Day 10 – Connecting External Displays to a Windows 8 Tablet
A Windows 8 Tablet for Teaching and Learning - Day 10
Friday, December 14, 2012
For classroom teachers often one of the first things we want to do is connect whatever device we are using to a projector so that we can share what is on our screen to a projected image at the front of the room. This allows for sharing what is on our screen so that all students can see what is going on. At EIU all of our classrooms are what we call Technology Enhanced Classrooms. What that means is that all classrooms are outfitted with a desktop computer with high-speed Internet connection, (Smart Boards in the College of Education & Professional Studies) , a document camera, a projector mounted on the ceiling, a sound amplifier with speakers, and a video switch box that allows for connecting a laptop using a VGA connection cable to switch between the desktop computer, laptop, and/or document camera. This equipment is located in a lockable podium and all of our classrooms are setup as similar as possible so that faculty and students need only learn one setup.
Our faculty float from room to room as they are not assigned one classroom as is typical in the K12 environment. Most faculty just use the provided desktop computer in the podium and plugin a USB thumb drive to access materials they want to share with the class. Some bring their own laptops and connect using the provided VGA cable and change the video switch box so that the laptop screen shows on the projector.
Herein begins the problem. Many PC based laptops come with VGA connection built-in but many of the newer ultrabooks and now tablets no longer have a VGA output as an option. As a consequence we have to enter the nightmare world of adapters. The VGA connection has been one of those standards that has stood the test of time over the past 20 plus years. Having this stability has been good for consumers but new devices are beginning to drop this standard in favor of display port, HDMI, or in the worst cases some other weird proprietary connector. This is where it becomes costly for faculty and students as you have to start buying “adapter converter cables” that change whatever output port the device manufacturer decides is the flavor of the day.
Thus is the case with my Samsung Ativ 500T Tablet. Thankfully, the Samsung Ativ tablet uses the microHDMI standard and at least a cable that goes from microHDMI to HDMI costs less than $5 on Amazon. That is fine if all I want to do is connect to a HDTV (almost all HDTVs have HDMI inputs) The problem comes when I want to connect my Ativ tablet to any of the potential 200 plus Technology Enhanced Classrooms on campus.
So…. I broke down (as much as I hated to) and bought one of those expensive Samsung microHDMI to VGA connectors that probably costs less than $1 to make but $30 to $40 to buy. Ugh. Some manufacturers are better than others and standardize on a connector type over a period of years. Others seem to change every other year and offer only proprietary cables that work only on "their" devices and are very expensive. They know you have no other choice but buy the costly proprietary version (not cool).
I bought the official Samsung microHDMI to VGA connector for about $40. This will allow me to connect the Ativ Windows 8 Tablet to any of our 200 plus classrooms and display what is on the tablet to the projector so all students can see my tablet display.
Since I am using my tablet as a tablet 80 percent of the time the first challenge I had to figure out was how to switch the tablet into duplicate screen mode. On a Windows 7 or Windows 8 computer with a keyboard you can simply press the Windows Key and the P Key together if you are using a keyboard to change the display to the projector. Well, with this tablet I am not using a keyboard 80 percent of the time so how do I get to these settings without a keyboard?. Strangely the onscreen keyboard does not even have the Windows Key so the onscreen keyboard will not work.
Since I am using my tablet as a tablet 80 percent of the time the first challenge I had to figure out was how to switch the tablet into duplicate screen mode. On a Windows 7 or Windows 8 computer with a keyboard you can simply press the Windows Key and the P Key together if you are using a keyboard to change the display to the projector. Well, with this tablet I am not using a keyboard 80 percent of the time so how do I get to these settings without a keyboard?. Strangely the onscreen keyboard does not even have the Windows Key so the onscreen keyboard will not work.
So here is what I did. First connect the microHDMI to VGA adapter to the tablet and plugin the VGA cable coming from the projector. Once everything is plugged in go to the Charms menu (easiest way is to swipe in from the right side of the screen with your thumb). Next select the DEVICES choice from the Charms menu. Once you press DEVICES you will see a choice for SECOND SCREEN (you must plugin the adapter to the tablet and projector for this choice to display). Select DEVICES and then you will get the choices of PC SCREEN ONLY, DUPLICATE, EXTEND, and SECOND SCREEN ONLY. I almost always select DUPLICATE so that what I see on my tablet screen is what the students see on the projector. Make sure that your projector (or HDTV) is set to the proper input and you Voilà! You see your tablet screen on the projector screen when you select DUPLICATE. Mission accomplished.
Now you can zip around the touchscreen and the students see in real time the tablet screen on the projector. Even better you can use the S Pen stylus and the tablet can substitute for an Interactive White Board. Using the S Pen stylus with OneNote allows a teacher to make freehand notes and drawings to share with the students displayed on the projector. Even better when finished save the notes and post them to a website or email them to a student that missed class.
Now you can zip around the touchscreen and the students see in real time the tablet screen on the projector. Even better you can use the S Pen stylus and the tablet can substitute for an Interactive White Board. Using the S Pen stylus with OneNote allows a teacher to make freehand notes and drawings to share with the students displayed on the projector. Even better when finished save the notes and post them to a website or email them to a student that missed class.
Discovery of the Day – 720P vs 1080P Can the average user tell the difference on a 10 inch tablet?
When I plugged in the Ativ 500T into my older 32 inch HDTV via a microHDMI to HDMI cable the screen did not expand to take up the entire screen. Instead it centered it on the screen and left a black area all the way around the tablet screen image. This is probably due to the fact that the tablet is a 1366x768 resolution and the HDTV is 1920x1080. Not sure how to get around this issue yet so I need some more time to play around and see if there is a work around solution.
I also used the Samsung microHDMI to VGA adapter cable and plugged the tablet into the VGA port on my HDTV and this time the display filled the entire screen and looked great. I still need to try this out on some different models of projectors at school but I think the older VGA handles the 1366x768 resolution better than the higher 1080P displays.
I have had several people look at the Ativ 500T tablet side-by-side the iPad 2 and the iPad 3 and most could not tell a difference in the screen appearance. Some even said the Ativ looked better than the Retina display of the iPad 3. Sometimes we get all wrapped up in the technical details and convince ourselves there is a noticeable difference when average users cannot tell much of a difference if they are not told (marketing hype).
Not so long ago the advice was that 1080P displays did not make that much of a difference when buying a TV until you went above a 32 inch screen size. That is probably why 720P has stuck around so long on smaller displays. Today the bigger is better attitude is winning in the market speak but there is a price to pay in pixel density when files become larger that require more bandwidth and faster processors to move the pixels around. There is no such thing as a free lunch (or a free pixel).
Keep on Learning,
Dr. Grissom
Dr. Grissom
Tom Grissom, Ph.D.
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