High School upgrades with 90 x Epson interactive projectors

Based in the London borough of Harrow, Whitmore High School is a mixed, comprehensive high school with approximately 1650 students aged 11 to 19 years old.

The school’s IT budget is organised to meet the best interests of the student learning experience and considers the needs of the school over a 10-year period. Most of the school’s decision makers are aware of the timings and costs of big projects being planned and the 10-year budgeting plan is approved by the school’s governing body.  

The school’s projectors needed to be replaced in 2020 with funds reserved for this purpose, however this was prevented due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The school did it's due diligence by looking at interactive display panels as an alternative to projectors and after exploring options at the educational technology trade fair BETT 2020, Whitmore selected an 85" display panel from a market leading brand for the trial. The trial of this unit made it clear that the school would have to reinforce the wall strength in the classroom, despite it being recently built. There was also no real positive push from the teachers involved in the trial that the display unit provided functionality that made learning experience that much better for the students.

The school engaged a professional installer to survey all the projection walls in the school for their ability to support the quite heavy display unit, which highlighted several logistical issues. The lack of wall strength and the need to carry the heavy display units up two floors added extra logistical steps, cost, and time. Given the lockdown rules and the state of the country in 2020, the entire project was put on hold. In October 2020, Epson engaged with us Whitmore High School to showcase the new EB-735FI ultra-short-throw, interactive projector. 

At this point the school made a conscious decision that installing interactive display units was not logistically possible and the school's budgets would be stretched. A decision was made to go ahead with an extended trial of the Epson EB-735FI.

The school tested the projector and also purchased an additional unit so that ICT support could install it in a separate room so that it could be tested without interrupting lessons. The school’s ICT support team came across a particular issue around the projectors’ user-interface, however Epson’s team in the UK was able to feed this issue back to their head office in Japan, and within two months a firmware update was put in place to address the issue.

Nalin Uduwawala, IT Network Manager at Whitmore High School said: “The majority of users reported similar Epson projector functionality to the interactive display units, but with superior image brightness and quality, a far easier install, and a much better price point.  The split screen functionality is a particular hit with many teachers who continue to praise the decision as they realise how the image quality is benefitting the Teaching and Learning experience in the classroom. 

The integrity, honesty and flexibility shown by Epson’s projection team when engaging with the school were key to Epson being selected. The school had a positive experience with previous Epson projectors which also played a positive role in selecting Epson for this project.