Every good teacher is looking for new and creative ways to reach and engage their students. In recent years they have done so in a variety of ways, from using Google Education and cloud-based interaction, to utilizing chrome books and tablets right in the classroom. Regardless of the method, the one constant in classroom innovative learning is through new and emerging technology.
Today, teachers and students have more technology at their fingertips than ever before. With so many options to choose from, many teachers find it difficult to choose the right option for the needs of their classroom and teaching style. Fortunately, this is where TouchIT Technologies can step in to help. TouchIT Technologies has always, and continues to, provide hardware and software solutions to assist teachers in taking their students on the learning journey in their own exciting and unique way.
In the traditional learning environment, the front of the classroom is the focal point of every classroom. Whether it is being used as a message board or for teacher-driven exercises, the front of the classroom is where provide information and deliver lessons. When we look at how teachers disseminate this information, it historically all starts with the blackboards and chalkboards. However, most schools have moved on from the chalk board system, and over time the dry erase whiteboard became the most popular way to deliver lessons and learning content. From there, we saw the introduction of the interactive whiteboards, which coincidentally is where we first saw TouchIT Technologies. TouchIT Technologies began as an interactive whiteboard manufacturer, and since then we have grown to offer our customers so much more.
Today, we are in the age of Interactive LEDs, like the TouchIT Rapide. Schools everywhere are trading in their Interactive Whiteboards (IWB) and projectors for new Interactive Flat Panel Displays, and with them, they’re taking innovative learning to a whole new level. In order to see at why schools are making the transition to Interactive Flat Panel Displays, we have to look at what makes Interactive LEDs better than their Interactive and simple whiteboard counterparts.
The technology in today’s Interactive LEDs far exceeds the capabilities of the Interactive Whiteboards in several ways. Interactive LEDs have improved their longevity to be much greater than that of the IWB and projectors capacities. For example, projector bulbs typically have a lamp life ranging from 1,500 to 5,000 hours of effective use. The backlight in a TouchIT Rapide however, has over 50,000 hours of effective use. This means that you would have to replace a projector bulb on an IWB up to 30 times to get the same level of longevity that an Interactive LED would give you. Having to change failing projector bulbs and defective IWBs repeatedly can be financially costly and a burden, but the real cost is seen in the classroom. For each day a defective projector bulb isn’t in use, valuable time is lost to teachers and students in the classroom. This lost time could have been spent on creative and interactive learning, as well as engaging students to participate in meaningful ways. When you have to spend time and money on replacing these costly IWB and projectors, you are missing out on valuable participation and engagement that could have been achieved with an Interactive LED instead.
These days, the best Interactive Flat Panel Displays come with built-in onboard operating systems. For example, the TouchIT Rapide has the fastest on-board Android operating system available in the market, the Android 8. This built-in Android 8 operating system has many capabilities, one of which being that the TouchIT Rapide has 4K UHD quality resolution and up to 40 points of simultaneous touch available. From a practical standpoint, this means that teachers can have 4 students standing in front of the display, each making unique interactions with all 10 of their fingers at the same time. Whether its gamification, comparative lesson annotation, or any other way a teacher could conceive having students interact at the front of the class, the TouchIT Rapide Interactive Flat Panel Display gives teachers the ability to engage their students with participation in ways previously impossible.
To complement our Interactive Flat Panel Displays and the super-fast Android 8 operating system, TouchIT Technologies has developed a suite of software that both serves the needs of teachers in the classroom and engages students in exciting and familiar ways. Today’s generation of students have grown up in the post-internet world, and are accustomed to personal technology such as computers, tablets, and smartphones in their daily lives. That’s why TouchIT Technologies developed the TouchIT App Store. The TouchIT App Store is where teachers can download hundreds of free applications right to their Interactive LEDs. With apps ranging from grade-level appropriate games and learning content, to productivity such as screen casting and webinar platforms, the TouchIT App Store is an excellent tool to engage students in fun and familiar ways.
Another piece of software TouchIT Technologies has developed to connect students and teachers is Just CastIT – the TouchIT Screen Casting application that allows students to connect their devices to the Interactive Flat Panel Display and share their screens from anywhere. Whether students are at their desks or connecting from home remotely, Just CastIT is an important tool that brings students together. Just CastIT can be used by teachers to monitor their students’ progress as well as enabling students to showcase their material at the front of the class. By doing so right at their desk or at home, this means that shy or uncomfortable Also, when a teacher allows a student to cast up to the “Big Screen”, they experience a sense of excitement and accomplishment in a way that also encourages them to continue actively participate in the lessons.
Encouraging students and teachers to interact through the TouchIT Rapide is such an important part of what we do, so we didn’t stop at Just CastIT. We decided to create a lesson delivery platform that allows students to collaborate, annotate, and multi-cast in a way that brings interactivity to the next level. That’s why we developed Contribute Cloud. Contribute Cloud is a platform where teachers can take previously created lessons and deliver them to your students’ devices. It enables teachers to engage with students in real time by allowing them to make annotations with the lesson right from their own devices, and simultaneously along with the teacher and their classmates. Teachers can utilize the Contribute Cloud interactivity even further by creating voting activities to engage the student, having access to gamification right at the teacher’s fingertips, and delivering learning material in a way that keeps students actively participating and engaged.
Today, teachers have the ever-increasing challenge of keeping students participated and inspired to learn. The demands of remote learning and hybrid classrooms has created another roadblock for teachers as they look to keep students interested and active in these teacher-driven lessons. It’s more important now than ever to utilize interactivity as a way to increase your student’s participation and engagement. Luckily, TouchIT Technologies is here to help. Our Interactive Flat Panel Displays and the software we developed are useful tools to excite your students and reinvigorate your classroom. Don’t let a lack of interactivity bring your classroom down. Encourage your students to participate with the interactivity provided by TouchIT Technologies.
Article by Alexander Murphy, East Coast Regional Sales
