Salvator Catholic School chooses Epson technology

Salvator Catholic School is part of a group of 25 Christian schools all over Germany, plus a technical college complex, all supported by Erzbistum Berlin.

Salvator School uses state-of-the-art IT equipment during lessons, so that students can be learn to the best of their ability. The school introduced its first electronic teaching materials in the form of two interactive whiteboards around six years ago. These were first used in a sixth form course room and in a room for science-based subjects. "The whiteboards didn't meet our basic needs," explains Christofer Lahser, Head Teacher of Salvator secondary school. "They were difficult to use and quite unreliable. This led us to the decision to replace the boards with projectors."

Today the school relies on over twenty projectors, including seven Epson EB-595Wi units, which are designed for interactive use. "Interactivity is a key advantage for lessons," explains Michael Hilpert, teacher of chemistry and geography. "One key feature is that projected teaching materials can be changed, supplemented and saved according to the feedback provided by the students."

The Epson EB-595Wi projectors used by the school can be controlled using both a pen and gestures – exactly the same way  students control their smartphones or tablets. "Easy operation of the devices is very helpful in lessons," says Mr Hilpert.

It is becoming increasingly important for students to learn how to successfully present ideas and concepts to an audience. The ability to store feedback and incorporate it easily into the material presented with the Epson projectors encourages communicative group work, and makes the process of pre-lesson preparation and post-lesson follow-up easier to manage. For this reason, the school's medium-term objective is to equip more rooms with interactive projectors so that as many students as possible can benefit from them and achieve better educational results. The devices also allow teachers to carry their lesson materials on a smartphone or tablet.

Mr Hilpert continues: "The Epson projectors are handy for teachers as they can save their lesson at a certain point, and pick up exactly where they left off in the following lesson.” As an additional facility, the school also provides its students with an e-learning environment, which enables them to download lesson materials that their teachers have prepared. With the aid of Epson software, which the students install on their own PCs, interactive board images and other interactive materials are available for them to work through at their own pace at home.

In addition to interactive projectors, the school uses other Epson solutions. A WorkForce Pro WF-5620DWF printer is currently in use in the staff room. "The printer is right next to our work area," explains Lahser, "which is why a laser printer was never an option for us. Colleagues wanted a print solution that wasn't associated with any uncertainty in terms of harmful emissions. This whole issue is avoided in a very sophisticated way with the Epson WorkForce Pro."

One of the welcome side benefits of the inkjet printer is the significant savings made in power consumption compared to laser printers. At a comparable output, the WorkForce Pro printer requires around eighty per cent less power than a laser printer. "The low operating costs of the WorkForce, which include its low power consumption, are very useful, as they helps us to minimise school running costs and protect the environment."

Since it was installed in 2016, around 28,000 pages have already been printed on the machine. The WorkForce Pro WF-5620DWF has proven to be a very reliable device - despite a wide range of different documents and a highly variable workload, there have been no failures at all so far. "The school's teaching staff are impressed by the quality and the reliability of the printer," says Lahser. This is why another WorkForce Pro is expected to be purchased very soon to allow teachers to handle even more printing jobs.

Experiments are a key element in teaching science-based subjects. In order to present the process and results in the most interesting way, Salvator uses the Epson ELP-DC21 document camera. This camera enables chemistry or physics experiments to be recorded, saved and then projected onto a wall at a later time.

At particularly critical points in an experiment, the video can be stopped with just the touch of a button. Thanks to the integrated time lapse function, a video of a chemical reaction that may take several hours in real time can be run and projected on a large scale in just a few seconds. 

The school has a great deal of equipment that has to be labelled with relevant details. In order to complete this task quickly and efficiently, Salvator School relies on the Epson LabelWorks LW400 label printer to create white self-adhesive labels to mark classrooms, lesson materials and mobile phone numbers.

Thanks to the high reproduction quality, which allows graphics to be clearly shown within the limited space of the narrow label, other possible applications are also being tried out. Epson provides a wide range of easy-to-use, efficient solutions, which help students and teachers design their lessons in a more interesting and effective way.