AlphaSmart pushes school device
US vendor challenges Neo for UK school market
A new contender in the interactive voting systems space, AlphaSmart, is seeking resellers.
AlphaSmart, a division of US vendor Renaissance Learning, is best known in the education sector for its Neo portable word-processing device.
Richard Hubbard, AlphaSmart product manager, told CRN: “Most schools have a Neo. We have about 16 resellers selling Neo in the UK and we sell direct. We added some other functions to Neo to create the AlphaSmart Classroom Responder System (CRS).”
CRS has been available for 18 months, but AlphaSmart is stepping up efforts to promote the product.
AlphaSmart has claimed CRS beats rivals such as Promethean and Turning Technologies. “CRS works with any software. Questions can be displayed on the pupil’s handset and each has a memory so it can be used outside the classroom,” said Hubbard.
Colin Messenger, senior consultant at Decision Tree Consulting, said: “It sounds like AlphaSmart’s offering is more than just a voting system, which is a good approach.”