Teacher here. Smartboards are like Apple computers. If you want to do exactly what they want you to do, they are great. If you want to tinker (let alone be actually creative with technology), you are using the wrong device.

Last year I switched to a LCD projector coupled to a tablet (Surface Pro 2) displayed on a dry erase whiteboard. Despite the MS hate, OneNote on a tablet is an absolutely killer app. My instruction has been forever changed for the better. I now write on my tablet at my desk rather than writing at the board, allowing students to view the information unobstructed by my body. Each lesson is saved in OneNote, so if I ever want to recall an earlier idea for review, it's just a matter of pulling up that lesson. Just yesterday, I pulled up a Geometer's Sketchpad animation seamlessly during my lesson by simply switching tabs. I frequently pull up a TI emulator so I can live demo keystrokes for the kids. In future lessons, I will be pulling up some Mathematica workbooks I made. Interacting with worksheets as a class is so much easier when I can simply display a Word document, directing my students' attention to key phrases, augment diagrams, etc.

Finally, with software such as Camtasia Studio, you can even record each lesson and post them online for students' later use. See vimeo.com/hillercalculus for some Calculus lessons demonstrating the aforementioned functionality.

Ditch the SmartBoard. They are about as useful in a classroom as an iPad - maybe better than nothing, but there are far superior solutions out there.

Some sort of force field?

Off topic, but this is the same problem with firing all the bad teachers. Economic down spells aside, talented folk look elsewhere for careers. Both professions would benefit from some incentivization.

I really like your sheet analogy. But if matter and energy are the wrinkles on the blanket, what does the coffee represent? What does this information consist of if not matter and energy? Maybe in the alternate world matter and energy are the stains from colored liquids on the sheet. But if that were the case, wouldn't the stains slowly fade back to white, in the same way the wrinkles get pulled out flat in this world? Further, even if a stain survived the fading process, since it is neither matter nor energy, how would we perceive it? If we can't perceive it is it really there? It is a nice twist of ideas, but I don't think the coffee part holds up as well as the wrinkles.

I missed the movie, and thus don't really get all this fuss. It must be good if people are still talking about it. I guess it's off to TPB for me.