As classroom technology improves, interactive classroom displays are becoming the standard. This is especially true as the quality goes up – and the cost goes down – on interactive flat panels like ViewBoard. And with the new advancement comes a long list of benefits, including some truly impressive performance improvements among learners.
Find out more about why more schools are opting for interactive classroom displays. If you’d like to learn more about ViewSonic’s range of interactive displays for education, click here.
Where do interactive classroom displays fit in education? In our modern era, those educating our youth are facing a conundrum.
Considering the rise of smartphones, tablets, and cloud-integrated technology, the chalkboard, overhead projector, and other analog tools of yore are no longer yielding the same educational results.
If student engagement and test scores are down, what can a school do in order to reverse course? The answer is to get with the times and adapt.
However, the relevant tools and technology do not come cheap and product options are widely spread. If it’s your job to decide to buy a product for your school, then we suggest interactive classroom displays and will help you to make an informed decision.
What Are Interactive Classroom Displays?
Interactive classroom displays combine the touch technology of a tablet with a whiteboard’s educational functionality. They emphasize flexibility, collaboration, and creativity in the classroom. This is achieved by way of their native feature suite and their enhanced capacity to incorporate outside media, thus allowing teachers to imagine lessons in almost any way possible.
What Are the Advantages of Interactive Classroom Displays?
By their very nature, the advantages of interactive classroom displays are present in nearly every education-based scenario. On one hand, they make day-to-day tasks, such as collaboration and lesson planning a breeze. Moreover, on the broader spectrum, their inherent portability and cost savings make interactive displays a worthwhile proposition as well.
Portability
Certain interactive classroom displays offer the advantage of portability. In some instances, may be attached to any surface, thus bringing interactivity and engagement wherever they go. What’s more is that the portability also extends to teachers themselves, in that from where they are in the classroom, they can access the display remotely.
Long-term Cost Viability
Granted, interactive classroom displays aren’t cheap. Following a purchase, however, it should become clear that the maintenance and upkeep fees for these digital products cost far less than they would for an ordinary, analog whiteboard. Between that, and the benefits bestowed upon teachers and students alike, interactive displays in the classroom practically pay for themselves.
Increased Collaboration
When students work together, they learn together. The traditional lecture-based teaching method offered very little in the way of collaboration between classmates, thus dooming education to be a solo activity. By using interactive classroom displays, interaction and engagement become the focal point of every lesson. Now, education is a collaborative group effort!
Easier Planning
Teachers’ lesson plans were once limited by what the textbook, supply inventory, and budget allowed. No longer! With interactive classroom displays, the sky’s the limit! Due to their interactivity and internet connections, teachers will find that lesson plans are easier and faster to produce, thus opening up more time for other preparations.
Find out how myViewBoard Clips makes lesson planning even easier, here.
What Are the Potential Drawbacks of Interactive Classroom Displays?
For all the advantages of interactive classroom displays, there is potential for drawbacks. For those with limited budgets, the starting price of the displays might be a hindrance, as could the subsequent reliance on IT for both training and repairs. Additionally, based on classroom layout, spatial issues could become a troublesome factor.
Price
The base price of interactive classroom displays is greater than that of other digital classroom tools, to say nothing of their analog counterparts. When factoring in maintenance, replacements, and repairs, the cost grows even higher. Even if the total is offset in the long term, many school districts will think twice before purchasing.
Less than Intuitive
There is a lot of training needed to become a teacher. Since many interactive displays are less than ideally intuitive, more training is required to master them. As a result, the oft-under trained teachers don’t use the displays to their fullest potential, which is a waste of both time and money.
Reliance on Technical Support
For both implementation and maintenance, the burden involving interactive classroom displays falls on technical support. For schools upgrading their classrooms, consideration should be paid towards how much of IT’s time will be taken up, as well as the amount of class time that could be lost waiting for a repair to take place.
Classroom Factors
Interactive classroom displays don’t necessarily feature scalable projection. Depending on the classroom layout, as well as the presence of external light sources, ocular issues could arise when students strain their eyes to see the display. The same goes for displays’ volume, which students sitting far away might not be able to hear.
What Are the Effects of Interactive Classroom Displays?
Beyond advantages and drawbacks, the true appeal of interactive classroom displays lays in the effect it has on the class as a whole, particularly in the long term. Greater student engagement, improved capacity for educational accommodation, and improved communication practices are just a few of these effects, and therefore, strong investment motivations.
Greater Engagement
Nothing is a greater indication of a functioning classroom than obvious student engagement. In fact, it’s been proven that students engaged in active learning, as opposed to passive, are much more unlikely to tune out. Since student engagement can be facilitated by an interactive classroom display, there’s no reason not to upgrade!
Classroom Accommodation
The best lesson plans are those that truly account for everything. Considering the flexibility afforded by interactive displays, teachers should be able to be ready for anything. This holds true not just for unforeseen obstacles, but also for accommodations having to do with different learning styles, speeds, and other special requirements.
Communicative Improvement
All students go through a phase where they’re reluctant to communicate in the classroom, both in large settings and small. For many, this phase carries on into adulthood. Considering, however, that interactive displays bring greater collaboration and interaction to the environment, students have the increased opportunity to gain communicative strength naturally. 
Are there any interactive classroom displays on the market?
Indeed there are. ViewSonic’s ViewBoard’s are the latest interactive classroom display on the market. With a heavy emphasis on total engagement and dynamic, ‘front-facing learning’, ViewBoard’s aim to thoroughly transform learning. Through a synergistic combination of a projector, a touch display, and a cloud-based software suite, it achieves just that.
In practice, The ViewBoard appeals to customers through its relatively low cost, ease of use, and speed. Spatial issues are not an issue, since ViewBoard projection allows for full scalability. With an eye towards overcoming potential pitfalls, the product aims to usher in the next generation of interactivity in the classroom. The myViewBoard software Suite also provides a wide range of tools designed especially for teachers, enabling easier lesson planning, mutli-media integration, and engaging activities.
Find out more about ViewSonics Range of viewboards, and how they can take your classroom to the next level, here. If you’d like to read more on interactive displays, read our post 10 ways interactive touch screens improve education.