ViewSonic Direct View LED Display Brings Efficiency, Reliability and Visibility to Career Tech Presentations

Apr 7, 2023

CASE STUDY

ViewSonic Direct View LED Display Brings Efficiency, Reliability and Visibility to Career Tech Presentations

CUSTOMER PROFILE

Headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery Public Schools is a large district serving over 30,000 students in 27 preschools, 32 elementary schools, 12 middle schools, and 10 high schools, according to US News & World Report. The Career Tech Department provides career and technical instruction to prepare students for life after high school, whether that may include postsecondary education, employment, or a combination of both.

“[The ViewSonic Direct View LED is] a showstopper. There’s no better word for it than that. When I meet visitors at the front office, which is maybe 105 feet from the display wall, I always get astonished comments. It’s vivid and clear even from there. Even the students stop and talk about how amazing it is.”

— Auburn Brown, Career Tech Bookkeeper

THE CHALLENGE

The Montgomery Preparatory Academy for Career Technologies (MPACT), the career tech building for the district, is a hub of activity, where students, staff, trainers, and recruiters frequently gather to attend and deliver presentations.

“We host countless seminars, training, PD, and recruitment presentations every month,” said Career Tech Director Todd Davis. “The process for facilitating these activities was very cumbersome. We had to go to another building across town to get a projector, screen and sound board, set them up, then quickly return it all so that it was available for other users.”

Not only was this incredibly inefficient, but with larger meetings and presentations not everyone could see the screen from the back of the room, added Davis.

Inspiration hit as it often does, when one least expects it.

“I was out to dinner during my daughter’s national volleyball tournament and saw what I thought would be the ideal solution,” said Davis. “It was a bunch of TVs put together into a screen so big you could just about see it from another state.”

Davis immediately sent a photo of the image to the CTE team’s Bookkeeper Auburn Brown whose responsibilities include sourcing and purchasing technology to support the district’s dozens of CTE instructors.

“I take care of around 80 teachers and two education specialists,” said Brown. “So when my boss texted me a photo of a huge video screen and said ‘I want this for our commons area,’ I started doing the research right away.”

THE SOLUTION

The large display that sparked Brown’s interest was a traditional video wall created by lining up several TV-like monitors into a grid. Not realizing there would be an alternative, Brown initially assumed that this was the format they would use.

“As I researched manufacturers, I made sure to look at ViewSonic because we use their 65-inch ViewBoard interactive displays here at Career Tech and the district has purchased many of them as well,” said Brown. “I had no idea that there was an option like their Direct View LED displays, which are huge and give a much cleaner look than the other video walls.”

installers mounting the panels to a direct view led

Brown narrowed the options to a few brands and sought advice and pricing from their rep at reseller partner InCare. When she saw the price of the ViewSonic^® Direct View LED display she was thrilled.

“I expected it to be more expensive than the video walls that didn’t look as good,” she said. “Going with the ViewSonic Direct View LED just made sense based on my research. It was bigger, had no lines breaking it up, and it was an easier to manage all-in-one solution.”

She took her recommendation that they purchase a 135” ViewSonic Direct View LED display to Davis.

“Auburn said to me, ‘I think we can do a whole lot better than a bunch of TVs lined up together,’” said Davis. “When I saw the ViewSonic display, I absolutely agreed.”

THE RESULTS

Installed in the center’s commons area, which can seat up to 100 people, the ViewSonic Direct View LED has been a big hit. After over a year of use, Brown and Davis can confidently say that the eye-catching display has exceeded their initial hopes for the presentation space – from its visual appeal to its functional benefits.

“It’s a showstopper,” said Brown. “There’s no better word for it than that. When I meet visitors at the front office, which is maybe 105 feet from the display wall, I always get astonished comments. It’s vivid and clear even from there. Even the students stop and talk about how amazing it is.”

When it comes down to utility, the ViewSonic Direct View Display has more than served its initial purpose.

“It has saved Todd a lot of time, not having to go to the downtown central office to sign equipment in and out every time we have a presentation,” said Brown. “I love it because no one has to hassle with it, it just works and looks amazing.”

Now, presentations of all kinds are reliably crisp, clear, and large enough for everyone in the room to get a good view, no matter where they’re seated.

“We use it year, round, even in the summer,” said Brown. “Presenters include trainers from the State Department of Education, military recruiters, our CTE instructors, and more. And if there are no meetings scheduled and no announcements that we need to run, we’ll put up music, football games or other content that the students and staff enjoy when passing by.”

Everyone is so happy with the display, in fact, that as of this writing, Brown was working on a purchase order to obtain one for their sister center, a magnet high school that focuses on career tech education.

“The advertising design teacher there fell in love with it and convinced us to get one for his school,” said Brown. “They’re going to install it in their ‘Crossroads,’ an intersection of two long hallways that pretty much every student walks through during the day, and run Career Tech announcements and other information.”