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Advanced Education INTEGRATORS CHOOSE COLLABORATIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN CLASSROOMS

L et the plotting begin. As the end of the school year

looms, now is the time to strategize

your upcoming education projects with a focus on connections and collaboration in

the classroom. And this is not the classroom you see in your high school yearbook.

"The claS'sroom of today looks very different than that of even a few short years ago, and AV integrators are an important

part of the movement toward an open classroom environment, including active

learning, distance learning, and the flipped classroom," said Greg Schwartz, president,

BTX Technologies. "In addition to having a thorough understanding of the underlying technologies required to build the backbone

of any complex display system, integrators now need access to new solutions that create and support these new educational requirements."

The addition of personal devices such as t ablets and Chromebooks in classrooms plays a big role in the transformation. "They've

paved the way for interactive teaching even more so than in the past," noted Nick Belcore, executive vice president, Peerless-AV. "With

the ability to enter a vir~ual environment, this is the first step in collaboration from teacher to student."

With collaborative technology, students

have the opportunity to ask and investigate questions that may not be the main focus of what's presented, but still aid in the learning .

"Students can delve into more specific inquiries that may not apply to all of the attendees, and it will give them a voice in the decision-making

process," Belcore said. "These opportunities are considered essential for both self­

regulated learning and motivation ." This shift to collaborative learning will

be the biggest demand going forward from clients in K-12 up to higher education, and it

represents more than a technology learning curve.

"It's a paradigm shift where the teachers will have to facilitate the learning process, but will

not necessarily solely conduct it as they have done in the past," Belcore sa id. "There will be a

new shift in thinking to where many seasoned

The University of Denver recently deployed Mersive's Solstice software in the university's Center for Statistics and Visualization to facilitate collaborative learning and the presentation of research findings. The center selected Solstice to transform its Prysm video wall into an interactive learning tool for wireless collaboration and visualization among students, instructors, and researchers.

educators may find· it counterintuitive to have the students set their own 'goals, in which case

adaptation will be required from many."

BTX has actively searched for the best solutions that the K-12 and higher education

markets are demanding, and notes three

emerging technologies that are game changers in this space, Schwartz said . ·

"In a collaborative setting, students and teachers alike should expect to walk into a

room, easily connect to a display, and share work wirelessly and seamlessly from their individual devices," he said. "This is the

baseline expectation, but there is so much

more that goes on beneath the surface: the

need for moderator control for content review· and for maintaining subject flow, IT best­

practice policies for bandwidth and security requirements, and cross - platform support for Microsoft, Apple, and Android devices."

In addition, there are constantly changing feature improvements, which is why the

integrators working with BTX have embraced software-based solutions . "As features become available, a simple upgrade pro~ides the latest, greatest features in a way that a firmware upgrade just can't provide," Schwartz said.

Schwartz also notes lecture capture as an important part of connecting students for

"The great thing about collaboration is that it focuses on students working together with teamwork and trust so they have a better understanding of real working environments, such as corporate environments,

than did previous generations. They're working with different personalities and learning that the sum is greater than the individual pieces. Being able to use the experiences.of others to solve a problem makes

the solution so much stronger. That's the biggest success of collaboration. And-as a manufacturer, that's how we're promoting collaboration." -Gina Sansivero, FSR

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effective learning. "We've seen an increase in

available funding for this technology, especially in higher educat ion." he said . "Having the

ability to specify a product for streaming l ive or on-demand over I P- enabled networks opens up new doors for integrators to move beyond

the four walls of the classroom or lecture hall.

"In a collaborative setting, students and teachers alike should expect to walk into a room, easily connect to a display, and share work wirelessly and seamlessly from their individual devices. This is the baseline expectatiolJ, but there is so much more that goes on beneath the surface."

Greg Schwartz, president, BTX · Technologies

By capturing multiple video and audio sources

such as computers, mobile devices, cameras, and microphones gives students the experience

of being in the classroom, even when watching live remotely or view ing at a later date. Having

a solution that of fers flexible reco rding and streaming opt ions fro m layout to bandwidth control allows for custo miz ing the so lution APeerless-AVprojectorrnountworkswellinaclassroornsetting.

••• a bridge over troubled audio

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A group collaboration space with two student tables uses FSR's HuddleVU collaboration system, along with an instructor station using FSR's Flex control system in the John and Margaret Walson Communication Hall at Muhlenberg College, Allentown.. PA.

to best suit the .institution's requirements, across the country or across the world, live Hybridization while meeting and exceeding the students' events and recorded media, just to name There is a middle ground between the requirements ." a few. Integrators need to have a solution traditional and the open classroom concept

Finally, internet protocol television that provides high-quality video, is easy and that is hyb ridization, according to Gina (I PTV) deliver.s centrally managed, user- to program and manage, and is scalable as Sansivero, director of business development,

appropriate content-perfectly packaged for requirements change. education, FSR. the education market-across the network. This is just a taste of what we see happening "Hybrid is comi ng onboard," she said. "What Content comes from many sources: broadcast in the education market today. we see most on campuses are traditional T V, in-house production, classrooms from classrooms because so many colleges are old

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and entire buildings can't be overhauled at once. The most

common classroom in the U.S. is traditional w ith some tech in there such as boards, screens,

audio, and control, but still operating in a traditional format. With new construction and renovation, the idea is that rooms w ill be future-resistant

w ith a lot of changes coming, and students expecting more collaboration."

A lot of students and instructors are not familiar with open, active learning environments and so the

technology is not always being utilized in the manner in which it

was developed. What happens is that the institutional design has to change its pedagogy . and that is time consuming for

traditiona l model instructors . Students w ho are used to

being spoken to in a traditional lecture might find that the active learning collaborative space is different for them.

58 SCN ////APRIL 2015

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College campuses use Peerless-A V Xtreme Outdoor Landscape Kiosks with Touch to help navigate the area.

"Research shows that they discover different types of success in an open classroom, but the idea of learning is going to have to change,"

Sansivero added. "While we in AV technology and tech managers have been developing this concept for years, students and professors are in the process of embraci,ng it."

The K-12 arena differs in that young'er students are more malleable, since they are most likely getting an earlier start with technology. "Their recognition is amazing," Sansivero said. "An cj many newer K-12

teachers are entering the field ready for the open classroom." On the flip side, primary education institutions typically don't have

ac'cess to the vast financial resources of higher education, and K- 12

public schools may be strangled by budget constraints, especially in very small districts and counties.

0 "A lot of manufacturers are coming out with smart furniture that is

customizable, flexible, and intuitive for hybrid classrooms," Sansivero noted. " Certain desks or tables can be pulled apart or configured in rows for a lecture ."

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Making Education Technology Last

· How can schools optimize moderately used legacy equipment

along with brand new products?

The key is to choose equipment that's modular and flexible by nature to grow with

the changing technology. In that regard, schools would benefit from solutions that can

be updated once they've been moderately used. Some may not think of infrastructure

products as future-proof, but many AV integrators have found that furniture products

like Middle Atlantic's L5 series lecterns are just that. The company's frame-to-furni­

ture approach to its lecterns includes a rae~ to reliably support the system within, and

a wood kit that's attached after the equipment has been installed. A design approach

like this is in egrator-friendly and future-proof by nature in that the outward appear­

ance can be c,hanged out for any reason. Further, a customizable presenter's panel

can be designed for thC' equipment first specified, and switched out if the technology

is upgraded. What was once moderately used can become brand new within minutes.

- - Dean Wh£elan, application engineer, Middle Atlantic Products

By connecting your existing A V equipment to a unified communication solution,

schools can present, ~ucate, and collaborate easily and effectively from anywhere

in the world. Informational technology is revolutionizing the products we see in the

modern day classroom. What once was hardware is now moving to the cloud, creating

the BYOD phenomenon. To accommodate BYOD preferences, manufacturers are

bridging Lhe gap between old and new ~Lh unified communications (UC) technology.

Taking your existing A V equipment and controlling it through your device (laptop,

"tablet, sma~hone), users can usc whatever application they want (WebEx, Lync,

Skype, You Tube etc.) to collaborate in a meeting room, lecture hall, or anywhere, and

they can do so in an inexpensive fashi~~- Vaddio address this particular need in the

marketplace vvith its A V Bridge family qf products, which allows you to take existing

cameras and audio sources and capture, record, stream, mix, and control them all

through a single USB stream into your computer.

- Hailey Klein, marketing manager, Vaddio

From the projection screen perspective, there are some possibilities. If a school wants

to hang onto projectors, we can fix them up vvith a slightly higher gain screen with

wider viewing angles than the screens they probably have now, or a screen with bet­

ter contrast, getting them a much better image. They cap use our Projection Planner

to spec out the viewing surface just right for the room and projector. They can also

replace old, overly glossy whiteboards with newer low-gloss models like the Scribe,

which works much better under projection. This is excellent for use with the ultra­

short-throw projectors. In some cases they are going for more interactivity using

touchpancls, but still have a need for some projection. In those cases, we are still see­

ing that m~nual pull-down screens and some lower-cost electric models can be used

for the projection while elsewhere in the same classroom, the touchpanels are used.

- Anry Madden, sales support lifts prodU£t manager, Draper

The current trend toward A V and IT convergence is great news for anyone looking

to leverage existing, or legacy A V investments while extending capabilities with new

technology to support new or incremental use cases. New market entrants like Mersive

know it's in everyone's best interest to make sure their products complement and aug­

ment what's already in the room because "rip and replace" makes for a terrible ROI

result. In the case of moderately used legacy technology, it's important to consider

what the original use-case rationale was, and why the solution may have fallen short.

Is the issue usability, performance, or missing features or functions? Software-based

solutions that leverage commodity hardware offer the greatest degree of flexibility

when it comes to integrating with existing solutions, which in turn can allow them to

refresh a stale investment. - Robert B~lglry, CEO, Mersive

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