Walk into a new school, a university teaching block or a corporate training centre in the UAE or Saudi Arabia and the front of the room is an interactive display. The projector-and-whiteboard combination has largely gone. This article looks at why that happened, what institutions are asking for, and why OneScreen has become a common choice.
What changed
Cost and lifetime. Projectors needed lamps, filters and a darkened room, and their image degraded over time. An LCD panel runs for years at full brightness with no consumables and works with the lights on.
Content is digital. Lesson plans, textbooks, exercises and assessments are files and web pages. A display that runs them directly, with annotation, replaced the whiteboard because the content moved.
Hybrid and recorded teaching. The pandemic made remote and recorded lessons normal. A display with a camera and conferencing built in made every classroom capable of it.
Standardisation. Ministries, school groups and universities in the region procured at scale, and at scale the questions are about management, support and total cost, which favours integrated displays over assembled kits.
What institutions ask for
- A durable touch surface that survives years of students.
- Pen and finger input with palm rejection, so that writing feels like writing.
- Classroom software: whiteboarding, lesson tools, screen sharing from student devices, annotation on any content.
- Video conferencing for hybrid lessons and guest speakers.
- Central management of a fleet of displays across a campus.
- Support that a teacher can reach without an IT ticket.
- A warranty and a local service path.
Why OneScreen
OneScreen designs its displays for the classroom and the training room rather than adapting a signage panel. The touch and pen response is tuned for handwriting. The software covers the classroom needs listed above without third-party subscriptions. The displays are managed centrally. And OneScreen’s live support – help from a person, reached from the display – is the feature teachers and trainers mention most, because it removes the fear of the technology failing mid-lesson.
Corporate training and boardrooms
The same features serve corporate training centres and boardrooms: annotation over a proposal, a whiteboard session captured and emailed, a hybrid workshop with remote participants seeing the board. The meeting-room models add the camera and audio options and integrate with room booking systems such as Joan.
Procurement considerations
Room survey. Sizes, wall construction, power and network at the mounting point, ambient light.
Size per room type. 65 inches for small classrooms and meeting rooms, 75 for standard classrooms, 86 or larger for lecture rooms and halls.
Compute. Whether the built-in system runs your software or a PC module is needed.
Accessories. Mounts or mobile stands, cameras, document cameras, cables at the teacher’s desk.
Rollout. A pilot in two or three rooms, teacher training, then the full deployment with device management from day one.
Support model. Who a teacher calls, and who replaces a panel if one fails.
OneScreen through Zen
Zen Interactive Technologies distributes OneScreen in the UAE and GCC, and supplies the displays with mounts, cameras and audio from Dubai. For schools and training centres we can support pilots, phased rollouts and the reseller or integrator doing the installation. See the OneScreen page.