K-12 Education Embraces Innovative Digital DisplaysHaving made great strides with one-to-one, technology-enhanced learning, K-12 schools are looking to new, collaborative solutions to broaden the learning experience and prepare students for their future.

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Higher education institutions have long been pioneers of using new technology to enhance learning. They were among the first to embrace CAVEs — virtual reality environments that allow students and researchers to visualize information. Many have redefined traditional libraries as “media commons,” digital-first spaces for learning and exploration. And they’ve been quick adopters of classroom display technology that allows students to share and interact with digital content.

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Now, future generations of college stu-dents — both in the classroom and those learning remotely — have the opportunity to learn in a similar, technology-enhanced fashion, driven in part by widespread efforts to democratize education tech-nology.

In K-12 school districts around the country, this evolution in learning began

with one-to-one computing initiatives. Efforts to give students laptops and tablet computers to learn, access online resources, and complete schoolwork have been embraced enthusiastically. In the early weeks and months of the corona-virus pandemic, when school systems closed and turned to distance learning, many more devices entered circulation. For instance, very quickly, New York City

distributed 175,000 laptops1 , tablets and Chromebooks to K-12 students so they could study from home. Now, given the fact that some schools are remaining remote and others are employing a hybrid model, this trend looks to be here to stay.

1 https://library.educause.edu/~/media/files/library/2017/11/2017hrk12EN.pdf

Putting the power of discovery in the hands of students has proven to be a positive investment of precious budget dollars. Giving teachers access to online learning platforms has opened the door to new pedagogies and innovative tools that improve learning outcomes — par-ticularly given the unconventional nature of educating during COVID-19. All told, such technology initiatives have begun to prepare students for a future in which digital literacy is crucial.

“As one-to-one mobile deployments expand, students have a greater ability

to learn anywhere at any time, allowing for more collaboration and facilitating increased access to peers and experts,” wrote the Horizon Report authors.

As for school districts that have opted to welcome students and teachers back to physical classrooms, the next evolution in K-12 edtech will be to take these one-to-one computing mod-els and make them one-to-many or many-to-many experiences, from the classroom, to a school’s common spaces, to purpose-designed learning venues. New display and interactive solutions

will help unlock what’s on a laptop or tablet screen and make it so everyone in a classroom can learn from it, creating immersive visual experiences.

“A lot of people are probably going to tell you it used to be an arms race to get the devices out, but now everyone has devices,” says Cao Mac, Chief Informa-tion Officer of Cicero School District 99, outside Chicago. “Now it’s really about innovation and how do we cultivate new learning? Because digital learning is the new norm and it’s going to be here for a long time.”

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“Project-based learning, challenge-based learning, and competency-based learning — all of these pedagogical trends are in service of creating richer and more hands-on, real-world experiences for students,” according to the NMC/CoSN Horizon Report: 2017 K-12 Edition2, published by the New Media Consortium and the Consortium for School Networking. “Both higher education and the contemporary workforce call for digital savants who can seamlessly work with different media and new technologies as they emerge.”

2 https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2020/3/23/21196118/the-new-reality-of-coronavirus-here-s-what-nyc-s-first-day-of- remote-learning-looked-like

The days of students sitting in rows are numbered. K-12 learning spaces are as-suming new and different configurations to best accommodate emerging forms of digital learning and more recently social distancing guidelines. Active learn-ing, blended learning and project-based learning represent the latest trends in K-12 education. So-called maker spaces; flexible rooms with modular furniture and mobile displays; and non-traditional, purpose-built labs have been shown to better engage young people raised on digital technology, while also being able to maintain a proper distance between students.

“As conventional teaching models evolve and emerging technologies gain a solid foothold in classrooms worldwide, formal learning environments require an upgrade to reflect the 21st-century practices taking place within them,” wrote the Horizon Report authors. “New pedagogies that leverage technology are impacting the design of learning spaces.”

Craig Park, Principal Consultant at NV5 Engineering & Technology, a leading consultancy that does extensive work with K-12 and higher education institu-tions, has seen the evolution first-hand. “When you think about team-based learning, where cohorts of four to six students are working together on a project, that means each group — each team — needs access to or the ability

to connect to a screen they can share information on,” he says. “And then they use that technology as a collaboration tool to document what each person is finding, collaborate together, and then push that back out to all the other screens in a room, or to the cloud.”

Woodstock, Illinois, Community Unit School District 200 operates one of several Challenger Learning Centers around the country. Students gain STEM education in a replica space station, with one room featuring a wall of LG flat-screen displays for showing information and video feeds from the International Space Station. The area also includes digital whiteboards and wireless tech-nology for sharing content from mobile devices. “We’re trying to promote a lot of problem-solving, collaboration, and kids working together,” explains Keely Krueger, the district’s assistant superin-tendent for early childhood and ele-mentary education, in an interview with EdTech3.

Foothills Education Charter High School, which operates classes out of many area K-12 schools, opened a new facility in Athens, Georgia, with a multipurpose space designed for training and oth-er education activities. It’s anchored by a giant videowall comprising nine, high-resolution LG screens, arranged in a three-by-three layout. There’s a touch panel to control the system, a digital sig-

nage player, and a wireless presentation system. Leo Satara, technology coor-dinator at Foothills Education Charter High School, says the system is used by Foothills staff, school district partners and others for meetings, collaboration activities and training. “It’s a versatile room, and then we have a couple confer-ence rooms with 75-inch touch panels for other presentations and interactivity,” he says.

By integrating new display technologies into learning spaces and common areas, K-12 schools can begin to create a more engaging, collaborative environment, while at the same time preparing stu-dents for the technologically enhanced, active-teamwork models that await them later in life.

According to a Project Tomorrow Speak Up Research Project4 , which surveyed nearly 344,000 K-12 students, parents, educators and administrators nation-wide from October 2018 to June 2019, 82 percent of parents say the effective use of technology in school is import-ant to their children’s future success. Moreover, 72 percent of parents and 81 percent of school district administrators said collaboration was one of the most important workplace skills for K-12 students.

The Speak Up researchers found, “Virtual labs, animations and simulations provide a unique opportunity for students to efficiently and effectively experience real-world experiments and bring mean-ing to abstract concepts that cannot be replicated in the natural world. Today’s students value digital learning experi-ences to bring context to education.”

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The Evolution of Tech-Supported Learning

3https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2019/12/creating-opportunities-immerse-students-learning 4https://tomorrow.org/speakup/speakup_data_findings.html

Factors in Adopting K-12 Display Technology

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As one might expect, technology for technology’s sake isn’t enough to support K-12 students and teachers in their learning experiences. Yes, it must support pedagogy, but it should also be integrated thoughtfully to complement the learning spaces and ensure health safety.

“Schools have gone all-in on instruc-tional technology,” explains Bill McCoy, Director of K-12 Sales for Tierney, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based audiovisual technology integrator. “But one of the trends we started seeing over the past couple years was technology directors talking about furniture, even though that aspect had always been on the facility side of the schools’ operation. They were saying they needed to take a holistic approach to instructional tech-nology — not only what kind of technol-ogy and devices supported what kind of instructional styles, but also what would the whole environment look like and is it safe?”

New technology should also be cost-ef-fective to deploy and manage, without requiring too much additional training of teachers and staff. Increasingly, new display solutions have become all-in-one

smart devices, with built-in processing, software, network connections, wireless interactivity, and more. They deliver a bigger bang for a school district’s buck and can be deployed in greater numbers.

“The challenge in the K-12 sector is they have a big desire to be better equipped, but often lack the capital budget to buy equipment and the operational budget to service and support it,” explains NV5’s Craig Park. “To the extent that the tech-nology is repeatable and cost-effective, it’s going to be a better fit.”

In recent years, collaborative display technology has evolved to be easier to use and manage. Before, enabling a flat-panel screen to allow students to share information would usually require a separate device. Now technology pro-viders are building that capability directly into the display.

“Several display manufacturers, like LG, have started to do this,” Park says. “Basically, the collaboration link is built into the screen so it’s not in a third-par-ty box. They can build it in and make it robust enough to handle more than four users, with an interface that is as easy as anything anybody has ever experi-enced.”

Then there is the challenge of ensuring that whatever display technology a school adopts gets used effectively. No school wants to invest in new technol-ogy it can’t benefit from. Fortunately, today’s students are often savvy enough to make the most of digital solutions. And, taking it one step further, they have come to expect digital experiences.

Marietta High School, a College and Career Academy, recently invested in a school-wide digital signage system for teaching, collaboration, and communi-cations. According to local integrator Heather Corbin, CTS, of Solutionz, Inc., the school may never need to print a pamphlet or brochure again.

“Administrators have determined that paper signs and posters just do not engage students who all have digital screens in their pockets, and they expect important messages to be delivered in a modern way,” Corbin says. “That is not a fad that’s going to reverse, so the school invested in platforms they know the students respond to and are interested in.” (Read more in the section, “Marietta High School: Using Display Tech to Prep Students for Real World Success”).

Generally, today’s display technology serves a couple key purposes in K-12 schools: It supports classroom activities in new, flexible ways and offers a digital medium that enhances communica-tions. That enhanced flexibility also allows teachers and administrators to better configure their classrooms in a safe manner, while maintaining student collaboration. Understanding how it de-livers better outcomes in K-12 schools has led to wider adoption.

For years, schools have been big adopt-ers of presentation technology such as digital whiteboards, and short-throw projection systems. But the future isn’t necessarily about teachers presenting what students need to learn; it’s about students and teachers actively engaging with digital content — manipulating it, collaborating over it, even determining what “it” is.

“Increasingly, there’s no front of the classroom,” says McCoy. “It’s now about small-group collaboration, and interac-tive flat panels are now collaboration stations.”

Interactive digital boards — large-format, flat-screen displays with integrated functionality — serve two important purposes. Boards with touchscreen technology allow students to interact with learning material, while boards with screen-sharing capabilities make it so entire classes can see and understand the work that a student or students perform on a personal computing device.

“Now you can start teaching across cur-ricula, where students are really thinking through a problem and presenting their thought process,” McCoy says. “It’s a much deeper level of learning.”

And interactive digital boards support active-learning pedagogies in spaces de-signed to be modular and reconfigurable,

promoting ad hoc collaboration. That’s because unlike traditional presentation systems, which are usually anchored to a spot in a room, digital boards can be mounted or placed on a mobile cart that students or teachers can position any-where. They can be shared among work-spaces, thereby maximizing utilization and return on investment, and because they often come with their own wireless connectivity and processing power, they offer anywhere access to cloud-based learning tools and resources.

Recently, Boston Public Schools invested millions of dollars in modular furniture and mobile, interactive digital displays5 with wireless presentation tools to enable classroom collaboration. Officials said the solution made it easier to outfit older schools with new technology while creating flexibility for teachers.

“We see schools putting in multiple panels, so they can place them together or break them apart,” McCoy says. “Then educators walk around and come to a small group, which can then share what they’re working on with the class.”

Of course, when it comes to interactive digital boards, one size does not fit all — nor is it meant to. With tight bud-gets, technology purchases need to be strategic and support specific use cases. For example, early grades may benefit more from touchscreen technology that

allows students to discover the mate-rial and gamify the learning experience, much as they’ve grown accustomed to with educational tablets and other touch devices found in the home. In later grades, screen-sharing and “casting” — the process of sending information from a one-to-one device to a group digital board — can support more advanced project-based learning.

“When a lot of districts ramped up their classrooms ten or twelve years ago, they tried to put the same technology in every K-12 classroom,” says McCoy. “One of the lessons learned is that your teaching needs in grades K-4 are differ-ent than grades 5-8, which are different than grades 9-12. You see a kind of evolution, where a mixture of interac-tive and static panels in a classroom for collaboration and breakout groups — are used at the higher-grade levels.”

According to a 2017 study by Black-board and Project Tomorrow6, 57 percent of teachers in blended learning environments say that technology leads students to collaborate more with their peers, 50 percent say that tech helps students apply knowledge to real-world problems and 48 percent say that digital tools help students take greater owner-ship over their learning.

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Collaborative Display Technology Comes to Classrooms

5https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2019/12/how-districts-install-new-tech-old-schools6https://tomorrow.org/speakup/speak-up-2016-trends-digital-learning-june-2017.html

Beyond the classroom, display technol-ogies can connect students, teachers, administrators and parents on a larger scale, motivating them to engage in learning, reminding them of COVID safe-ty measures and establishing a modern, tech-savvy environment.

“In the K-12 environment, many districts dipped their toes into digital signage with some very basic capabilities such as static panels with slides and basic messaging,” says McCoy, “and many have seen the impact and the value of being able to transfer information to large groups of people. Now we’ve seen them understand that they need to move to more sophisticated platforms.”

Schools are discovering more applica-tions of display technology: day-to-day messaging, emergency notifications, communication of health protocols, dig-ital menu boards in cafeterias and more. “We’re also seeing increased display adoption in athletic departments,” says McCoy. “Everybody seems to be moving toward a digital wall of fame.”

In 2018, Klein Independent School Dis-trict (ISD) in Houston finished a com-prehensive technology refresh, which included about 50 large-format digital signage displays connected to a newly installed wireless network. As a rapidly

growing district, Klein ISD wanted an effective way of communicating.

“We think the wayfinding and engage-ment capabilities can have a huge impact on both the student body and communi-ty,” Klein ISD IT Director Chris Cummings said at the time7. “We envision a number of useful applications: helping students navigate campus on their first day of school, directing parents visiting campus to the right offices or classrooms, helping students and teachers find the nearest stairway or exit in health and safety situations, or helping a disabled student find the closest elevator.”

Whether it’s health protocol commu-nication, wayfinding in lobbies, digital menu boards in cafeterias or video wall installations in media centers and public spaces, display technology is used increasingly at the K-12 level to communicate a school’s vision.

Sherlock School in Cicero, Illinois, is one of many committed to using technology to enhance the learning environment. To underscore that point and build excitement among students, faculty, and parents, it adopted some of the most cutting-edge display technology available8 to create bright, architecturally unique videowalls in the school’s lobby. Flat panels based on organic light-emit-

ting diode (OLED) technology actually curve and create columns and waves, displaying vibrant content that attracts people to the school’s mission and sends the message that Sherlock School is serious about preparing its students for a technology-rich future. (Read more in the section, “Cicero 99: Ubiquitous Digital Learning Prepares Schools for Any Eventuality.”)

Display technology for common spac-es comes in many shapes and sizes to support a school’s unique needs, infra-structure and strategies. Digital signage displays, for instance, can be implement-ed on a very targeted basis or through-out a campus as a dynamic, easy-to-use method of conveying up-to-date information and messaging. The more intricate or pervasive a digital signage network becomes, the more advisable it is to seek smart, networked, commer-cial-grade displays that are reliable and manageable from a central location.

Schools are using digital signage displays as unified communications systems once they’re on the network,” says Tierney’s McCoy. “When a fire alarm goes off, for example, it triggers a videowall to go into digital signage mode and shows the evacuation map. Plus, it takes over class-room displays and hallway screens with instructions tailored to those locations.”

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Displays for Common Spaces and Digital Signage

7https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180410005589/en/Klein-Independent-School-District-Enables-Smart-Classrooms8https://www.lg.com/us/business/commercial-display/resources-hub/pdfs/Sherlock_School_Case_Study.pdf

Whether inside or outside K-12 class-rooms, modern display technology has multiple roles to play. Schools are increasingly tasked with preparing students for a digital future while main-taining a healthy environment. They’ve been adapting teaching styles to achieve these goals, and technology can be an important, strategic enabler.

According to the NMC/CoSN Horizon Report, “As conventional teaching mod-els evolve and emerging technologies gain a solid foothold in classrooms

worldwide, formal learning environ-ments require an upgrade to reflect the 21st-century practices taking place within them.”

Ultimately, today’s display technology forms the foundation of engagement in the modern classroom. As Cicero School District 99’s Cao Mac put it, “Technology changes drastically, but if we don’t expose our kids to these types of envi-ronments, they’ll never be able to succeed in the future.”

The Digital Foundations of Engagement

8 9https://tomorrow.org/speakup/speakup_data_findings.html

“Research has long

documented the benefits

of engaging students in the

learning process,” stated

Project Tomorrow in its recent

Speak Up Research Project9.

“This focus on the role of

engagement in learning has

become the predominant

theme when evaluating the

impact of technology.”

In the spring of 2020, when Illinois closed schools in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Cicero School District 99 was ready. The K-8 district of 14,000 stu-dents, southwest of Chicago, was already five years into its mission of changing the way it delivers education through technology.

Cicero 99 had embraced one-to-one learning, putting computing devices in the hands of all its students. It adopted an online learning management system as a foundational education tool and charted a professional development path for its staff that included a digital edu-cator certification. And it had adopted ubiquitous, digital display technology throughout its 17 schools so that stu-dents and staff would be fluent in new ways of learning. So, when the district closed temporarily, everyone was ready to continue their studies.

“Our students are fortunate because prior to coronavirus, that’s how they’d been learning,” explains Cao Mac, Chief Information Officer for Cicero 99, of the district’s move to digital learning. “After coronavirus, they’re still learning in the same manner because we’ve had that infrastructure and framework in place. As

we remain remote for this current school year, we are still seeing our students con-nected and engaged with our teachers.”

Throughout Cicero 99, every class-room has a 75-inch interactive display, connected to the district’s online learning resources. The district developed its own plug-in computing module to give the displays their smarts. Users can control each display through a 10-point touch interface or a wireless keyboard and mouse. And once students return in person, they can share wirelessly the information on their one-to-one devices with the classroom displays.

“The best thing about our interactive panels is our students have the ability to ‘cast’ whatever they’re seeing on their screens up to the panels,” Mac says. “Now it becomes an immersive, collabo-rative workspace — a canvas for interac-tive learning. Not only can the teachers see what students are doing, but other students can too. So, it’s not always about the teacher’s voice and the teacher talking. It’s really about students showing their work.”

Mac describes how a student can use half the display screen to show what’s

on his laptop, while the teacher uses the other half of the screen to annotate whatever content is showing by touching the display. And it’s 100-percent wireless — no cables necessary.

“Every student and every teacher has their device,” Mac says. “And the teachers can actually differentiate among groups of students based on the levels that they’re learning at. It gives teachers the ability not only to work individually, but also check and chime in when they need to.”

Each classroom in the district — roughly 900 in all—is equipped with the same technology, Mac says. This makes it easier for IT staff to manage and service each solution. It also ensures that the experience of using technology — by students and teachers — is consistent across the district.

Videowalls as Immersive Learning Locations

Cicero 99’s new Sherlock Elementary School also includes a series of large videowalls that let groups of students experience more fully the subjects they’re learning about. With the new school, Cicero 99 wanted to create an environment that would motivate and stimulate students by introducing them to technology in ways they might not have encountered before.

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Spotlight on Cicero 99: Ubiquitous Digital Learning Prepares Schools for Any Eventuality

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Sherlock School’s main lobby features a unique digital display composed of 34 curved LG organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays — 24 mounted on the ceiling in a wave pattern and 10 more curved screens in columns against one wall. On the school’s fourth floor, there is a pair of more traditional — yet no less impactful — flat-panel videowalls, each including eight commercial-grade, 55-inch LG narrow-bezel displays. School officials credit the videowalls with invigorating students and encouraging staff to consider new ways of engaging students in their learning.

“For us, a videowall is not just a videow-all; it’s an immersive learning location,” says Mac. “Sherlock is our new flagship school. It was designed as a flexible learning environment, not just four walls and a classroom. Open areas mean kids

can learn anywhere within the school. And the reason we built that immersive LG learning environment is because it gives our teachers and students the ability to call up specific content. For example, if they’re learning about caves, they can go down to the immersive learning environment, with its floor-to-ceiling videowalls, and experience a cave. If you’re just seeing a cave on YouTube, that’s one thing. But when you walk into an environment where it actually looks and feels and sounds like a cave, then you’re in a cave.”

Open to New Options and Delivering Results

Cicero 99 continues to look at new ways it can use digital technology to improve learning. The district has started lever-aging augmented and virtual reality kits

to get students further excited and add extra dimensions to class activities.

“It’s a multi-tiered, multi-layered ap-proach, but it gives the kids the ability to have different experiences,” Mac says. “That’s the key: It’s not just about the device; it’s about the experience and providing multiple types of experiences.”

Technology also has to deliver results. Student engagement is a critical factor, and Mac says attendance is significantly greater now that the district has imple-mented a digital technology strategy. Student behavior has improved, Mac says, and instances of discipline have dropped. And administrators constantly ask students for feedback.

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“Kids want to come to schools now,” Mac explains. “We’re measuring engagement and our kids are telling us how they’re feeling. As a district, we have all the key components to ensure that, pedagogically, we’ve changed our mindset on leveraging technology tools in the classroom. We’re seeing the benefits today.”

Spotlight on Marietta High School: Using Display Tech to Prep Students for Real World Success

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Marietta High School, a Georgia College & Career Academy, recently joined Georgia’s growing career prep education initiative, where students are given tools and course options that go far beyond the average public education experience.

With “Career Pathways” that provide college prep and training for careers in locally significant sectors such as digital media production, construction trades, sciences, nursing and medicine, game design, engineering, architecture and more, the school is a beacon of expan-sive student opportunity that represents a 21st century version of the traditional trade school.

“We are preparing each of our 2,454 students for a meaningful career aligned with career aptitudes and interests,” says Keith L. Ball, Principal of Marietta High School. “We are purposefully aligning the Career Pathway offerings to opportuni-ties in our community and region.”

A Display for Every Educational Need

As part of the school’s goal to provide education and training relevant to the needs of the community and students’ interests, more than 80 state-of-the-art digital displays from LG have been installed throughout the school property. Serving a variety of needs from school-wide communications to classroom instruction to virtual collaboration, the digital displays create an atmosphere of innovation and help prepare students for real-world careers where technology is common.

Local AV Systems integration team led by Keith Taylor and Heather Corbin, CTS, of Solutionz, Inc., worked closely with Marietta City Schools and the general contractor to coordinate industry best practices for display signage infrastruc-ture. According to Taylor, Marietta Col-lege & Career Academy’s new technolo-gy is worthy of a college campus.

“Georgia is focused on making its edu-cation system more workforce-oriented, and to do so, the schools need to reflect workplace realities,” says Taylor. “For our part, we helped the school design and implement a consolidated system of LG displays that extends through the entire campus. This centrally-controlled display network reflects what college campuses are currently doing, and the benefits include eliminating the need for ineffec-tive paper signage and delivering more dynamic learning environments that help increase student engagement.”

While the building’s new J-Hall, a 55,000-square-foot addition, received the bulk of the new LG digital displays, a minimum of 15 displays are also now active in hallways throughout existing areas of the school.

“This school may never need to print a pamphlet or brochure again,” Corbin adds. “Administrators have determined that paper signs and posters just do not engage students who all have digital screens in their pockets, and they expect important messages to be delivered in a modern way. That is not a fad that’s going to reverse, so the school invested in platforms they know the students respond to and are interested in.”

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Jason Meade, Associate Principal and Career Pathways Supervisor says, “The full display network is quite a marvel for a public high school.”

Starting in the Career Center, where students can speak with college training experts and career counselors, the college and career sections of the space each feature a 3x1 vertical video wall composed of 75–inch LG 4K displays, plus four smaller adjacent displays, he explained. Like many of the school’s new displays, these two video walls and eight adjacent displays are centrally operat-ed through a control system and offer wireless content sharing, HDMI input through wall-mounted ports, and screen sharing from mobile devices.

In the Grand Entry Hall students are kept informed by eight 49-inch LG displays mounted above doors and win-dows. These displays present the same digital signage content found on all the hallway displays, which is distributed through a third-party data distribution service (DDS).

“In classrooms, the displays command higher attention and allow teachers great flexibility in lesson presentations.

The game design classroom is one of the most display-heavy areas in the school, with its two separate rooms each containing three 2x2 video walls with 49-inch displays, giving instructors six 98-inch ultra-HD canvases. Having multiple video walls increases flexibility for upper-level courses that often have fewer students, and it provides addi-tional opportunity to enhance social distancing as schools work to ensure student and staff safety,” adds Meade.

Preparing Students –and Schools– for a Digital Future

Torey Bradley, Director of Technology & Information Systems for Marietta City Schools, noted how the traditional ed-ucation system was uprooted in 2020, and how this College & Career Acade-my’s timely investment in communica-tions technologies aided educators and students throughout the school year.

“So much about in-person experiences have changed in the last year, it’s really fortuitous that Marietta City Schools had already planned and invested in this display network,” Bradley says. “The school’s handle on technology has been instrumental to students’ continued

success throughout the Covid pandemic. The college and career counselors have been able to use video collaboration services to connect with students to plan their futures, and even orchestrate Zoom-based virtual job shadowing. I imagine this is the direction all schools will go, because virtual collaboration is not going to go away - in fact it will only become more important in the future.”

Outside the hallways and core class-rooms, a new “Board Room” in J-Hall offers a more open-style 25-seat meeting space complete with a 3x3 LG video wall. Overlooking the school’s football field, the multi-use room is used to host internal meetings, conduct vir-tual interviews with job candidates and as a classroom for smaller upper-level courses that include regular discussion, not just teacher-led instruction.

For graduations, ceremonies, and major announcements, the system can stream a single video feed to every display and video wall on campus, offering every person in the building the opportunity to witness the events. This includes the J-Hall entrance atrium, which features four LG displays on opposite sides of the room.

“As a school dedicated to the career success of its students, Marietta College & Career Academy offers a roadmap for other schools looking to leverage cutting-edge technologies to more deeply engage students and provide real-world experiences to carry far past high school,” Meade concludes.

Copyright 2021 ®LG Electronics USA, Inc., 2000 Millbrook Drive Lincolnshire, IL 60069, USA.

All rights reserved. LG and the LG logo are registered trademarks of LG Corp. All other products and brandnames are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Designs, features, and specifications are subject to change without notice. All screen images are simulated.

CASE STUDY

Teaming Up for a Tight DeadlineSherlock School leverages the power of tech partnership to deploy custom digital displays to help embrace learning in any space

They say time stops for no man, but the trusting partnership between LG, Peerless-AV and Snap Install made it almost stand still in order to complete a state-of-the-art installation on an almost impossible deadline. With only three weeks left until the school year began, Cicero District 99 sought to use new technology to provide innovative learning spaces for students at Sherlock School that would motivate and stimulate them by introducing technology in ways they might not have encountered before.

With the opportunity to build a new school, Cicero District 99 wanted to implement technology solutions throughout the facility to add functionality and efficiency in unexpected ways. This included unique, eye-catching video displays installed in the main entrance and fourth-floor interactive space as well as a creative display design utilizing curved screens to stimulate students upon arrival each day.

Cicero District 99 knew that a task of this magnitude with intricate installation needs would require assistance from a skilled team and immediately began searching for an integrator that could not only complete this task but could do so in a tight timeframe.

With the deadline quickly approaching, Snap Install worked quickly and efficiently to team with manufacturers it knew and trusted. Snap Install selected commercial OLED displays from LG Business Solutions and mounted solutions from Peerless-AV that could easily create a unique, state-of-the-art installation that would provide immersive experiences

and showcase content in welcoming ways to students, teachers, parents, and guests. In addition, LG’s impressive lineup of options includes 55-inch Open Frame OLED displays that could be easily curved for ceiling and wall designs, as well as video wall displays that create a virtually seamless, impactful image.

According to Snap Install’s President, Travis Peterson, “We knew right away that it was going to be a unique project. We’ve never provided an installation service for OLEDs that actually are curved on site, but our long-time partnership with Peerless-AV helped to create the trusted environment we needed to deliver the project on time and with perfect precision.”

Peerless-AV, an industry-leading designer and manufacturer of AV solutions, was able to quickly design, test, manufacture, and install video wall mounting solutions that support LG’s Open Frame OLED displays – in less than three weeks.

“A unique, state-of-the-art installation that would provide immersive experiences and showcase content”

“Working with Peerless-AV and Snap Install, we were able to design a customized approach for the school,” said Adam Salinas, Enterprise Account Manager, LG Business Solutions USA. The solution not only fits the needs of the school but is ready to be utilized by the students on day one.

The main lobby features a unique digital display experience with 34 curved LG Open Frame OLED displays (model 55EF5E-L) – 24 units on the ceiling and ten units in two columns on the wall, supported by Peerless-AV’s dedicated mounting solutions. The fourth floor includes two video walls, each composed of eight 55-inch LG Narrow Bezel displays (model 55VH7E-A) and eight Peerless-AV SmartMount® Supreme Full Service Video Wall Mounts with Quick Release (DS-VW775-QR).

Through Snap Install’s partnership with Peerless-AV and LG Business Solutions, the team met the school’s aggressive deadline and welcomed students to a brand-new school.

“The digital displays have successfully invigorated students for the new school year and have aided in encouraging advanced ways of learning,” said Cao Mac, Cicero School District 99’s Chief Information Officer. “Technology changes drastically, but if we don’t expose our kids to these types of environments, they’ll never be able to succeed in the future. Having the people who understood our vision, who understood our goal and our mission of what we’re trying to accomplish, and having them truly buy into what we’re trying to accomplish really set the tone for the entire process.”

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EXPAND LEARNING AND SOCIALIZATION TIME

Apply education technology to meet multi-purpose needs to address learning loss, provide social and emotional services and provide after school care

Education technology can be expanded beyond the classroom to help schools provide remote mental health services and allow students to experience virtual field trips and specialized labs

PRODUCTS: LG gram, G Pad, Non-Touch Displays, Interactive Displays, Video Walls, Desktop and Gaming Monitors, Projectors

RETURNING TO CAMPUS SAFELY

Sustain healthy environments to reduce the risk of virus exposure, coordinate response efforts and alert all to campus safety protocols

Campus digital signage can be used to communicate health and safety protocols, direct walking traffic, push emergency alerts as well as for mobile spaces for socially distanced learning

PRODUCTS: Wellness Kiosk, webOS Displays, Non-Interactive and Interactive Displays on Mobile Carts, Projectors, UV-C Robot, Air Purifier

ADAPTABLE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENTS

Flexible instruction delivery models help improve engagement, facilitate individual learning and improve the interactive environment

Adaptable classroom technology can be used in global seminar environments and in classrooms for in-person, remote and blended learning to create immersive learning environments

PRODUCTS: LG gram, G Pad, Non-Touch Displays, Interactive Displays, Desktop Monitors

FEDERAL FUNDING INVESTMENT PROVIDES FLEXIBILITY TO YOUR SCHOOL’S UNIQUE TECHNOLOGY NEEDS

LG’s Interactive Digital Board helps instructors engage students during lessons, enhancing learning, collaboration and retention.LEARN MORE: https://www.lg.com/us/business/digital-signage/lg-75TC3D

1https://www.pnas.org/content/111/23/84102https://campustechnology.com/articles/2020/10/08/report-points-to-negative-effects-of-covid-19-on-student-success.aspx3https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/nov09/vol67/num03/Teaching-with-Interactive-Whiteboards.aspx&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1614217497019000&usg=AOvVaw1nUAOcHqW-tXpwLP7j7FqD4https://www.guide2research.com/research/interactive-learning-statistics

74% of teachers use game-basedlearning to enhance their lessons4

The use of graphics, videos and other visual aids including graphs, charts and direct access to websites can be associated with a 26 percentile point gain in student achievement3

86% of surveyed students, faculty and administration believe that technology and engaging hands-on instruction heavily drives student success2

Students in active learning environmentsare 1½ times less likely to fail than studentsin a passive learning environment1