Dublin school improves classroom participation and interaction with Epson

St. Mark’s Senior National School (SNS) is located in Tallaght, South Dublin. It is a mixed gender Catholic school with almost 550 young students and is a school that is engrained in the local community.

The school is committed to offering a safe and positive environment for its students that will prepare its children for the 21st century, meeting their unique physical, social, emotional, digital and intellectual needs.

St. Mark’s classroom facilities had previously included some basic projector models from InFocus and Hitachi, but these were not fully interactive, making it harder for students to engage meaningfully in classroom activities. Some existing teaching boards in classrooms also used Mimio products to introduce a certain amount of interactivity with students, but it was not achieving the desired effect. The teachers of St. Mark’s SNS needed an innovative and creative solution in order to help engage the young students with their studies and create a more immersive learning environment to meet their educational needs.

The Principal of St. Mark’s SNS, Richie Walsh, is a passionate advocate of technology in his school. Richie always strives to provide the best learning environment for his students, which includes giving students access to the best technology available to improve classroom learning.

Epson was recommended to St. Mark’s SNS by an Epson preferred educational partner, Infinity2. As a market leader in providing innovative technology solutions in a classroom environment, Epson representatives were introduced to the ICT department of St. Mark’s, who challenged Epson to come up with a creative and impactful way to address the problem of non-interactive equipment in the school.

“We first came to realise how effective Epson projectors were in the learning environment from first-hand experience through our European partner schools. As part of different visits under projects such as Comenius and Erasmus+, we saw students interacting with the Epson projector technology and were very impressed. We realised that Epson was a very popular choice in a lot of the schools we visited in Finland, Sweden and Denmark”, said Martin Durkin, Head of ICT at St. Mark’s SNS.

In order to trial the Epson projector functionality and technology, the school installed an Epson EB-695Wi demo product during a ‘summer in-service’ course for teachers. Epson felt that this HD-ready EB-695Wi projector was ideal for the school, renowned as an innovative teaching solution with a large scalable screen size of up to 100 inches, designed to enhance collaborative learning in the classroom.

The six-week trial allowed teachers at St. Mark’s to test the technology and identify the learning skills required if the projectors were installed throughout the school. The results were overwhelmingly positive; the teachers of St. Mark’s could immediately see the benefits and advantages in raising attention levels and engagement from the student. Features such as split-screen capability and ultimate interactivity by combining finger-touch with dual pen function were a key highlight of the trial. The teachers found the projectors to be very user-friendly and efficient, a key requirement of time-poor teachers with challenging workloads.

As a result of this successful trial, 21 Epson EB-695Wi projectors were installed in classrooms of St. Mark’s SNS. Epson and Infinity2 were highly involved in the installation phase, working together with the ICT department of St. Mark’s to manage all aspects of the installation and deployment process in the school over the summer, St. Mark’s opened its doors again in September 2018.

“These fully interactive projectors have allowed not only our teachers to engage with important presentations but have also empowered each pupil to take an active part in classroom presentations in many ways, which is wonderful to see”, said Martin Durkin of St. Mark’s SNS.

Classroom interaction and participation in the school has notably increased, as Epson’s multi-PC projection software has allowed teachers and students to co-create and share content simultaneously. Digital learning has moved to the forefront of classroom activity, as the projector’s split-screen capability has also allowed teachers to display two separate types of content simultaneously in the classroom, such as a lesson plan from a PC and a still image or video clip from a document camera.

This new partnership with Epson and St. Mark’s SNS has been a true collaboration process. The Epson technology implemented in the school is now enabling teachers in St. Mark’s SNS to engage with their students in a more innovative way, helping to promote a creative digital learning environment and encouraging classroom participation and interaction amongst all students.