As part of Michigan State University’s Empower Extraordinary campaign, the College of Arts and Letters has received an in-kind gift valued at more than $100,000 from CAL alumnus Peter Stougaard, a former studio executive for DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox.

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The gift is in the form of 4,000 software licenses for an Apple app Stougaard developed called PopBoardz, whereby users can create, organize and present ideas in the form of video, images, websites or any file type all on one screen. Stougaard, now an entrepreneur, is providing the licenses to the College of Arts and Letters to use in its classrooms as a tool to help students collaborate and present effectively.

“Throughout the past few years, I’ve been working with CAL to find ways to bring real-world experiences to students who want to pursue their creative passions for a living,” Stougaard said. “That being said, I felt that providing the value of PopBoardz to faculty and students would enhance the thought process to help solve creative challenges.”

Unlike PowerPoint slides, which limit presenters to telling stories in only one way, PopBoardz is a flexible tool that is untethered to the Internet and designed for more interactive and open-ended presentations.

“I decided to use it in hopes it would be a single solution to my current situation, in which I am using multiple programs and apps to share content with my students,” said Daniel Trego, coordinator of technology-enhanced instruction. “The biggest impact that I see PopBoardz having on students is encouraging them to be active learners. Because students and instructors can both create and interact with different boards or screens, it may well be the perfect tool to help motivate students and facilitate access to learning.”

In 2013, the Creativity Exploratory, an idea incubator located in Linton Hall on the MSU campus, was offered a test of the first version of PopBoardz. Students used the application as part of their brainstorming sessions and presentations to rousing success.

“This is such an exciting new tool — I can hardly wait to use it in my own classes,” said Elizabeth Simmons, acting dean at the College of Arts and Letters. “There are times when one needs to move rapidly between images and video from multiple sources in order to keep the ideas flowing in a class discussion, and PopBoardz’ capabilities could make all the difference.”

So, what would happen if Pinterest and Symbaloo and Blendspace had a baby? Well, it might look a little like PopBoardz, one of my new favorite options for personal curation and presentation.

PopBoardz allows you to organize the content you need and easily present from your iPad, iPhone or Mac desktop. For educators, it can be used as an instructional dashboard, whether they sitting a their desktop or walking around presenting from their iPads or phones.

Simply drag and drop PDFs, JPEGs, videos, notes and websites, as well as anything in your camera roll, your Google or iCloud Drives as tiles onto a board. Each board allows you to collect 16 tiles.

You can easily rearrange your tiles, add images or text to your thumbnails, drop in your own logos or backgrounds, copy and paste tile contents, mashup new Boardz from existing ones, or share Boardz or import or export them to and from your Cloud solutions.

Popboardz App

CEO and co-founder, Peter Stougaard, a former studio executive for DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox, developed PopBoardz out of frustration with existing linear presentation software.

I developed the application for me to have the ability to jump to the right thing exactly when I need it. During a critical meeting, you’ve got to be able to react, sometimes like your life depends on it.

He’s gotten excited reactions from business-types, for instance, real estate people who may need to immediately show properties.

But he is especially impressed by teachers’ quick response to the potential for the application in the classroom:

I believe the reason teachers have been drawn to PopBoardz is because it allows them to simply and easily “illustrate” their lesson plans with perfect examples to help make their point, no matter what forms they take. And then let’s them instantly jump to what’s important during any classroom discussion. Simple. Flexible. Nimble.

Unlike linear presentation tools, PopBoardz offers flexible, open-ended movement among mixed media elements, untethered to the Web, and perhaps, a more realistic response to our teaching needs.

Here’s how the application looks in a science lesson:

Peter is currently piloting project improvements with K12 teachers and with classes at the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University, his alma mater.

Next on the road map are versions for PC, Android and the Cloud. Peter and his team are also exploring exploring administrative and analytic features, access controls, customization, and a variety of back-end tools. We also chatted about the potential for shared galleries of boards in a kind of SlideShare approach.

I am excited to be able to use this as a teaching dashboard from my laptop app, and across my devices for my live classes and audiences, and on platforms with screen sharing, like Hangouts. And I’ve got big plans for organizing new web recipes, scans of new cookbook and magazine ideas, and old note card recipes from Mom in preparation for the upcoming Valenza Thanksgiving.

Popboardz App

The only downside (and Peter promises to address it) is the clunkiness of sharing Boardz with others on their devices. Currently, you can export to DropBox or Google Drive. But generating an immediate URL or embed code would be oh so handy!