How To Implement Empowering Interactive Education: TCEA 2020

Coming live from the 2020 TCEA Convention and Exposition floor held in Austin earlier this month, this episode of the MarketScale EdTech podcast, hosted by Online Learning Consultant J.W. Marshall, features Bob Wudeck, a 20-year veteran of the display industry and the Senior Director of Business Development at BenQ Corporation. Through people-driven, innovation-fueled products, services and solutions, BenQ empowers more interactive K-12 education.

“When you’re looking at display technology for schools, you’re impacting a future generation,” says Wudeck. “Right now, we’re in the middle of a number of unique technology transitions in the classroom. What was the traditional paradigm of either a standalone projector on a screen or a proprietary whiteboard is kind of shifting into a much more fluid and dynamic environment.”

Whether it’s an older projector doing XGA on a board that everybody loves but can’t get an HDMI cord to or the inability to get a notebook with VGA, the TCEA show brings together a niche crowd looking for solutions to their district’s particular display issues. To meet the needs of the Education sector, BenQ has evolved into a partnership model (rather than a traditional one-off vendor model), and has expanded their offerings to include more comprehensive display solutions that not only fit into a district’s current AV ecosystem, but that continue to scale with a school’s growth as they’re able to transition into more modern equipment and software options with improved device integration, wireless connectivity and more.

According to Wudeck, there are two primary trends revolving around software this year that BenQ has been able to resolve. With BenQ panels and projectors that accommodate multiple operating systems and apps, the “walled garden” is decaying, enabling IT Directors to mix and match the platforms that work best in their classrooms. Further, via NFC technology, BenQ is solving login management, enabling automatic logouts when teachers leave a room and access to the same screen or file as they travel from classroom to classroom, allowing fluidity in teaching methods, but with dynamic location.

“We’re trying to help teachers teach whatever content that they want, where they want it, and how they want it, and put the information where it’s easy to get to, that they don’t have to worry about the smart kids in the corner being able to triangulate their password and change their grades,” Wudeck remarks.

An extension of their anti-bacterial coated boards that won Best in Show at TCEA last year, this year, BenQ has raised the bar by directly integrating emergency alerts and messaging into their panels and projectors, providing a revolutionary mass communication display technology method for schools. Further, from advanced metallurgy techniques similar to those used by Apple and Samsung to their InstaShow wireless solution that enables network collaboration at the touch of a single button (without additional facility investment or training), BenQ solutions are empowering educators with the flexibility they need in the classroom and IT Directors with the management control they require to ensure positive, interactive, safe and secure learning spaces.

Tune into the podcast now to hear more about the current trends transforming the Education sector and how one of BenQ’s best-selling multi-platform tools helped to solve a curriculum vs. technical issue for a school customer in rural Illinois.

You can also listen to more podcasts from TCEA 2020 right here.