AV Magazine Education Supplement

M any schools are beginning to actively encourage students to bring their own devices into class or use ones issued by the school. And you’ll hardly see an undergraduate without a laptop or phone in their hand. “BYOD (bring your own device) may be simple – students handing in assignments to the teacher, or sharing their work with the class,” says Ronny Dewaele, Vice- President for the learning experience at Barco. “Or it can be more sophisticated - interactive sessions with voting, or the teacher sending content to students’ devices.” Often the first driver for supporting BYOD is teachers’ own use. “Many schools are moving away from fixed PCs and USB sticks to an environment where teachers Making aBYODconnection Barco’s wePresent supportsmultiple device platforms that can fit easily into existing IT systems can walk into class with their laptops or mobiles and run lessons directly via Wi-Fi,” says Dewaele. True BYOD, which may see students turn up with anything from a Windows Vista laptop to the latest MacBook Air, means that BYOD infrastructures must increasingly offer support for multiple device platforms. Another concern, particularly for universities, is that BYOD must dovetail into the existing IT infrastructure. And within the classroom, especially in schools, teachers generally want to be able to moderate what goes on. Management is also an issue. “Some universities have 500 or more classrooms so they need a good, centralised management system,” says Dewaele. Barco wePresent (www.barco.com/ wepresent) is designed to address these issues and enable schools and universities to easily add wireless presentation and BYOD interaction to the classroom. The entry level WiPG-1000 system offers 1080p wireless sharing from any device, using its own Wi-Fi. Intended for presentation rather than collaboration it’s ideal for the teacher-only BYOD model that’s still widely applied in schools. The flagship WiCS-2100 product adds seamless integration into the campus network and provides collaboration capabilities. BYOD connections have preview thumbnails, and multiple sources are automatically arranged on the screen, simplifying intervention by the teacher. Additional collaboration features include push-back of content to the students, WEPRESENT moderation, annotation and virtual whiteboarding. “For the teacher it’s very flexible,” says Dewaele. “You have control back to the teacher’s device, so a teacher standing by a touch screen can use this to control their computer. And they can control the wePresent box from their PC, phone or the touch screen.” An entire wePresent estate can also be managed centrally, enabling firmware upgrades or troubleshooting to carried out remotely. “Support for multiple standards is really important,” says Dewaele. “We have our own wireless sharing protocol, MirrorOp, which supports multiple BYOD platforms, including Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. A uniform protocol can make it easier for the teacher to answer students’ questions if they need help. But we also support native device sharing, including AirPlay and Chromecast.” Integrating with older existing environments can be challenging. “We still support VGA, and there are quite a few 4:3 ratio displays out there,” says Dewaele. “But this also creates opportunities for integrators and distributors to talk to schools about revamping their display equipment.” Although wePresent is also sold into corporate meeting rooms, Dewaele expects it to be focused increasingly on education in future. “Education is a rapidly growing market that’s really interesting to play in, with tens of thousands of classrooms a year being equipped for wireless presentation and BYOD,” he says. Barco’s wePresent is designed to enable schools and universities to easily add wireless and BYOD interaction AVMAGAZINE EDUCATION SPECIAL 14 | AV EDUCATION SPECIAL | DECEMBER 2018 /JANUARY 2019 LX-Tunghai University: wePresent management Ronny Dewaele, vice- president, Barco