Global Indian International School (GIIS) is an international network of award-winning schools with 23 campuses across 7 countries. They include Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Thailand, UAE, Vietnam, and India, offering Indian and international curricula to students from diverse backgrounds.

At the end of 2016, GIIS Singapore new campus has started construction work of two main buildings. With the aim of building a school with state-of-the-art technology, the school IT team came to IQ. We offered them a proposal for the smart classroom and smart campus development.

Challenges

Fully aware of the importance of education technology in the 21 century, the GIIS team has confidence in blueprinting a school of the future. When it comes to the classroom A/V design, they are clear about what they want:

• An interactive, intuitive and innovative teaching & learning environment, where technology is easy for teachers to use and fun for students to engage.
• Efficient campus management via a networked AV system. Keep multiple devices under regular control through the internet of things to achieve energy conservation.
• Audio and video announcements broadcasted on the campus could be timely, effective and assigned destination.
• Integrate the traditional emergency alert into the overall networked system to achieve a safe campus environment.

Solution

At the request of the GIIS team, IQ has designed a comprehensive campus AV solution that rises to the challenge:

Each classroom is equipped with two IQTouch interactive displays and an IQView interactive document camera. Together with bundled software IQ Interactive Education Platform, they create a vivid and interesting learning environment.

Each classroom installed a central controller (IQSchool Converged Station) by simply utilizing the network infrastructure. So that automated and centralized control over classroom devices become possible through a single software platform (IQSchool Manager Software) operated by IT admins. More excitingly, audio and video broadcasting could be realized on the same platform without involving another system.

A desktop touch control panel is available on teachers table, enable the teacher to control all AV technology in the entire classroom from a user-friendly interface. At the press of a button, switching multiple AV signal sources could never be easier, as well as powering up the display and the lights (IQSchool Power & A/C Control Terminal), adjusting volumes of the classroom speaker. To prevent teachers from throat pain, a hands-free wireless microphone (IQ 2.4G Wireless Mic) is provided for them to wear around the neck or clip on the lapel.

Customized Functions

A particular request from the school is to balance the sound of the fire alarm and the sound of the classroom audio/video. When the teacher is having the class with classroom audio/video on, the fire alarm might not be heard by the crowd in case of fire emergency, which leads to campus safety hazard. How to integrate the independent fire alarm system into the IQSchool system network has become a challenge to the IQ team.

After several simulation tests and on-site evaluation, IQ engineers have come up with a solution, to connect a network I/O sensor between the IQSchool server and the fire alarm system, meanwhile the server software gets modified so that when theres fire alarm, the server software automatically activates a mute task to all the classroom speakers, more than that, a voice announcement of emergency could be broadcasted to every corner of the campus, along with a video of evacuation route if available.

Equipment list:

• IQTouch Interactive Flat Panel 65 & 75
• IQView Document Camera
• IQSchool Manager Software
• IQSchool Converged Station V330
• IQSchool Power & A/C Control Terminal
• IQ 2.4G Wireless Mic
• IQSchool PA Announcement Station