As we thankfully gain distance from the past disastrous two years, some edtech companies have started to look back at how student and teacher behaviors have changed during the lurch to remote learning and now back again to whatever we want to call this “new normal.” What worked and should remain in the day-to-day school experience? What didn’t and should be pushed to the curb immediately?
I had the chance to chat with Ed Morgan, COO of DisplayNote, on some of their recent customer findings and how they have upgraded their offerings as a result. DisplayNote’s data highlights screen-sharing usage from their tool Montage. This wireless presentation software allows teachers and students to share their device's screen to the big screen in the classroom.
The findings are based on more than 1.8 million screen shares over this year and indicate a shift in education as more educators embrace technology to address unfinished learning, staffing shortages and other challenges.
Some highlights:
Screen sharing is a core component of daily lessons – Almost 70% of users use the DisplayNote app daily.
Students are using a variety of different devices for learning – When it comes to screen sharing Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, web and native casting all have their place.
Web-based screen sharing is king – 53% of users shared their screen via their Chrome browser.
Lessons are dynamic and student-driven – The average session length is 1.6 hours and tends to feature multiple people screen sharing and adding context as opposed to one static presentation sitting on screen for hours.
Teachers need a flexible environment – Teachers like the ability to walk around the room and share their content from anywhere, so they can stay closer to their students.
Ed Morgan goes into greater detail in a blog post here
Some highlights from the conversation:
On how Broadcast is changing the classroom dynamic:
We're still finding teachers and schools want the flexibility that maybe, yeah, everyone's in the room at times, but maybe they're not. They've got schools or pupils off campus. They've got someone in the back of the room who may just wanna have their earphones in and listen again. What a lot of screen sharing does is just share, one thing out to many. We're just wanting the ability to just make it a bit more individualized. So whether that's picking up the facial expressions of the teacher when you're at the back of the room or picking up the audio, So broadcast is just adding that one to many screen share and bringing it in face and bringing in voice.
On how collaboration and the tools that enable it have changed:
I guess it begs the question, what is normal? You've probably seen it, in office spaces and classrooms. We want to go back to that in room, in person experience. We all realize the value of proximity and what I can get across to you as a class—that the ability to walk around the room, you're not just at the front. But now I guess our users are also saying, “Well now we've got a bunch of these great tools that we can use as part of that lesson.” They're not going into it saying, “We must use video, or we must use tool X, Y, and Z, but hey, we've got very familiar with these tools and we're gonna start to work them into where we think makes sense.”
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