St Albans School upgrades its wireless screen sharing with Airtame

The challenge

Three years ago, St Albans School transformed their IT setup, embracing a mobile teaching strategy by replacing all desktop PCs with individual laptops for teachers. As part of this transition, they needed a wireless screen sharing solution that would empower teachers to move around the classroom during lessons, while sharing their screens with the class. They chose a solution that was fairly well-known at the time.

Unfortunately, the IT staff at St Albans School encountered several problems with the product, resulting in a lot of frustration, as teachers couldn’t share their screens easily or reliably during lessons. After a particularly frustrating incident in the summer of 2019, the Head of IT Services made an executive decision to look for an alternative screen-sharing provider.

St Albans School began the search for a wireless screen sharing solution that was reliable, easy for teachers to use, and aligned with their existing IT infrastructure.

The solution St Albans School had been looking for

After some initial research, they came across Airtame. With Airtame’s free 30-day trial, the IT department was able to order and test out a device within their existing environment. The Airtame worked seamlessly.

The IT department had also noticed that Airtame was already being used by a number of schools and education facilities within Europe and the United States, across different age groups. This was compounded by the support and responsiveness they experienced throughout the testing period: “We got the sense that this is a company that looks after its customers and effectively supports their requirements,” said Rob Hagon, Head of IT Services.

Rob was also impressed by the Airtame app, which meant staff wouldn’t need to rely on Miracast or any other technology that was out of their control. The compatibility with Windows was another selling point.

In May 2020, St Albans School committed to installing 100 Airtame 2 devices around campus. They used a network deployment tool to roll out the Airtame app across all teaching devices, which further reduced the workload for teaching staff.

The results

St Albans School has now rolled out its full Airtame fleet, and the results so far have been nothing but positive.

Airtame is mostly being used within classrooms by teachers for wireless screen sharing. The fact that teachers are able to share their screen without being tied to the front of the room makes classes more interactive and teachers better equipped to assist students 1:1. Airtame has also been a great addition to talks and assemblies within the lecture theatre, with speakers often sharing their screen to run through specific initiatives or presentations.

St Albans School is also using Airtame for digital signage, with a select number of displays in hallways featuring important notices to keep students on track each day. They plan to increase their use of digital signage over the coming year.

For the IT department, Airtame Cloud has made device management a breeze. All devices are managed and updated through the Cloud, saving Rob and his colleagues time that would normally be spent manually checking on devices in each classroom.

“Airtame is working really well for us, and the feedback we’ve had from teachers so far has been extremely positive. We sent one email out to teachers with instructions on how to use Airtame, and that’s all the training we’ve had to provide. It’s easy to use and a far more reliable solution than what we were using previously,” said Rob Hagon, Head of IT Services.