Parkland School District uses Airtame to revolutionize learning

The challenge

Parkland School District is enthusiastic about the benefits of technology in learning. For instance, they’re purchased Chromebooks for students to share, along with a Chromebook Cart for them to store and charge them. But they were also wary, having purchased solutions that failed to deliver on their promises.

The District was eager to promote a more collaborative in-class learning experience and believed that a screen sharing and collaborative platform would do just that. “We are focused on personalized learning and amplifying student voice, as well as doing anything we can to help our teachers instructionally to shift their pedagogy from a teacher-centric environment to a learner-centric one, where they have more mobility,” explained Tracy Smith, Assistant to the Superintendent for Operations, Parkland School District.

But there were challenges to accomplishing these goals. First and foremost, school children have a tendency to lose things, so any solution they’d adopt couldn’t rely on individual cables or adapters. Wifi wasn’t consistent in all classrooms. And with 11 separate campuses, the implementation needed to be quick, easy and seamless, as well as cost efficient.

The solution

Parkland School District decided to test pilot Airtame’s wireless screen sharing and collaboration platform in all classrooms at the high school, but in short, order opted to roll out Airtame devices district-wide.

Shortly after rolling out Airtame the District invested in individual Chromebooks for each student. The one-Chromebook-per-child decision meant that every student could interact with the screen, which promotes hands-on learning.

They hardwired most of their Airtame with Ethernet adapters to overcome their spotty WiFi, which instantly made the whole setup more reliable and stable.

The results

Thanks to Airtame, learning has become more interactive. Gone are the days of rigid, one-way lessons. Teachers are able to move about freely and to share the front of the classroom with students. As a result, teachers say that Airtame has improved classroom management significantly. More importantly, it has given students more agency in their learning processes.

“Providing a learner-centric environment is perfectly in line with the type of education and pedagogical instruction that the school district wants to ensure,” says JR Renna, Coordinator of Educational Technology in Parkland School District.

Airtame is the most reliable and easy to manage platform for wireless screen sharing that Parkland School District has found. “Airtame’s collaboration platform is as reliable as flicking the light switch and expecting the lights to come on. It’s something we don’t need to think about,” said JR Renna.