“The Interactive whitebaord of tomorrow would be an integrated product, which will play multiple roles by utilising the power of its software,”
Ramya Chatterjee, Director (Sales and Marketing), Cybernetyx
Please share new innovations in Interactive classroom technologies for education.
The next generation interactive whiteboard is evolving beyond the traditional roles of a pen-shaped click-mouse. Today it is acting as a content gateway, a document camera, an evaluation system, a student response system and even as a host PC in the classroom.
Educational institutes have always valued optimising their investments. They are now waking up to the fact that spending money at all these devices separately and then struggling to make them work in unison does not work out so well in the end. The interactive whiteboard of tomorrow would be a single product, which will play all these roles in itself utilising the power of its powerful software, with no incremental purchases to be made by the client ,thus exponentially increasing the client satisfaction.
Interactive projectors are now aining momentum in the segment. How do you see the future of Interactive Whiteboards?
Interactive projector is a wonderful concept. There were known drawbacks associated with physical IWB solutions (costs, logistics, maintenance, vulnerability, size and aspect-ratio limitations, etc), and also the portable ultrasound based devices (low performance, limited software, calibration issues, etc), and interactive projector concept came as a respite to all that.
However, current state of interactive projector solution lacks the strength of a robust, usable product. They are being served like a half-baked solution to the innocent customers.The reason is that the companies launching these solutions in the market are mostly projector companies with little or no exposure to IWB segment.
We believe that the market will rather evolve into a third category, which will be a central system/device which can collate with any projector or display and act as a host of devices as mentioned above. Cybernetyx has developed its latest generation EyeRIS and Uniboard devices fundamentally on this principle, and thus is getting the tremendous applause from the market.
What suggestions you would like to give to educators to enable them utilise full potential of boards?
The primary reason for this is that though we are in an era of smartphones and tablets with user-friendly apps and amazing user interfaces, interactive whiteboard software still keeps looking like this dated age-old software with drop-down menus and complicated functionality. Keeping this in mind, Cybernetyx has developed its EyeRIS IntelliSpace software suite essentially with an app-like interface, with the minimum learning curve for even a new user. For schools having existing old boards, one solution could be to upgrade the software to a new-age software like IntelliSpace, which will arouse the interest again from the teachers in using these solutions.
Also, Cybernetyx gives enough emphasis and makes a lot of investments on teacher training programmes in association with the schools / partners / ESPs. Cybernetyx also has teacher certification programme where our trainers do a hands-on training, review and certify the teachers upon successful completion of the training programme. We have started this initiative being a responsible IWB brand and received excellent feedback from the schools.
How do you support the integration of tablets with the existing resources?
We believe tablets would evolve more as a learning device than a teaching device. While it is wonderful as a multimedia replacement for the notebooks and a second screen for students, it is extremely difficult to do mainstream teaching and writing on a small 7-10 inches tablet for teachers. IWB will remain indispensable for a classroom. Furthermore, the need of the hour is an IWB system, which can connect to all the student learning tablets, share data and facilitate two-way collaboration.
Cybernetyx EyeRIS Pro is one of the first solutions in the world to achieve this functionality. We are about the launch the products commercially in India soon.
India would also be the epicenter of other ASEAN markets as well and currently, we have already started catering this market from our India operations”
Please share your plan for the Indian market?
Our Flagship product EyeRIS (Eye-like Rapid Imaging System) is now accepted widely as standard in the interactive whiteboard solutions space for both K-12 and higher education. Currently, more than 12000 and 1100 schools/higher secondary education institutions are powered by Cybernetyx products in India. In India we work closely with all major Education Service Providers (ESP) and education vertical focused channel partners. In India Cybernetyx has focused on providing its clients with industry-leading and costeffective ICT equipment and software solutions. We are in the process to grow our Indian operation exponentially. We have Pan-India presence in 300+ cities with 50+ billing locations through our national distributor(s) as well as channel partners and 260+ city presence for after sales service/ support / implementation infrastructure through our ASPs.
Cybernetyx is customer-centric organisation; regular product updates and new product developments based on customer feedback are our strength and focus area. We have dedicated service help desk and customer care at Noida to enable our partners / customers for technical support, troubleshooting and enablement. We are currently expanding our team in Software Development, Operations, Sales, QA/QC and Implementation. We are in the process to take additional new offices in Noida and Bangalore to support our growing business in India. Going forward, India would also be the epicenter of other ASEAN markets as well and currently, we have already started catering this market from our Indian operations. In a relatively short duration, our total deployments even outnumber the most established companies in this space and that is the biggest testimony to the strength of EyeRIS solutions. This is just a beginning. We aspire to become the market leader in the IWB space by 2015.
Points to be considered while selecting interactive whiteboard solution:
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