Colombia. Although the National Government makes a great effort with its Computers to Educate program, which with the delivery of more than 781,032 technological tools has benefited about 7,990,405 million children and young people and has trained more than 75,000 teachers in the pedagogical use of ICTs, the reality is that Colombian education is far from updating its classrooms with the cutting-edge technology offered today by the world market.
TecnoMultimedia InfoComm will offer the public and private sector the opportunity to know first-hand what are the tools that set the tone throughout the world for the technification of classrooms and messages according to students who have been born and live in a digital environment. In the same way, a wide range of audio, video, lighting and home automation solutions will be exhibited to the main manufacturers, distributors and integrators of this technological segment.
For Leonardo Trillos, consultant in audiovisual systems and external advisor of TecnoMultimedia InfoComm, in the last 10 years technology has revolutionized educational environments that around the world revolve around interactive and multimedia classrooms. "Thinking about the optimization of pedagogy, today's trend is interactive whiteboards where the teacher and students can interact in real time with high-quality images, attractive texts and amazing videos that generate sensory experiences and can give a new dimension to learning."
In this fair it will be shown that in the future, master classes, exhibitions with billboards and group work will be displaced by projection devices equipped with infrared sensors, bluetooth and radio frequency connections, applied in tools for school purposes such as these:
INTERACTIVE SURFACES: Generated by sensors installed at the top and along flat surfaces. These surfaces reflect the contents that are sent from one or two front projection units, installed on top of these modern "boards".
INTERACTIVE PROJECTORS: They work on smooth and white surfaces that receive the contents by projectors with infrared sensors, which allow the interactivity of the student and teacher when scanning what happens on that surface.
INTERACTIVITY SENSORS: They work on a conventional whiteboard and with a conventional projector. The content management process is done by devices installed on the side of the whiteboard, which are responsible for testing in an infrared way the entire surface that allows interactivity on the projected contents.
INTERACTIVE LED MONITORS: They are interactive and touch screens that have full physical and wireless connectivity and that allow you to play content through external media, such as micro SD and USB memories. These units are heavy-duty and allow for visual areas from 50 to 80 inches that can cover work areas for 35 people.
WIRELESS COLLABORATION PLATFORMS: These systems allow academic processes to work on Full HD LED screens or on HD projectors as central communication units, and offer an interactive replica of the contents exposed in the class to any laptop, tablet or smartphone device, connected in a network.
Edutainment, complement to technology
As expected, the contents in the near future will also evolve so that teachers can get the full potential of these devices. Software loaded with geo-referenced information, 3D images, animations and virtual reality will combine to generate educational pieces of what has begun to be called edutainment.
This term, which is nothing more than a combination of methods to display educational information with elements of entertainment, aims to motivate students in the learning process to increase the amount of information retained and the ability to transfer it in the future to different fields of application in their daily lives.
And how is Colombia doing?
The country is still far from implementing the aforementioned tools in pedagogical processes. In most private establishments of medium profile there are the basics, televisions in each room and one or another projector in special classrooms. In the public sector the outlook is not more encouraging, some schools manage to have a TV in each classroom but it is seen more as a luxury than as a necessity.
And although you might think that high-level schools are fully technical, there are few that have interactive classrooms and multimedia rooms. "The above scenario is due to the lack of ICT education for educators and the absence of economic resources to access these technologies, which distances us from new and improved teaching environments," says Trillos.
The Government has made a giant effort to massify internet access in municipalities outside the country, today there are 1,078 that are connected through fiber optics to high-speed internet, according to Mintic figures. However, "a greater effort must be made to establish a roadmap as a State to respond to a latent need: to update and revolutionize academic and pedagogical environments," he concludes.
Visitors to this fair will have the opportunity to update themselves with the news of more than 70 exhibitors representing the main brands in technologies that will point the trends for this sector in 2017. For more information visit www.tecnomultimedia.com.co
