3 Technologies Your College Needs to Succeed This School Year

According to an article on Business Solutions, the top three tech needs for this school year in higher education are digital signage, low-maintenance projectors and enhanced audio microphones.

Scott Thie, VP of Education for Panasonic System Communications of North America and author of the article, says that digital signage can “provide a very effective campus-wide communications system.”

It can be used as a wayfinding system, an outlet through which colleges can broadcast multimodal alerts or welcome messages, and creative content distribution throughout campus.

“Digital signage also allows for…educating guests on topics ranging from the history of the institution, to available courses and programs, to sports events and extra-curricular activities,” Thie says in the article. “The educational environment is constantly changing, and on today’s campus, static signage has a hard time keeping up.”

Similar to the pluses of digital signage, Thie proposes that low-maintenance projectors will improve the flow of college learning.

He says instructors are often too busy to conduct maintenance and repair outages in traditional projectors.

As a result, low-maintenance projectors are in high demand and are expected to reduce these outages, some offering up to 20,000 hours of maintenance-free operation.

Low-maintenance projectors also have a slower rate of brightness deterioration, which allows instructors to teach with them for longer periods of time.

“Rate of brightness deterioration in the LED/Laser-combined light source is extremely slow compared to lamp-based projectors,” Thie says. “Certain projector models also use a built-in sensor to constantly detect the light intensity of the light source and correct corresponding changes in white balance, helping to maintain excellent picture quality over time.”

Thie also argues that enhanced audio microphones will make a serious footprint in higher education classrooms.