"From The Top"
Technology Integration In the Classroom
with Rashid Skaf, AMX president and CEO

From rudimentary etchings on the walls of caves to today’s most sophisticated campuses of higher learning, technology has been the driving force behind classroom evolution. Chalk, rulers, and hand-crank pencil sharpeners are giving way to laptops, video projectors and electronic lecterns. It is clear that the success or failure of education technology is directly linked to the value it brings to the learning process.

At AMX, our products and solutions are working right now in pre-schools to graduate schools around the world. We aren’t teaching a child to say their ABCs or demonstrating the dynamics behind quantum physics, but we are developing technological innovations that facilitate students’ ability to learn and educators’ ability to teach.

Limitless Possibilities
The possible applications for our hardware and software in schools are nearly limitless. From automating classroom presentation facilities to networking rooms of PCs to integrating a multi-campus lecture, our solutions are having a tremendous impact on education. Here are just a few examples:

• ClassroomManager™
  Part of the AMX Resource Management Suite (RMS), ClassroomManager is the first enterprise-level, server-based software solution for campus IT staff, school administrators, educators and students that ties together all technology equipped facilities for centralized monitoring and management.

• MAX™ by AMX Media Distribution
  From day one, MAX products have captured the attention of educators and librarians as a way to centrally store and locally distribute multimedia content throughout the campus. MAX also opens doors to exciting future applications such as video capture of classroom sessions, students posting their storyboarding work and much, much more.

• Modero® Touch Panels, Mio Modero Keypads and NetLinx® Integrated Controllers
  Our Touch Panels and controllers are fast becoming standard devices in today’s electronic lecterns. A professor can now comfortably and confidently control audio, video, lighting, PCs and more simultaneously and at the touch of a button.

Focusing on Projection Control
One of the areas in education that you will continue to see us support in many ways is projection control, which ironically was the first-ever AMX product introduced nearly 25 years ago. In K - 12 and higher education, educators are recognizing the new opportunities of projection as it applies to interaction, student engagement and virtual experiences through video and the Internet.

As educators experience the possibilities and convenience that projection control offers, they realize the potential that this technology holds for multiple media sources, which in turn requires other more sophisticated control technologies like switching, audio systems, motorized screens, new lighting requirements, etc – all of which AMX has solutions to support.

Perceptions Are Changing
The perception of education control technology and what it is capable of is slowly changing for the better. Control applications used to be isolated room control systems (AV, lighting, HVAC and environmental systems), which were relatively static in nature and often managed by facility management teams. “Real” technology was believed to have to do with networks, servers, computers, software, web applications and administrative solutions. As AMX leads the way with ground-up network-centric solutions, this perception is beginning to change.

Electronic or smart classrooms are becoming their own entities among the community of networked devices. They can now control classrooms of PCs and annotate on screen without additional, specialized devices. They can also be managed through the network like any other IT asset, utilizing standard network protocols and web browsers.

With the introduction of digital video servers and analog-to-digital encoders/decoders, AMX now completes the total technology infrastructure throughout the campus by tying together all the previously disjointed systems and devices from lighting and projector control to conferencing and video streaming. This leads to increased interest and attention on the part of IT managers and Chief Information Officers.

There will always be a thirst for knowledge as well as a desire to share it. At AMX, we look forward to creating smarter, friendlier and more effective technologies to help the world learn a little more, a little faster and a little easier, for many generations to come.