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Projectors are the norm in the classroom, but there’s so much more that AV can do to enhance learning. Nick Price, territory manager at Optoma explains how tech is being used to improve the education experience.
Technology in education has changed so much over the last few years and is a far cry from the dusty OHP acetates some of us remember from our schooldays. Nowadays, technology is being used in a variety of ways to improve teaching to make the lives of teachers and students better.
Interactive projectors foster greater collaboration in a classroom. These can be pen or finger touch. Optoma’s TouchBeam 10-point finger-touch interactive technology, seen in its 320 range of ultra short throw projectors, enables several people to work simultaneously on the screen or the wall without the need to use a pen.
It is easy to draw, annotate, zoom and rotate images on the projected screen and teachers, or students, can open documents or browse the web without touching a computer. Multiple touch points also give a more natural and intuitive way of interacting with digital content.
Visualisers (also known as document cameras) not only allow teaching staff to share passages of text, maps, detailed diagrams and 3D objects with the whole class, but teachers and students can also annotate on an image captured by the visualiser and capture lessons as video clips to use later.
This has made lessons more engaging and interactive. Optoma has just launched its 4K UHD visualiser, DC554, which has a 13 megapixel camera, 17x optical zoom and up to 30 frames-per-second video which can capture detail often not visible to the human eye.
Education venues still need large screen sizes to be able to share content with the whole class or lecture theatre – which lends itself more to projector technology rather than flat screen displays due to the lower cost and portability of smaller, more compact, projectors. Flat screen displays, such as TVs, would be incredibly expensive for the same screen size.
Laser projectors have now become a cost-effective, low maintenance option for schools and are becomming increasingly popular within the edtech market place. Projections can be daylight visible and maintenance costs for bulb replacement have been eradicated through the laser technology which provides around 20,000 hours of impressive, virtually maintenance-free operation.
All Optoma projectors use DLP technology which has a filter–free design that prevents dirt and dust affecting the system, meaning they are likely to last much longer and work at a higher performance for much longer than equivilant devices in the past. This means they need very little maintenance (and less downtime) as there are no filters to remove and clean.
