CHALLENGE
Garforth Academy is a secondary school, serving 1,950 students aged from eleven to sixteen. With the school expanding, a site-wide refurbishment was planned to coincide with the new academic year, including the full refurbishment of three existing areas of Academy, and a technology refresh for 26 classrooms. A key priority was finding an interactive screen technology that delivers high definition content, offers intuitive touchscreen capabilities, and needs minimal maintenance to lower the total cost of ownership.
KPMS Commercial, a specialist in educational and corporate AV installation was tasked with delivering an interactive touchscreen to sit at front and centre of each classroom’s teaching wall.
INSIGHT
Garforth Academy was looking for an interactive solution to replace the existing projector technology used in its classrooms. With educational content increasingly including bright and colourful videos and graphics, the school required a high-quality commercial LCD screen with great viewing angles from all sides, and superb image performance from anywhere in the classroom. An anti-glare screen was also paramount to drastically reduce ambient reflection in high brightness environments without compromising sharp clarity of the content.
KPMS invited Midwich, a leading trade-only distributor of commercial AV solutions, to present three different interactive touchscreens to members of the teaching and technology teams at the school. The teams selected the iiyama 65” ProLite, an Interactive LCD Touchscreen with integrated annotation software and USB playback.
Self-calibration, accuracy of finger swipes and delivery of high definition content were key features that impressed the school’s team, alongside the integrated interactive EasiNote writing software allowing teachers to make annotations on files opened directly from a USB device or internal storage.
WHAT WE DID
KPMS turned to Midwich for its independent technical advice, range, availability of leading touchscreens and ability to provide post installation training. After an initial consultation, John Soden, from Midwich’s Interactive specialist team, identified touchscreens to suit the school’s requirements. John worked closely with KPMS to organise a day’s trial where three screens were set up at the school for staff to gain first-hand experience. Upon testing, the decision was clear and the school purchased 26 iiyama ProLite TH6567MIS-B1AG, interactive LCD touchscreens.
KPMS worked with the building team to identify optimal screen location in the newly refurbished classrooms. As the touchscreens require a minimum amount of cabling, they were quickly installed on teaching walls over the period of a week.
John Soden, Interactive Screens Specialist at Midwich said:
“Our ability to offer a selection of interactive screens from more than one leading brand enabled us to quickly set up demonstrations and provide an unbiased comparison of their different features. This helped Garforth Academy decide which model and brand was the best fit for them. Once a decision was made, we supplied the screens and brackets quickly to ensure that installation could take place in the summer break. Post installation, Midwich provided highly valuable training for teaching staff to ensure that they could operate the touchscreens smoothly from day one.”
RESULT
Ben Wetton, Associate Assistant Principal at Garforth Academy, commented on the project: “The ability to provide a side-by-side comparison of leading touchscreens was invaluable in our decision making. Our students conduct “touch screen lives”, and this experience of fast interactive content delivery needs to filter through to classrooms to encourage engagement. With the iiyama screens, we can present high-quality and dynamic content easily.
“For such a large refurbishment, we needed to work with companies that could identify and deliver the right technology for us – KPMS and Midwich did just that. The iiyama touchscreens work perfectly, they are cost effective, produce a stunning image, and were easy to install. In the long-term, they promise more reliability and therefore lower maintenance costs. The training post installation underlined how intuitive the screens are, and the teaching team and pupils are already benefitting from more engaging, dynamic lessons.”
