New Delhi: ViewSonic’s ViewBoard interactive displays are available in a range of sizes for classrooms, that make education interactive and fun for students. These interactive displays replace the traditional blackboards in schools with a suite of sophisticated annotation tools, integration with third-party cloud services, and kits of readymade teaching materials. The infusion of AI makes it easy for teachers to plan lessons on the fly, convert rough sketches into rich, detailed drawings, and read out content automagically to the students. There is support for screen recording and live streaming for the displays, that allow students to join in from anywhere, even on their smartphones.
The AI lesson planner quickly generates lessons. (Image Credit: Aditya Madanapalle/News9).
Muneer Ahmed, VP of Sales and Marketing of the AV Business at ViewSonic says, “Education has become interactive now. Earlier on, the teacher was only only talking, and we used to write notes. Now there is an interaction between the student and the teacher. Software plus hardware plays the game over there. So we are also evolving as an ecosystem based company. Ecosystem means you have the software supporting the panels, the hardware. We also have a classroom software, which is an interactive software between the students and the teacher. If you miss a class, you have the recordings, or you can attend the class online, sitting at home. Education, I would say, has been revolutionised in that way.”
A rich content library
The teachers get access to a rich content library, as well as a community of other teachers. Lessons can be shared and edited, and personalised according to the requirements of the classrooms. Additionally, ViewSonic also provides educational games, based on Indian curriculum, as well as stock media so that the teachers can enhance their presentations. Ahmed explains, “Content is based on NCERT subjects. The content is editable. The teachers can add on to the content to explain to the students. Every teacher has their style of teaching. Teachers can build their lessons as per their needs. We have a community of teachers across the globe, who upload their lessons. The community is called ViewSonic Classroom India.
The in-built reader can highlight the different types of words. (Image Credit: Aditya Madanapalle/News9).
Ahmed says, “In US, you won’t see AI used that much for education, but in India, it is being used. People are asking for it. I don’t know whether or not they are using it in classrooms later on, but people are asking for AI. We introduced AI in 2017, that was called AI pen. At that time, AI was not what it is right now, but we introduced at that time. Now it has been developed, and we also developed our AI features. You can take help of AI in preparing lessons, in ppt format or pdf format. We are still working on it.” The capabilities are developed in consultation with educators, and makes learning more fun and interactive for students. Multiple students can use the whiteboard at once, and the teachers can also set up polls and quizzes on the panels themselves. ViewSonic also provides optional slot-in Windows PCs to enhance the experience for teachers.