Classroom software – bringing your new hardware to life

Interactive touchscreens are an outstanding enabling device for the software. Making the most of their high performance, it’s this software which powers them in an interactive classroom.

This article will briefly summarise the two main types of software in a typical classroom. All classroom interactive touchscreens need to utilise front-of-classroom educational software, yet mobile device software is increasingly a vital teaching tool.

The two main software types are:

Front-of-the-classroom – this covers the content building, presentation, and assessment packages that are held on a PC and usually shown via the classroom display. When considering your options, always ask:

• Can it open lessons created in other software packages natively such as SMART and Promethean? This means archived lessons can be reused, without any loss of function or interactivity; even more important as teachers are sharing resources between other schools in their cluster or group.
• Does it have the features you need?
• Do they actually improve teaching and learning?
• Can it be used school-wide, on all types of interactive classroom devices from multiple vendors?
• Is it easy enough to learn and is training available?
• Is the user interface available in the required language(s)?

Mobile device software – these packages extend the front-of-classroom experience to the student and teacher mobile devices, enabling collaboration. When considering your options, always ask:

• Does it support the required devices and operating systems?
• Is it easy for students to connect their devices, such as through a simple scan of a QR code?
• Does your school’s WiFi network have the capacity?
• Can the teacher control and/or monitor hand-held use, to ensure that students focus on the lesson?
• Does it enable interactive activities, annotation, and student note-taking?
• Are the results of the students’ personal work automatically pushed back to the teacher’s PC, graded, and presented in graphical form for teacher review?

Call us on 0843 886 6228 to learn more about how the latest software transforms your classroom, or to discuss upgrading your technology.