It wasn’t too long ago that I was a graduate student - taking notes, studying for tests, and writing papers. My life was filled with lots of paperwork and lots of stress as I worked to get everything “right.” Now I’m in front of the class as a professor, and none of that pressure has gone away. If you’re a student in my class, you write one paper…but I grade 90 papers. Same goes for tests. (The one redeeming factor is that I know the answers ahead of time.) =)

I can’t wait until the smartpen is available for my students - and for me. At Livescribe, we’ve spent a lot of time developing a user interface and applications that will make life a lot easier and less stressful.

My area of expertise is instructional technology. I spend a lot of my time trying to figure out how to use technology to make teaching and learning more effective, efficient, and accessible. It turns out that there’s a lot the scientific research community has learned about how to do this. Unfortunately, much of what is known is buried in dusty journals–the science hasn’t been turned into technology.

This is what we’ve done at Livescribe. We’ve taken this scientific knowledge and created easy-to-use applications that will help you to work more efficiently and think more effectively, with the end result that you will learn more quickly and remember what you’ve learned for longer.

I look forward to sharing with you, through this blog, the science behind how our pen and our applications work. I think you’ll be amazed at what you’re capable of if given the right tools.

Andy Van Schaack, Ph.D.
Senior Science Advisor