Thursday 23 June 2016

The Best Interactive LED Screens

What is the best interactive LED screen for your school?


Over the past 10-15 years most schools have bought into interactive technologies for their classrooms which usually consists of an interactive whiteboard, projector, audio system and software to help annotate and present lessons. Decisions on which product to buy used to be fairly simple as the vast majority of schools either purchase SMARTBOARDS or PROMETHEAN ACTIVBOARDS albeit for a small number of schools that opted for cheaper or lesser known solutions from the likes of Hitachi, MIMIO, e-beam and CleverBoards.

Key Benefits of Interactive LED Screens:
As always, technology moves on and for the past 2-3 years this change has seen schools rapidly swapping out their old interactive whiteboards for new interactive LED screen technologies and there are a number of reasons for this:
  • LED screens are brighter and clearer to see - keeping pupils engaged with the lesson.
  • Additional features on some interactive LED screens such as built in devices with access to thousands of education apps means that lessons can be delivered in different ways again helping to engage pupils with lessons (whatever their VAKT learning style).
  • Additional software and resources are provided free of charge with most interactive screens that help teachers to incorporate their existing pupil devices (iPads, laptops, Android & Windows tablets) into lessons by delivering content directly to them via the interactive screen and retrieving worksheets or answers back that can then be saved for pupil assessment purposes.
  • There are no ongoing maintenance costs for LED screens, whereas projectors required servicing, filter changes and costly replacement lamps. 
Prices have dramatically reduced on interactive LED screen technology over the past 12 months as manufacturers battle it out to offer the best technology at the most reasonable cost - making the swap to the new technology affordable for most schools.

Which Interactive LED Screen?
So, your school has decided to replace your old systems with interactive LED screens, but now which ones do you choose?

Unlike in the past 10-15 years where you had two clear manufacturers to choose from, there are now dozens of manufacturers all claiming to offer the best technology, best software and best all round value for your school.... manufacturers have been popping up left, right and centre with products to offer and whilst Promethean and Smart also have interactive LED screens, there are now also screens from Clevertouch, BenQ, Genee, VividTouch, Philips, Iiyama, Samsung, CTouch, Prowise and many more. They all have different features, different built in devices and different software,
but which screen is best for your school?

NS Optimum have partnered with almost all interactive LED screen manufacturers throughout the past few years as the market has been emerging, developing and changing so that we can offer impartial advice:
  • which screen will be best for your school? NS Optimum can help you choose.
  • which software will best suit your teachers and their teaching style?
  • will the school benefit from any of the additional features or software or is this an unnecessary cost?
  • which installation options will suit each individual classroom and the pupils in that class?
A pedagogical consideration for most of these decisions is paramount as there is little point in installing new technology if it's not going to enhance learning. NS Optimum review each schools requirements on a case by case basis to offer impartial advice and quotations to suit the decisions made.

NS Optimum in partnership with Tablet Academy, also offer ongoing CPD for the new technology as an option so that schools really get to know the new technology, how it can be best used to deliver more engaging lessons and to really help bring IT to life in the classrooms by integrating the schools previous investments in IT technologies such as iPads, tablets and laptops in with the new technology such as the interactive LED screen, coding robots such as Dot & Dash and Lego WeDo.


Please contact NS Optimum on 01926 745608 or email info@nsoptimum.co.uk to take advantage of our impartial advice and free school surveys.