Overview
When Cornerstone Christian College made a like-for-like comparison, it became clear that Vivi would deliver the solutions required—and more—at considerably less cost per classroom than Airtame. The school was looking for what it believed were two distinct solutions. It wanted wireless presentation and digital signage and was independently evaluating delivery options.
By choosing Vivi, Cornerstone Christian College now has an intuitive and easy-to-use wireless presentation system that also runs digital signage. As a result, the school has been able to repurpose the capital it had set aside for digital signage.
With Vivi, Cornerstone Christian College has been able to:
- Reduce support calls. Teachers no longer waste valuable lesson time trying to connect to the classroom’s AV system and requesting IT support. Vivi just works.
- Save money. Vivi’s wide range of features has enabled the school to repurpose the money it would have spend on a separate digital signage solution.
- Begin standardizing its classrooms. With Vivi, there’s no longer a need for adaptors and a jumble of cables. Using Vivi, teachers will be able to walk into any classroom and have the same great experience.
Choosing a Solution
Bruce Mapstone is the IT Manager for Cornerstone Christian College in Western Australia. The school is one of 12 that make up the Christian Community Ministries (CCM) Group, of which it is the only one in the country’s west. It’s a fully integrated co-educational K-12 Christian College with approximately 400 students across two campuses—at Busselton and Dunsborough, a few hours south of Perth.
When Mapstone started at the school 18 months ago, he faced challenges that will probably resonate with many others in his position: there were lots of support calls from teachers who couldn’t present in their classrooms because of faulty or missing cables—or, in some cases, problems getting audio to play from the correct device.
As well as the impact on his own team, Mapstone was quick to recognize what this meant in the classroom. “The teachers were spending three, five—perhaps seven minutes just getting their AV working,” he says. “It’s not good to lose that amount of time from a 45-minute class.”
And so began the process of finding a suitable, unified solution to wireless presentation across the school. “My initial brief was essentially to simplify classroom AV and make it wireless,” says Mapstone. “I wanted to free us from needing adapters in the classrooms.”
At the same time, Mapstone was looking for a digital signage solution for the school. He hadn’t initially considered that there might be a single answer to both. As part of his search, he spoke to the other 11 schools in the CCM Group and learned they were using various systems, including Vivi, Airtame, and Microsoft wireless adaptors.
Mapstone’s initial inquiries led him towards Airtame—it looked as though it would deliver wireless presentation at a reasonable price. But once he joined his two searches together, it quickly became clear that Vivi was a no-brainer. “We would have to pay more to do digital signage and emergency broadcasting through Airtame,” he says. “In the end, it was going to cost considerably more per classroom than Vivi. For us, it was probably less about the cost comparison of one device over another. It was more the fact that Vivi provided all of this additional functionality at a similar or cheaper price point.”
The Implementation
A demo of Vivi left Mapstone in no doubt that it was the answer. “Other solutions require teachers to be a little bit tech savvy,” he says. “I found Vivi to be a really intuitive product that teachers don’t struggle to use. It’s built by teachers, for teachers. It understands the classroom.”
“With Vivi, teachers don’t have to try and learn something new,” he continues. “They can just look at the screen and know what to do. The interface was so intuitive that we were able to just dive in feet first.”
The school began its implementation with a trial of ten units. “I’ve been doing demos across the school with our teachers,” says Mapstone. “Some of them in our primary school are already using it, and we’ve also got some digital signage going in our reception. The demo was so simple to set up, and that helped ensure teacher engagement and uptake was successful.”
What Mapstone noticed about Vivi was that even the most tech-averse teachers were happy to use it. “In our primary school, there were several teachers who had refused to use the built-in wireless functionality our Epson projectors possessed. They thought it was just too flaky. So when I put Vivi into the classrooms, one teacher was adamant she was going to continue using the HDMI cable. Needless to say, she hasn’t touched an HDMI cable since,” he grins.
“Now, if I took Vivi out of the classrooms, I think I’d have a revolt on my hands,” Mapstone adds. “We’re gaining tens of minutes in teaching time each day just because our teachers don’t have to struggle with the AV when they hit the classroom.”
