How Classroom Technology Enables and Improves Collaboration among Students

Helping learners of all ages pick up cooperative work and collaboration skills stands as an extremely important goal for educators everywhere. A big move away from top-down and learning by rote education models, collaborative approaches leverage the reality of digital native students who are highly comfortable with new educational technology, in the classroom and at home. Current generation students instinctively gravitate towards interactive digital devices, and don’t require much in the way of training, if any. 

BenQ is committed to helping you and your students have access to the finest classroom collaboration tools, and to ensure pupils pick up vital skills that will benefit them for the rest of their lives. Among these tools are BenQ interactive displays, which pack numerous features for teamwork and cooperative learning. Together with EZWrite digital cloud whiteboard software, InstaShare device and screen mirroring, BenQ interactive displays establish strong consolidated platforms for smart classrooms that are very amenable to fruitful collaboration. 

Because BenQ interactive displays are smart, always-connected devices, your classrooms should have a strong Wi-Fi signal and good internet speeds. 

Ideally, your students should bring their own smartphones, tablets or laptops, and these need to be connected to the same network as the interactive display. That’s why Wi-Fi is required, while a wired connection won’t work, as there’s no practical way to link dozens of devices to the same local network without a senseless amount of cable clutter. 

Once you have connectivity set up, it’s time to get creative and work together as a group, or cooperate as several teams. EZWrite digital cloud whiteboard features allow for spontaneous writing, jotting, drawing, and annotation on the interactive display and coordination with later input from students’ devices, which can be easily shared. You have a host of tools to support brainstorming sessions that invite participation and ideas’ sharing. 

You can begin by writing the topic of the discussion session on top of the interactive display, then turn on co-create mode to make it easier for multiple users to access the screen. Then students have many options, including writing directly on the board, editing the whiteboard content on their device or using EZWrite sticky notes. 

The easy sharing and mirroring from students’ devices to the interactive display - which we mentioned before - occur via the InstaShare app. It’s not just easy and fast, it’s also completely neat and wireless. 

A great way to utilise InstaShare is to have the class arranged into groups, each working separately on the same task or project. When the time comes to present, each team can mirror their work to the interactive display in front of the classroom using InstaShare, inviting feedback and discussion, all without getting out of their seats! 

That’s very convenient; for the purposes of intellectual collaboration you likely prefer the focus to be on ideas and concepts, not students moving around while accompanied by the sound of dragging chairs. 

Circumstances vary greatly across school districts, jurisdictions and countries. Some places have no restrictions at the moment, while others still maintain an emphasis on mask wearing and social distancing at school. Whatever the case may be, digital wireless classroom technologies offer you an enhanced tool set, which by its nature works great with or without social distancing rules. If your school does prefer reduced contact, interactive boards with cloud whiteboarding and wireless mirroring are excellent collaboration-enabling technologies. 

Despite the stress of the pandemic and the changes it brought, schools must remain devoted to productive learning, collaboration and cooperation, while also encouraging curiosity. And if the world changes, then it’s great there’s technology that helps us adapt and improve, because what we do now will affect generations to come.