We will be attending the Educatec Educatrice Exhibition in Versailles, Paris in Pavilion 7/3 on Thursday 24th November 2011 If you are going it would be great to meet up please email me Tony Mercer me or call me on my cell phone 00 44 7795 635 882 I hope we can meet

Today, 29th November 2011, chancellor George Osborne announced in his Autumn Statement: An extra £1.2bn will be made available for UK schools - split between £600m to local authorities to address school placement shortages and a further £600m to help fund 100 new free schools

This builds on funding announcements made earlier this year:

£2bn Priority Schools Building Programme for secondary schools in England and Wales
£800m for City Academies
£500m Basic Need maintenance funding
Furthermore when you factor in the ongoing BSF legacy work (only 160 of 700 confirmed BSF schools have been built), it's easy to see why the UK’s leading schools builders; BAM, Skanksa, Capita Symonds, Carillion, and Graham Construction have already confirmed their presence at the Building Future Education (BFE) event. Can you afford not to be there?

BFE (formally BSEC) is now in its 7th year and takes place at the Business Design Centre in London 9-10 May 2012 and is the UK’s only focussed event for the finance, procurement, design, construction and furnishing of education buildings.

The event will feature over 120 suppliers from architects, consultants, contractors and product suppliers showcasing their products and services to over 3,000 exhibition visitors and conference delegates from local authorities, academies, sponsors, schools, colleges, investors, consortiums and construction and design firms.

Press Notice issued by the Department for Children, Schools and Families 20 January 2009

'The latest local authority projections for new, rebuilt or refurbished schools to be opened under BSF are: 115 in 2009/10; 165 in 2010/11, rising to at least 200 new schools every year thereafter'.

A full version of the latest report can be found here Second Independent BSF evaluation published 20 January 2009

You can take your choice - In-wall amplifier, standalone amplifier, active speakers - all designed for the classroom. Request a quote

Updated design for EA014 - The EA014 Interactive Whiteboard speakers now have a USB Audio input so that iPods and media players can play direct into the amplifier without going through a PC - as requested by many customers - and an SD card slot to play your own media selection

and we've updated the design to meet the new CE directives covering standby currents etc more details of the EA014 here...

EdisEducation.com is a new community site for teachers and education professionals where we bring together insights, news and best practice for the interactive classroom.

We will be promoting  EdisEducation.com to schools and colleges around the world. Send us your articles to be included in this new community site venture. 

Edis 10.1" , 9.7", 9"and 7" Android Tablets in 4:3 and 16:9 formats for the classroom. Tailored to the needs of pupils in the interactive classroom - Edis tablets have all the features including WiFi - backed up by a full range of classroom accessories,. See more details of Edis Android Tablets here...

Edis now provides an outsourcing service for school websites and virtual learning environments. We provide Moodle VLE with web hosting which is integrated into school websites. See more details of Moodle VLE here

The IR touch screen is a very well established, well proven, and reliable technology. Invented in 1971, the first "touch sensor" was developed by Dr Sam Hurst (founder of Elographics) in 1983 Hewlett-Packard's HP-150 was one of the first commercially available IR touchscreen PCs with a grid of infrared beams across the front of a monitor which detected finger movements.

Other touch technologies have been developed since including resistive and capacitive used in many hand held devices and the much later optical imaging technology.

Dr. Andrew Hsu, an expert on touch screen technologies, states in his research paper that “IR (infrared) screens are among the most durable surfaces and can handle hostile environments, making them well suited for military applications... we can see that infrared touch screen technologies, while being the most durable surfaces, are also quite possibly the most versatile”. Touch screens are used in aircraft, military equipment, machine controls, automobiles, appliances, cellphones, gaming consoles and in large format screens in school classrooms

IR touch technology has also been established for a long time in the classroom in another form where it is used for some makes of interactive whiteboard where it easily withstands the daily wear and tear of eager pupils.

At EdisAV we chose IR technology for our Touchscreen Multi for the classroom to take advantage of the versatile, well proven technology and established durability to hostile environments coupled with the indomitable LCD display featured in millions of TVs around the world

CDEC Ltd - AV Awards 2011 Finalist uses Edis AV products for Litherland High School

A 27.5 million (US$41 million) next-generation school which has just been completed at Litherland in Sefton, Liverpool UK was a finalist project in the AV Awards 2011 last week.

The hi-tech solar powered building boasts colour-coded rooms featuring the latest computers along with dance and recording studios. 

The school is the first in Sefton, Liverpool to be completed under the Building Schools for The Future programme.

It features outside classrooms, solar panels and a wind turbine with separate hairdressing and beauty salons equipped to professional standards and interactive classrooms with projectors and sound systems.

School bells are be replaced by classical music which change on a fortnightly basis.

The colour coding ranges from green for student support areas to blue for calm classroom areas, to red or yellow for music and dance.

Headteacher Jim Donnelly said he believed the improvements were "long overdue." He added that: "The building has been carefully and individually designed to enhance learning in the 21st century".

The central avenue unites the three distinct curriculum areas of the school and features the professionally-designed hairdressing and beauty salons; "it is called the Avenue of Stars to reflect our strong links with Hong Kong."

The school's old building was the first school to be opened by Lancashire County Council after the Second World War which will now be demolished to make way for a new "village green" for the use of the school.

The school building is 10,900 m2 Sheppard Robson, the arcitect, is working with Kier Education on a One School Pathfinder to provide a bespoke tailored design for a school providing interactive classrooms to enhance learning.

The new Litherland High School embodies the vision of the staff and students into an innovative interactive learning environment, a radical departure from the traditional institutional school style.

  
Interactive classrooms include Edis EA35 In-wall amplifiers with microphone inputs, Fast-install cable kits  either side of short throw Epson projectors, Digital signage features Edis World Beater LCD Tilt wall mounts with all Audio Visual equipment supplied and installed by CDEC Ltd who are Finalists in the AV Awards 2011.

BETT is reported to be the largest education technology exhibition in the world and offers "the opportunity to view, touch and test all that is new in the industry". We shall be there, Tony Mercer is attending and look forward to meeting old and new friends

Edis Digital Display Stands for touch screen and digital displays include mobile, floor and large format desk versions with tilt and rotate models in heights from floor to 1.8 metre high in robust aluminium alloy that look really good in any environment. Cable management and equipment mounts for camera, DVD, Media player or PC etc See full range of Edis digital display stands here

Sound reinforcement systems in the classroom can significantly improve pupils academic performance. A new article has now been published on E-Zine articles and is available on the main Edis Website. A useful document to support sales of Sound reinforcement systems..... and an existing article by Barbara Pytel informs of the already large install base in the USA together with amazing results for reading ability

We've just added our range of free standing or wall mounted  speakers to our website. These are fine speakers for entertainment in school halls, gymnasiums and pubs etc. See also our active classroom speakers and a range of passive classroom speakers - wall mounted and ceiling mounted.

There are some serious misunderstandings that reach me about the quality of sound systems in the classroom.

Unlike Hi-Fi systems where listeners are used to, and some obviously enjoy, booming bass sounds and higher pitched screaming guitars or the full range of an orchestra, the need to make the voice of a teacher intelligible to a classroom of young pupils requires very different sound qualities.

The human voice generates most of it's power between 100 Hz and 2 kHz, this is a tiny proportion of the full Hi-Fi range but unless consonants can be heard in this frequency range, speech becomes almost unintelligible. In Sound System Engineering by Davis and Patronis they state that “It can be seen why the telephone with it's limited response works so well as do small radios with well-designed 4”- 8” loudspeakers covering the range of 125Hz-5000Hz”

Comparing music on a Hi-Fi set-up with that played into a properly engineered classroom audio system, the classroom system will sound flat and the big mistake is to assume that the quality of the system is not good. This could not be further from the truth.

Speech intelligibility calculations and tests show that the articulation loss of consonants in speech  (%AL_CONS ) which is normally measured at 2kHz should not exceed 10% to 15%. The most important factor of the audio system for classrooms, is to have the correct frequency spectrum shape at 2 kHz. Many available sound systems ignore this in their design and would need some equalisation to correct these defects at 2 kHz.

So the simple answer is that a normal music amplifier system is unlikely to perform well for intelligibility in the classroom despite an untrained listener thinking that the boomy sounding base relates to a higher quality system

Our classroom audio systems are designed specifically for maximum speech intelligibility at 2 kHz in terms of frequency response, articulation loss and sound pressure levels and perform exceptional well at improving listening and as a result improved learning outcomes. Don't be fooled by those who offer to sell you under powered and poorly designed systems with booming bass !

David Edis-Bates C.Eng MIET
CEO EdisAV

We are actively promoting these products to Primary and Secondary schools in the UK this summer, you can take advantage and secure extra sales over and above your normal installation contracts by offering these products.

EA1133  Sound Reinforcement - IR microphone system that connects to exising (or new) audio amplifiers that enhances learning. See details and download datasheet also an article about the learning advantages and results.