New classroom tech allows for more interactive learning

First-grade teacher Cindy Longacre works with students Wednesday, Aug. 24, at Forest Ridge Elementary School. The instructor has a touchscreen BenQ Board at her disposal to aid in classroom instruction. The teaching resource allows her and her students the ability to have an interactive lesson.

Learning in a classroom environment has an inherent interactive nature, but that doesn't mean schools can't occasionally level up, especially in this ever-progressing world of modern technology.

Over the summer, the Citrus County School District has been hard at work with improvement projects at several schools, including installing new interactive large-format display monitors on top of the classic whiteboards in classrooms across all grade levels.

At the regular school board meeting on May 10, the $1.9 million purchase of 775 BenQ Interactive Display Panels was approved by the school board members following a demonstration to the board of how the interactive touchscreens would work in the classroom.

Forest Ridge Elementary School first-grade teacher Cindy Longacre congratulates Victoria Rosado on a correct answer by slapping a high-five with the child Wednesday afternoon, Aug. 24. The teacher uses high-tech classroom technology in the form of a touchscreen BenQ Board. The equipment has many advantages in the classroom as a teaching tool. It operates similarly to a tablet where the teacher or student can use their finger to manipulate the monitor to answer questions or give examples.

Cindy Longacre, first grade teacher at Forest Ridge Elementary School, said she likes that it's an interactive tool not just for teachers, but for students as well.

"You can prepare lessons and have them set up as presentations, so when you come in, you can go back and forth between things you’ve prepared," said Longacre. "There are times when they can come up and they can write on the board, they can do their work on the board and then share it with the class. There's also a specific screen that pulls up three separate whiteboards so three kids at a time can be working and see the work for all three."

The BenQ Corporation is a company that specializes in the design and production of cutting-edge technology, such as digital projectors, professional monitors, interactive large-format displays, imaging solutions, mobile computing devices and LED lighting solutions.

The BenQ Boards they offer are geared specifically towards classroom use in schools, saying on the website that they increase involvement with more dynamic lessons, are user-friendly, can connect wirelessly to teachers’ laptops, and can be managed remotely with ease. It has the ability to allow up to nine iPads and laptops at once to connect and screen share seamlessly.

Forest Ridge Elementary School first grader Rayleigh Shiver quietly reads a book in class Wednesday afternoon, Aug. 24. A touchscreen BenQ Board at the front of the classroom directs students to what current activity they should be involved.

Amanda Harris, kindergarten teacher at Central Ridge Elementary, had a BenQ Board installed in her classroom just before the year started on Aug. 10, causing her to have a crash-course in learning how to use the board.

"I absolutely love it," said Harris on the first day of school. "It's going to be really great for the kiddos. There's this great drawing feature that they have on it, so the kids can manipulate it since it's touchscreen. There's a lot of good features on it. You can copy and paste pictures and all kinds of stuff that I think will be beneficial."

Many teachers were concerned about the possibility of losing the use of their whiteboards, but rather than replacing them, the BenQs were installed directly on top of the whiteboards.

"I was like ‘I need my whiteboard’," said Harris. "A lot of teachers have it in the middle of their whiteboard because they were installed during the summer when teachers weren't here, but when they installed mine, I was in my classroom. So I was like ‘can you put it to the right and hang it lower?’ I just wanted some of my whiteboard space, you know, just in case."

The boards also boast a healthy learning environment for the classroom with the inclusion of germ-resistant screens and pens via a coating of a nano-ionic silver formula that kills 99.9 percent of common germs after contact. Plus there is a built-in air quality sensor that monitors CO2 and PM2.5 levels in the classroom, as well as anti-glare screens with low blue light and flicker-free technology to make the display easier on the eyes and easy to view from anywhere in the classroom.

Multiple devices can connect wirelessly to the board simultaneously, meaning the students’ iPads can all connect and be displayed on the board, bridging the gap between the teacher and what the students are working with on the tablet.

The EZWrite cloud whiteboard allows for teachers and students to write on the screen and for that to then be saved to reference later. Teachers can also use a split-screen option for multitasking during lessons, as well as 32W speakers with 15W subwoofer for audio enrichment when playing videos or audio.

"A lot of our curriculum is digital," said Longacre. "So a lot of the things that we have, have an audio part that goes with it, and there's a really nice speaker on it that projects. And I’m just at the tip of the iceberg, there's a lot more that can be used."

Additionally, in Special Education classrooms, it provides multi-media instruction that addresses multiple modalities as well as accessibility tools, giving students more of a voice in the classroom.

Peter Rausch, a teacher at Lecanto High School, said at the school board meeting in May, "This is the next step, now it takes the iPads and makes it interactive with the teacher."

The purchase was funded using the ARP ESSERIII Federal Stimulus Funds and includes a five-year warranty for each device and a 10-year life span with 50,000 plus hours of bulb life.

Not all of the BenQ Boards were installed over the summer. The remaining BenQ Boards will continue to be installed periodically throughout the year in more and more classrooms across the district for teachers and students alike to be able to level up their learning experiences.

Contact Chronicle Reporter Georgia Sullivan at 352-564-2929.

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