Latest curriculum, health and security features make modern interactive displays a must have for ECEC

As 2024 draws to a close, leaders across Australia’s early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector are preparing for kindy graduations and the inevitable goodbyes that come as the new year arrives and children transition off to school.

“This time of year is always a bit bitter sweet,” Sandi Odisho, area manager at Early Education Holdings said. 

“It is never easy to say goodbye to the children we have educated and cared for for so long but we are also very excited for them as they make the move up to “big” school.”

Ensuring children are ready for “big school” has quite rightly become an increasingly important objective for ECEC services over the last several years, with parents more aware of what “school readiness” entails and with Governments more determined than ever to ensure pre-school is affordable and accessible to all.

“The push towards higher quality kinder and pre-school programs that underwrite ‘school readiness’ has been unfolding for some time,” Ms Odisho said. 

“As an organisation we have worked hard to keep one step ahead by exploring not just traditional programming methods but non traditional, technology based methods too.”

It is against this backdrop that quality focused ECEC services are looking to harness modern interactive display technologies to augment and complement existing school readiness programs to boost interactivity, encourage collaboration and allow for different modes of learning.

Literacy, numeracy, shapes, time and even teamwork – Interactive boards lead the way

Since the introduction of digital white board technologies into early learning environments in the early parts of the last decade, huge levels of innovation have ushered in a new generation of digital displays that empower early childhood teachers (ECTs) and educators to design and deliver contemporary school readiness programs in ECEC settings.

“Whether it be activities that focus on language and numeracy, social and cognitive skills, or even physical development prompts, interactive boards are able to deliver on a wide range of preschool activity plans,” Martin Moelle, Country Manager at BenQ Australia said.

“We have made introducing phonemic awareness and demonstrating mathematical concepts such as time and distance, both of which are foundational concepts for emergent literacy and numeracy, a seamless and engaging experience that is great for children and rewarding for educators.”

“As a global leader in interactive display technology for education BenQ has been privileged to work with thousands of preschools around the world and has unsurprisingly developed a suite of tools for ECEC environments that are unmatched right now,” he added.

In addition, BenQ interactive displays are not only less cumbersome and more intuitive than their older counterparts but have access to substantial libraries of educational activity materials to meet the needs of a specific activity or extension in the classroom via access to all of Google’s collection of apps and the official Google Play Store.

AMS – Personalised, secure teaching spaces allowing for multiple educator usage

Embedded in all modern BenQ interactive displays is BenQ’s proprietary Account Management System (AMS) designed specifically to enable teachers and educators to personalise their own BenQ Board and access stored resources and materials with ease.

“We are acutely aware of just how much effort educators and teachers put into designing learning experiences on our interactive boards, that are often the same board used by multiple educators,” Mr Moelle said.

“It was therefore imperative that we created a system that not only safeguarded an individual’s “classrooms” but also allowed for one board to be the access point for as many educator spaces as required.”

Separate user accounts, easily accessible through the board’s interface, guarantee complete data privacy, with logins limiting access to only the user’s files, folders, and app and web data on the board.

AMS is CASA Tier 2 verified for high-level cloud data security. This rigorous standard offers end-to-end protection for user data by ensuring that every aspect of AMS is secure.

BenQ Boards – not only excellent for learning but fostering healthier environments too

Although education is the primary focus of the BenQ Board team, substantial effort has also gone into ensuring that their interactive displays support healthy learning environments for children and educators alike.

“BenQ has worked very hard to pioneer educational display technology that helps to strip out the harmful blue light emissions that are ever present in all types of handheld and large format LCD devices,” Mr Moelle said.

“We have also focused on using the panels to support air quality via the introduction of a built-in air ioniser that helps reduce particulate matter in classrooms and in so doing improve overall air quality.”

Next generation eye and air safety technologies have been developed and included across much of BenQ’s interactive panel range offering ECEC services more comprehensive assurance that health and wellbeing commitments are being met.

“In the digital age there is no limit to how much attention we must invest in our children’s health and well-being. We are thrilled we can not only contribute to better learning outcomes via our BenQ Boards, but also contributing to general wellness and an improved learning environment outcome too,” Mr Moelle added.

Learn more about how BenQ can support your early learning service here.