Two monitors for teaching PC's connected to IWB's

[Joanne]

I'm using clevertouch, so that stretches across everything. Using laptops here.

 

I think the OPs idea is a good one and is worth trialling in a couple of classes perhaps?

[AJWhite1970]

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I've been playing this morning with the Hitachi IWB software and it appears to be behaving with the two screen/projector setup. A (pretty tech aware) member of the maths team is going to trial it for me and see how it goes.

 

I think the OPs idea is a good one

Thanks Joanne, I'm keeping that one!!!

 

Andrew

[mikeprice]

I have a 2 screen setup in the computer room and I use it when I teach

 

however it would totally freak out several members of staff so I have the system set up to reset to cloned displays when the system reboots - with a shortcut to do it on the desktop

[AlanD]

In a few places, we use extended desktop, two monitors and a projector in several locations - using either a splitter - or using the "out" signal from the projector back to the second monitor. Occasionally there is a problem when calibrating the whiteboard - because it thinks its on the "other" output....and yes when playing movies we have had to change it back from extended to duplicate mode - as not all packages seem aware of extended mode.

 

I'm always surprised how much students "learn" about staff and school from emails being opened by a teacher on the desktop PC when its connected directly to a projector. Teachers seem to thing that students won't notice when the class is supposed to be engaged in some other activity....and of course - email alerts sometimes pop up with messages that students are not supposed to see.

[burgemaster]

ive found the interactivity only seems to work on screen 1 so if using extended mode i have to make sure my smartboard is the primary screen if the secondary screen is the smartboard touch diddnt seem to work all

Cant remember exactly what you press, but there is a button combo to swap the interactivity to the other screen using the two buttons on the smartboard.

[DrBeaker]

Just to clarify, all our teacher desks are front facing about 8 foot from the wall and all our teachers sit with their backs to the screens so for example having screen 1 as the projector and screen 2 on the VGA screen on their desk doesn't really work for us.

 

Thanks for all the feedback though, I'm going for a lie down in a dark room and come back to this in the morning...

 

Hi, Did you get much further with this?

 

Our school is in a similar position with teacher desks being in all kinds of awkward places and sometimes with the board/TV to the back of them altogether. I wondered how far you got with this or did it not get out of R&D/trial stage?

[AJWhite1970]

Hi. It never left R&D for me but a school near me went for it and they claim that the teachers are fine with it and it works well....

[DrBeaker]

Thanks. I came across your post and it gave me some ideas.

 

Building upon your idea - a dual-monitor mount/stand of some kind on the desk, would allow them to view the 2x screens either side-by-side or one above the other. Gives them the option depending on desk/room layout etc and also frees up desk space. As we've got some TVs I'm tempted to give this a try myself when I get chance to see it it pans out.

 

[eddyc]

One of our technology staff has this setup.

 

Monitor 1/projector on the onboard VGA using a VGA splitter so he knows if it’s in monitor a 1 it’s on the board behind him.

 

Monitor 2 connected on display port. Used for sims, email, etc without issue.

 

Only issue we did have was resolution and scaling was a problem on machine reboot. We overcame this in the end by using two identical monitors that do a resolution that the projector can support.

[PotNoodleTech]

Yeh do that here, the main tft is splitter boxed to VGA into the projector, then use a displayport to vga adaptor for the second monitor and configure extended desktop in windows. Works fine.

 

Obviously if this was a newer install you'd probably use HDMI instead of VGA but it all works the same.

[DrBeaker]

We all know how ubiquitous VGA is in education! Probably got another 10 years in it at least - especially considering the state of budgets!

[LTurner3692]

We did this with a few rooms, personally thought it worked well, specially in IT classrooms when they wanted to monitor what the kids had open on there screens while trying to show them things on the board! we did have to have the same monitors so that we didnt have a problem with res! we tried a few of the stands above to, some found it useful others didnt like that they couldn't move it freely!

 

Personally think its a good idea!

[DrBeaker]

We did this with a few rooms, personally thought it worked well, specially in IT classrooms when they wanted to monitor what the kids had open on there screens while trying to show them things on the board! we did have to have the same monitors so that we didnt have a problem with res! we tried a few of the stands above to, some found it useful others didnt like that they couldn't move it freely!

 

Personally think its a good idea!

Would you be willing to share some pics of the setup at all? I'm just curious as to how other schools have done it. Being a lone techie you don't get to bounce ideas off anyone else

[Bladez]

Hi

 

got it in most our classrooms here, dont mess about with splitters though if you are only going for 3 outputs, just shove a cheap graphics card in. The most i have got going is in an IT classroom, it is a funny shape and i have set up 5 outputs, but it is an odd shaped room and with that one i split the hdi to the board, anf have 3 displays on the desk.

[mikeprice]

For many years my class room had 2 monitors - extended desktop with 'my monitor' usign AB Tutor and the projector being on the second monitor. I never thought of splitting the projector and having a second monitor on my desk - but it would have been a great idea.

 

In effect I also had a 3rd monitor because the school insisted on having SIMMS on a seperate network - hence I also had SIMMS on a seperate laptop - so I could use this for other stuff as well

[DrBeaker]

@AJWhite1970

 

We've got some kit replacements planned and a load of new monitors. I might try and do this in some of the classrooms. I've been intrigued by this concept and your post for a while. Apart from space issues with multiple monitors, I can't see any issues. We have some bog-standard TVs that the common complaint is "I can't freeze it" - it simply doesn't have that functionality as it's just a TV, so this solution would be ideal.

[markwilfan]

Some of our science teachers have this set up. Causes havoc for cover as it's a non standard setup. Don't ask me why

[mikeprice]

Some of our science teachers have this set up. Causes havoc for cover as it's a non standard setup. Don't ask me why

 

I used to get that - I had to setup my PC to set itself to mirrored on startup so that other people could always use it if I wasn't around - I seemed to be the only one who could cope with an extended desktop.

 

 

Eventually one of the Science teacher used my room for a lesson and several of then were converted - but the rest of the school ran off screaming when I mentioned it

[mavhc]

Seems like there should be a Windows feature to use the new multiple desktop system on different monitors, keep the 2 jobs teachers do separate without requiring 2 computers.

 

Also need a transparent lock screen, so the projector display can continue to show the video while the computer is locked, and the other screens are blanked

[mikeprice]

Also need a transparent lock screen, so the projector display can continue to show the video while the computer is locked, and the other screens are blanked

 

I like that idea - never seen a way of doing that though

[DrBeaker]

I used to get that - I had to setup my PC to set itself to mirrored on startup so that other people could always use it if I wasn't around - I seemed to be the only one who could cope with an extended desktop.

 

 

Eventually one of the Science teacher used my room for a lesson and several of then were converted - but the rest of the school ran off screaming when I mentioned it

I've had people come to my office and ask "How did you do that?" when moving windows between screens - both staff and students. It's just normal to me now. I just need more graphics power or more desk/wall space to get any more monitors!

Seems like there should be a Windows feature to use the new multiple desktop system on different monitors, keep the 2 jobs teachers do separate without requiring 2 computers.

 

Also need a transparent lock screen, so the projector display can continue to show the video while the computer is locked, and the other screens are blanked

 

Windows development of new and actually useful features in recent years seems to have really just evaporated into thin air. They push apps like Candy Crush etc into Windows 10 and make it a real struggle to remove them. But they don't seem to bother with developing multiple monitor support, taskbar etc with a multiple monitor setup. E.g. It took until Windows 10 for them to get the function to be able to snap 4 Windows to the corners in Windows 10. E.g. In Xp they actually introduced the zip format built into the file system, then in Windows 8 and above - remove the DVD functionality purely to save a few pennies.

 

I don't get it. If it was a car we wouldn't go back to ones without ABS brakes, central locking etc and consider that "progress"

 

TL;DR: Reduced functionality in Windows OS's over the years.

[mavhc]

Windows development of new and actually useful features in recent years seems to have really just evaporated into thin air. They push apps like Candy Crush etc into Windows 10 and make it a real struggle to remove them. But they don't seem to bother with developing multiple monitor support, taskbar etc with a multiple monitor setup. E.g. It took until Windows 10 for them to get the function to be able to snap 4 Windows to the corners in Windows 10. E.g. In Xp they actually introduced the zip format built into the file system, then in Windows 8 and above - remove the DVD functionality purely to save a few pennies.

 

Multiple desktops, paste history, better screenshoting, better taskbar for multiple monitors, improved start menu showing per app history, consolidated notification system, per app sound settings, built in miracast send and receive, biometrics, single combined update, so your os is mostly only 1 feature and 1 monthly update away from being up to date, WSL, cmd windows can be resized and ctrl-c/v work

[DrBeaker]

Multiple desktops, paste history, better screenshoting, better taskbar for multiple monitors, improved start menu showing per app history, consolidated notification system, per app sound settings, built in miracast send and receive, biometrics, single combined update, so your os is mostly only 1 feature and 1 monthly update away from being up to date, WSL, cmd windows can be resized and ctrl-c/v work

 

Fair point - but this is only now being added into the native Os. Prior to this you had to have multiple apps that would get you anywhere near the same functionality.

[msi_school]

I found setting some admin staff up with multiple monitors suddenly made the teaching staff "need" dual monitors

[mavhc]

Hmm, windows must be able to do it, because that's what multipoint is, guess it uses RDP. Wasn't multi session Windows 10 supposed to be a thing by now? -- ah, it's only an Azure thing, boo.

 

Most secure way would be to RDP to a TS for admin work, and force the RDP client to never be on a projector somehow

Edited March 6, 2019 by mavhc