Comprehensive and interactive solutions of value for the new digital educational environment

Efficiency, Cost reduction and advice are concepts that should be on the agenda of any audiovisual solutions provider.. Pablo Doblado reflects on his contribution of value to the educational environment and his involvement in providing comprehensive solutions., business developer manager Education/Corporate at TDMaverick, Tech Data division.

The educational market is a sector in which there have been many business opportunities, favoring that numerous distributors without focus in this market have decided to reconvert to be able to qualify for this situation. That is why it is important to take advantage of every business opportunity in an increasingly competitive environment and, above all, price sensitive, as well as being able to meet all customer demands. An educational center needs comprehensive solution providers with a turnkey service.

There are many technologies that have entered our educational centers, some of them passengers, causing a small distrust in the use of them in a large part of the teaching staff. Even so, In recent years it has been observed that the use of audiovisual solutions has entered our classrooms with great force.. Interactive whiteboard, projector and speakers are the products that have been massively integrated into classrooms, little by little replacing the traditional use of chalk or marker blackboards.

Classes 2.0

Besides, Now there are no longer only the so-called Computer Rooms available, but the entire classroom has been equipped with a PC or laptop, with a device for each student and for the teacher, which provides greater dynamism in learning in the classrooms, in addition to offering interactive content and access to any information that is on the Internet, how to make visible a virtual route of a museum or other free digital resources available.

The Public Administrations have been betting on what is now known as School 2.0, which is nothing other than providing classrooms with audiovisual solutions accompanied by a good network structure, with WiFi access throughout the center, and mini laptops for each student.

In this sense, The Government of the Canary Islands has recently launched a public tender, worth 9 million euros approximately, to equip the classrooms of their educational centers with all this technology mentioned above. Also, the Junta de Andalucía, which has also presented a public tender, for an approximate value of 8 million euros, to provide students with tablets, among many other examples.

Some experts in the field point out that too much technology has been introduced into the classroom and that this can cause a loss of time in the students' teaching hours.. Yes ok, Technology is advancing rapidly and, definitely, The market data referring to the last quarter of last year reflects this, since technological equipment was supplied to more than 6.000 classes.

Technological trends and advances

The trend observed in the last year is to provide students not so much with laptops, but of tablets. It's more, The idea is to share the digital content of the classroom not only from these devices., but also from smartphones, achieving more collaborative interactive classes.

In this technological advance, Soon we will be able to see interactive monitors in classrooms replacing the digital whiteboard and projector. In other countries, like in the UK, These interactive screens have had a growth of 30%, and in Germany of a 20%, but in Spain it is expected that 2014 be the year in which it is introduced, although slowly, since the value of the product is still above the current digital classroom, to which is added the few budget items that the centers and administrations have.

However, something that is still to come is digital content, of which there is a wide free repertoire on the Internet. Unfortunately, not everything has been adapted to the Spanish curriculum. Interactive whiteboard manufacturers offer digital content as value when purchasing their products, and publishers are adapting to this new way of offering their developments and services and, definitely, They are the ones who should lead this section.

As far as the product is concerned, It is worth mentioning applications that allow all the hardware and software elements of the manufacturers to come together., facilitating classroom control to interact and share content from any device, either on the part of the student or the teacher.

We are at a time when audiovisual solutions have a strong presence in our classrooms., in such a way that they can be adapted to any center and learning profile. The different existing audiovisual solutions offer different ways of using the technology, but the end or objective is the same: achieve the greatest audiovisual interactivity between the student and teacher.

Pablo Bent

Business Developer Manager Education and Corporate in TDMaverick, division of Tech Data.