access to this tool can come in handy for in-class translation. For example, teachers can use it in a multilingual classroom to help students quickly understand material on the board. Or, say students in a world history or international studies class want to learn from a primary source in another language that’s never been translated, they can easily get a translation right on the board. In language learning classes, students can also use translation as a dictionary to look up word meanings. If they’re more advanced, they can even edit and improve upon translations as an activity.

5. Make sharing safe

With BenQ Boards, it’s easy for students to wirelessly share content from their devices, such as smartphones and Chromebooks, to the board. This can be a great way to facilitate collaborative learning and presentations. However, there is always the risk that students might try to cast inappropriate content to the board and disrupt the class.

To prevent this, BenQ has integrated an AI content moderator into the InstaShare 2 screen sharing program on specific BenQ Board models. This AI moderator filters shared images in real time, blocking adult content from appearing on the interactive board. This ensures fewer disruptions and creates a safer classroom atmosphere.

6. Hear what matters 

Poor audio quality can lead to poor learning outcomes: Up to a third of students said they felt frustrated when they encountered poor audio quality during online lessons, according to a recent study.⁵ What’s worse, about 14.9 percent of students under nine have mild hearing loss.⁶ Even students with normal hearing miss 25 percent of what’s being said in classrooms with bad acoustics and background noise.⁷

To combat this issue, BenQ Boards and their add-on cameras have noise-reducing microphones that block unwanted sounds from your streamed lessons and recordings. Whether it’s the rumble of a thunderstorm, or the hum of the air conditioner, this feature expertly removes distracting background noises to ensure that your voice is perfectly audible.

7. Keep everyone in frame

Planning on conducting a hybrid lecture, hosting a remote competition, or holding a video call? If so, you want to focus on delivering your content and not moving the camera about. If you choose to get a DV01K camera with your BenQ Board, you’ll gain access to AI framing tools that help you stay in focus. 

The DV01K features AI-powered face and voice tracking that locks in on your face when you’re speaking so there’s no need for you to stand directly in front of the camera. It also has an auto framing feature that ensures that you’re consistently centered in the frame.

Getting started with AI-powered education solutions

With the above tools easily accessible with EDLA BenQ Boards and the DV01K camera, making the most of AI resources is both simple and allows for a better educational experience for students and teachers alike.

Want to enhance your lessons with BenQ Boards and their AI tools? Get started by talking to one of our experts.