Cardinal Newman College based in Preston; Lancashire is consistently placed amongst the highest performing sixth form colleges in the UK. With a wide range of courses, the College helps students progress onto prestigious universities such as the Russell Group.
After previously using projectors and interactive whiteboards, the College were looking to upgrade to the latest technology and overcome some of the challenges that the legacy solutions posed from a support and teaching perspective.
Anthony Dickinson, Head of Network Services at the College explains; “Our whiteboard estate caused issues across the teaching faculty, constantly needing calibration which caused delays in lesson delivery. In addition, the luminosity of the bulbs meant that the image quality was poor while bulb replacement was a costly expense for the college to bear.”
Dickinson and his team were looking to upgrade classroom technology to create a more integrated experience with Microsoft 365 which is used across the college and were looking for a solution that provided a more immersive environment for teachers and students utilising digital inking tools natively within Microsoft applications.
Dickinson goes on; “We knew we wanted to upgrade to interactive touchscreens so we could remove the reliance on projection and the associated maintenance costs, but we were also keen to explore the potential for native Windows 10 digital inking integration. Our teaching staff wanted 4K screen resolution on a solution that was intuitive and easy to use. We also needed to have a solution that delivered an optimal viewing angle for students with a reduced parallax.”
The college trialled several interactive display brands and, in the end, selected Avocor due to the product integration with the Microsoft office suite, enabling annotations directly into a variety of applications including PowerPoint, Word and Adobe.
“What most attracted us to the Avocor displays was the Windows 10 inking tools and the gesture control actions, that created a natural annotation and writing experience for users. The display interface was simple to understand, meaning that the Avocor displays could be easily adopted across our campus. We were also all impressed with the build quality and general engineering of the Avocor solution, the displays delivered the best viewing angle and reduction of parallax of all the solutions we tested.”
The Avocor displays were installed by Avocor partners, Pure AV and Dickinson was incredibly impressed with the service Pure delivered.
“We were honestly thrilled with the support Pure gave us during the installation of the Avocor screens. They were incredibly knowledgeable and the physical installation was quick and painless. They were on hand to ensure that we have a solution that works seamlessly for our teaching community across our classroom estate.”
The Avocor displays have delivered instant results, including reducing the time it takes to get started, maximising lesson time as well as being easy to use
“Our teachers have all commented that the screens are extremely intuitive and work seamlessly with Microsoft products, enabling digital inking directly into applications and delivering dynamic and engaging lessons in vibrant 4K quality.”
The college plans to adopt Avocor displays across the entire campus in the coming years, enabling teachers to deliver immersive lessons that captures the student’s attention while dramatically reducing the support and maintenance costs of replacing legacy projector technology and bulbs.
Keep up to date with all the latest from Avocor and partners and get information on upcoming events and exciting product news.
