Chris Kendall, AMX Europe’s business development director for education, explains how, by taking control of classroom technology, you can ensure that technology doesn’t take control of the classroom.

Today’s classrooms are complex places. There’s been a staggering variety of digital technologies introduced to education over the years, from projectors and televisions to computers and smart boards, through to video and web-conferencing via the internet.

In most cases, these classroom technologies are deployed, operated and managed independently and rarely complement each other. As more and more of these systems are introduced, the opportunities for system conflicts, user confusion and mismanagement grow accordingly and the level of complexity involved in using the multitude of available devices makes it difficult for even the most motivated teachers to integrate technology into their lesson plans.

In a world where visualisers are the new overhead projectors, stylus has replaced chalk and white is the new blackboard; teachers have had to embrace a new, more technologically interactive way of teaching. Whilst this may be a language in which today’s generation of electronically-enabled pupils are fluent, mastering this new approach and its associated hardware and software can be a daunting prospect for some of their teachers.