How to get into interactivity
With audiovisual technologies becoming increasingly commonplace within the educational sector, interactivity has become a major watchword among channel players. Gareth Kershaw investigates in part two of our three-part series
For most people, interactivity is something associated with gaming or perhaps multimedia. So it is all the more ironic that interactive technology should now be making such a major noise in education – a market many would consider the polar opposite of those sectors.
However, in common with so many other channel markets over the years, it seems that no sooner has this vertical emerged, than its lower reaches – areas such as the interactive whiteboard (IWB) space – have started to look rather bloated with products, players and promises. Can saturation point really have been reached quite so quickly?
Not according to Russell Blackburn, commercial director at specialist audiovisual (AV) distributor, Steljes Trade. “According to IDC, the UK AV market is still growing at around 20 per cent annually,” he says. “Education is among the key verticals in that growth. We’re seeing broad, deep demand for a whole range of interactive technologies including flatscreens, voting systems, front and rear projection and videoconferencing. Dynamic digital signage and networked communications are adding extra substance and good margins into the equation. It should also be remembered that this is all happening, despite issues such as the removal of Becta [British Education and Communications Technology Agency] funding on IWBs.”
Blackburn says he believes there are other reasons for the uplift.
“Educators are beginning to realise AV’s true reach, scope and applicability to their needs and this will continue as the awareness of what the technology can deliver becomes more and more apparent,” he says.
Add to this the fact that about 95 per cent of all AV products, systems and services are delivered via the channel and it really starts to look like a juicy prospect for resellers.
Paul Berry, director of UK business at specialist AV distributor Promethean, also claims that opportunities in the education sector remain plentiful and suggests that, in fact, there is a long way to go before saturation becomes problematic. Even then, he says, there is a potentially enormous replacement market to consider.
“It’s a general misconception that the IWB market in education is fast approaching saturation when the approximate installed base of 360,000 units in fact represents just over half the 650,000 rooms where interactive solutions could be used,” he says. “Moreover, with the government predicting that every classroom will one day have an IWB, schools remain a key customer base.
“Projectors typically need replacing after three to five years. Forecasts suggest that about 40,000 IWBs will need replacing in 2010.”
Mike Kibblewhite, managing director of remote control software producer NetOp, is similarly upbeat and believes that, if they can manage their offerings properly, there is every chance for resellers to prosper.
“There is still massive demand from schools, colleges and universities and a large part of that demand is not for brand-new hardware, but for upgrades to existing equipment,” he says.
Here, with funding for schools and universities broken down by local councils, with resources spread across the UK, and with each university and school able go to a localised reseller, SME VARs have a chance to profit from new government schemes, Kibblewhite adds.
“Technologies are now available that will provide longevity and don’t require upgrades every few months,” he says. “For instance, e-learning systems based on a remote control model allow cutting-edge IT classrooms to be set up quickly and easily.”
While the potential demise of the interactive IWB – however far distant it may be – will hardly come as a welcome thought for AV resellers active in the educational space (the IWB has been a bankable channel staple for some time now), consider it they must, Kibblewhite says.
“The IWB is often very high on the purchasing agenda, but, as with most technologies, it has its limits as a piece of hardware and could eventually become obsolete,” he adds.
Thankfully, says Berry, in light of the government’s current emphasis on assessment based-learning, other audience-driven interactive technologies are now gaining similar traction with educational customers, from primary schools through to higher education and adult learning.
Driven by the emphasis on personalised learning and reducing the administrative burden on teachers, interactive voting systems such as TurningPoint from Turning Technologies and Promethean’s ActiVote, have enjoyed a particularly marked increase in uptake. Promethean’s third quarter 2006 voting system sales were up 37 per cent on Q2 of the same year, and up 50 per cent on Q3 in 2005.
Figures from analyst Decision Tree Consulting (DTC) paint a picture of even more dramatic growth, noting that voting system sales volumes have grown by almost 400 per cent since 2003 from 44,000 units then to more than 200,000 units in 2006.
“Aside from the IWB space, which is now widely established as the gateway to interactive classroom technology, voting systems are a firm favourite with educational institutions as an effective way of engaging and involving all class members, with schools increasingly using them to support individual and group-based assessment,” Berry says.
“They reduce paperwork, increase student participation and, as portable solutions, they can easily be used as a shared department resource, providing a greater return on investment.
The anonymity feature also offers flexibility in how the results are displayed and used. It’s expected that there will be at least one voting system in every school by 2010.”
With interactive technologies becoming popular tools with which to heighten student participation, and the introduction of integrated IWB and student response systems among the other emerging trends, the opportunity for value-added bolt-on sales also looks a healthy one, Berry says.
“Nowadays, pupils don’t even need to leave their seats to interact with lesson content,” he says. “Allowing lessons to be taught from anywhere in the room, one slate can either be passed around or every individual can have their own slate for ultimate involvement from their seat.”
Barrie Guy, public display manager at NEC Display Solutions, says that the demand for the performance of touchscreen systems should be a growing consideration for the channel.
“We’ve seen a steady increase in the sales of our large format screens over the past year,” he says. “Higher education and universities seem to have a bit more freedom to use their imagination and resources to select large screens where projectors would have been used before. We now have screens in specialist medical and scientific campus sites across the country.
“It’s great to see the faces of the teacher or child when they stand in front of the screen with a painting program and draw with their finger on the screen and then see it appear in front of them,” Guy adds. “They don’t stand with a shadow in front of them like with a projector or whiteboard having huge parts of the image missing; they can stand as a group in front of what is essentially their easel and all see it 100 per cent of the time.”
Uptake is progressing well, especially at the high-end. However, suggests Guy, variety is an important ingredient in the touchscreen channel, as are professional – as opposed to consumer – product-based portfolios.
“We work with three partners who use our LCD panels and all three bring very different products and experience to the customer,” he says. “One specialises in desktop size units, the others on the large format 32in and upwards. All our products are professional, so fixing and installation margins are possible unlike on consumer units or LCD TV.”
While not interactive technologies in the strictest sense, the same can be said of projectors. With education customers citing influencing factors such as security, portability, accessibility, training and ease of use, resellers have multiple points of attack from which to choose, says Blackburn – particularly with manufacturers and distributors bringing products to market to target such areas.
According to Berry, among the other peripherals starting to make waves in the sector are large interactive panels able to project images of virtually unrestricted size, which are particularly ideal for higher education establishments where lessons are conducted in large lecture theatres.
There are also changes in the IWB market itself, with increasing demand for integrated systems. And channel players ought to take further heart from recent governmental initiatives encouraging schools and colleges to adopt interactive AV products and services, says Kibblewhite.
“Many schools around the UK are trying to achieve ‘Technical College’ status,” he says. “I’m aware of one school spending an extra £200,000 on upgrading equipment and purchasing state-of-the-art teaching software packages. This surge in funding – and therefore spending – means more sales for the channel.
“I think that the Chancellor’s announcement about ‘building schools for the future’ is also relevant. Plans will soon be enforced to rebuild every school in the UK within the next 20 years, starting with secondary schools. Technology will undoubtedly be an integral part of this process, as the new ‘Academy’ model Tony Blair talks about will require millions of pounds with much of this being devoted to IT departments.”
Kibblewhite argues: “The majority of schools buy through resellers as it’s the most cost-effective way of purchasing and this can only be good news for resellers.”
However, it will not all be all plain sailing, warns Berry.
“One of the hurdles that channel partners face in schools is a lack of people and financial resources to manage the introduction of interactive technologies,” he says. “Best practice is for partners to offer comprehensive training at the outset and maintain dialogue with advocates to ensure continued interest in new technologies.”
According to Berry, an opportunity lies in maximising schools’ pre-existing technology investments.
“A sales opportunity for channel partners is to identify where existing solutions can be enhanced by new interactive technology developments,” he says. “So it’s important to make sure customers are up to date with new ‘off-board’ solutions. By doing so, end-users will remain confident that they are dealing with innovation experts.”
Kibblewhite concurs, noting that according to “one of the five biggest colleges in the UK”, only a very small percentage of the technology implemented in schools and further education colleges is currently being used to its full potential.
In the case of this college, he says, a further £100,000 has been allocated to its £500,000 annual IT budget over the next three years for upgrades and new virtual teaching systems.
This will include NetOp School, which gives users access to multiple screens simultaneously from the teacher’s central computer. Such set ups are becoming increasingly popular, according to Kibblewhite, because they allow teachers to monitor and control pupils’ access to the internet, as well as demonstrate and distribute different media easily.
“This method of teaching has proven so popular in a classroom environment that it’s been tailored to fit business users to help with e-learning and knowledge sharing programmes,” he says.
Here, more than in any other market, the question of “who trains the trainers?” is a particularly appropriate one, notes Guy – not least from a channel perspective.
“If the teachers aren’t trained, it doesn’t matter what you put in front of them,” he says.
“I asked my 15-year-old step-son what he thought of IWBs because his school is equipped with one in almost every class. He essentially said they are of little use in his school because none of his teachers were at the school when they where installed and have had no training. Instead they prefer to use the whiteboards on either side of the interactive board, which is used for showing films or slides.”
Guy said training is an essential part of a reseller’s role. “VARs that understand training from the schools’ and colleges’ point of view will survive,” he says. “Those that do not will end up running out of sales where cutting margin as their only tool fails.”
Success is not just about the technology, agrees Berry. Offering training services as part of the bundle is a real opportunity. “Not only does training provision help build relationships with the school, but it ensures the technology is adopted and used to best effect, which ultimately increases the likelihood of schools implementing future technologies,” he says.
Indications are that individual interactive AV technologies could eventually converge to enable a totally immersive, collaborative classroom of some kind. According to Karoline McLaughlin, director of corporate marketing at LifeSize Communications, one of the main technologies that is likely to drive this is videoconferencing.
With more than 30,000 schools in the UK, running school trips and bringing in specialists in one particular field is a problem teaching staff are desperately looking to solve, says McLaughlin. As such, videoconferencing addresses a very real issue – especially with many of the traditional barriers to VC adoption – especially cost, complexity and reliability – now coming down.
“Traditionally videoconferencing has been a black-art technology with specialist skills required to sell it effectively,” she says. However, with the advent of high-definition solutions, it has become much simpler to set up IP devices to run on school networks. Here too, with solutions now starting at a much lower entry-level price point, cost is much less of an issue.
“The opportunity for resellers is much greater now that the technology has become less expensive and quality has significantly improved,” she adds. “Also, because the market is by no means saturated, there are many new margin and revenue opportunities as educational establishments look to improve not only the technology they’re using, but the services they offer to students.”
She believes that channel players such as AV integrators and resellers ought now to be looking to provide innovative solutions such as high-definition video communications and telemedicine devices that integrate with videoconferencing systems.
“As high-definition displays and other interactive devices come further into play, educational institutions will literally be able to make available programmes and classroom sessions to people anywhere,” McLaughlin says.
Evolving education curricula also play an important role in this process, Guy says.
“The curriculum today is very different to when most of us sat in a classroom,” he says. “The ability for teachers to use a PC with pre-prepared content has become an integral part of school life, as is the access they get from a whiteboard or interactive LCD screen.
“I was in a school yesterday – on behalf of a reseller – to talk specifically about media studies, art and drama courses and that curriculum now has AV products in mind. The students will be using wireless laptops, mobile and fixed projectors, our 40in screens as trolley-mounted portable presentation screens and ‘mobile video theatres’, video and still digital cameras and video editing. The list goes on and this is outside of the work a number of our partners are currently doing with digital signage and direction finding screens.”
There is an interesting if subtle endgame for the channel here; play their cards right and AV technology may very soon not only impact how subjects are taught, but the curriculum itself. If VARs have done their homework correctly, this could add up to a long-term opportunity.
CONTACTS:
Decision Tree Consulting (01438) 316 240
LifeSize Communications (0125) 648 059
NEC Display Solutions (0870) 120 1160
NetOp (01428) 641 616
Promethean (0870) 241 3194
Steljes (0845) 075 8758