St Columba College

St Columba College is a Catholic and Anglican school, catering for 1400 students from Reception all the way through to Year 12. It’s situated just outside Adelaide, South Australia, across three beautiful campuses, for the Junior, Middle and Senior schools, all within a kilometre of each other.

The school was using projectors in the senior school, to help bring a new dimension to lessons but by the end of 2020, these had come to the end of their life.

“The image quality was degrading over time, as happens with projectors”, explains Simon Flaherty, the college’s ICT manager. “The wireless streaming, which was via a third party add-in, was prone to drop-outs and lags, meaning that students were less engaged with the teaching material and teachers were left feeling hindered, rather than helped by the technology. On top of this, the projectors required ongoing maintenance – new globes, and cleaning of the optical engine and the filters, all of which took valuable time and money.”

The college did have one Clevertouch interactive panel, which they had purchased earlier in the year and were trialling in one of the science labs in the primary school. They were very pleased with it, but decided, nevertheless, to look at the broader market.

“Our research brought home to us how very good the Clevertouch panel was”, says Simon. “We found nothing else to match it in the market. Unlike other solutions, the Clevertouch panels had built-in wireless streaming, and had the 75inch size that we wanted. They were also very competitively priced, offering the best compromise between price and size. Being an interactive panel, rather than a projector, the Clevertouch needed no maintenance – a very attractive prospect for us.”

The final level of comfort with the Clevertouch solution was the fact that the college had a good existing relationship with Chris Ennis of ASI. ASI are Clevertouch’s exclusive distributor in Australia, and St Columba knew Chris from his previous role. They felt that with the combination of Clevertouch technology and Chris as their account manager, they couldn’t go wrong.

The college purchased 25 Clevertouch panels, and wall-mounted them throughout the school – in junior, middle and senior classrooms. Chris ran some training with Simon, who then replicated that out to the teaching staff.
The panels have made a real difference to the teachers, who love being able to add another dimension to their teaching and to delivering really engaging material – whether the lesson is Science, PE, Health, Food Technology, English or Maths.

Reliable streaming

“The staff really appreciate the reliability Clevershare, the inbuilt wireless streaming app”, says Simon. “They know they can stream video from their laptop, directly to the panel, without having to plug anything in. They prepare lessons on their laptop, with the confidence that they can connect automatically to the panel, and it will all just work.”

“Clevershare has made a big difference to the ICT team too”, Simon explains. “I was previously getting a lot of help requests around streaming, and when we put the Clevertouch panels in, I didn’t have a single call for three and a half months. That gives me back a lot of time to be more proactive in supporting the college with technology.”

Inbuilt web browser

If the teaching material is all online, teachers don’t even need to connect their laptops, because the Clevertouch panels come with an inbuilt web browser. They effectively act as a large computer screen, one with inbuilt capture and sharing capability.

Whiteboard app

The college still has whiteboards in the classroom, but with the Clevertouch Whiteboard App teachers or pupils can write on the panel and save the notes; Teachers simply use a QR code to save those notes to their phone or laptop and then share them with the students, a far simpler, quicker and more efficient way of recording and sharing information

Any device

The Clevertouch Panel interacts with a range of devices – Windows, Android, iOS – so the teachers have a lot of flexibility. They can prepare and deliver lessons using a laptop, iPad or even a phone.

Robust, durable and high quality

The panels offer a very high quality image, so that all students, anywhere in the classroom, get a clear view of the material. Just as importantly, the panels are, in Simon’s words “rock solid”.

“We encourage the students to use the panels”, he says, “whether that is the Whiteboard App, the browser, the inbuilt calculator, or any one of the multiple Clevertouch apps. The panels are designed for inquisitive students and very robust.”

Positive feedback

The feedback on the panels, from teachers and students, is nothing but positive. They are helping teachers to make lessons more interactive, and students are engaging and learning.

“We’re certainly delighted with our decision to Clevertouch at St Columba”, says Simon, “and we’re definitely looking to expand the rollout to the rest of the school in the future.”