Project Background
Global Indian International School (GIIS) is an international network of award-winning schools with 23 campuses across 7 countries. They include Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Thailand, UAE, Vietnam, and India, offering Indian and international curricula to students from diverse backgrounds.
Originally GIIS had three campuses in Singapore: Queenstown, Balestier and East Coast. However with an area of only 7,800 square kilometres, Singapore is home to another 60 international schools to cater to the country’s growing expatriate community. International schools here are facing more fierce competition than those of other countries. How to survive and even strive to become the top ones remains the priority concern for school leaders.
Back in 2006, GIIS Singapore team has decided to build a new campus in Punggol from scratch. The idea was not only to accommodate all the students from Queenstwon and Balestier campuses, but also to create a modernized school with state-of-the-art technology, taking GIIS Punggol campus to the forefront of international schools in Singapore.
The challenge
In an era of information technology, everything in life is closely related to intelligence, education is no exception. It faces with a great change that students expect a more intuitive learning experience and an automated environment for efficient outcome. Faculty and IT administrators also hope to have a digital workplace that reduces inefficiency while being at a loss in complicated devices, and engages in meaningful things to enhance the education. The overall strength of an international school is represented not only by its students’ performance, but also through daily management which should be well-organized and intelligent. In the highly-competitive education environment like Singapore, the GIIS team is aware of the power of ed-tech, and they want to take full advantage of it to improve teaching outcome and raise its reputation among international schools.
Starting a project from scratch is a huge deal, which requires enormous efforts to bring all related teams in charge of different aspects of the project together, discussing feasible plans for construction, electricity, school furniture, classroom layout and AV equipment that can eventually work well in harmony. Q-NEX team has stayed with the GIIS team from the very first beginning to help come up with tailored AV solutions for the school’s needs.
Q-NEX Solution
Q-NEX solution is committed to creating a digital campus with centralized control and AV distribution through the Internet of Things, which reshapes the campus experience of GIIS staff and students.
In addition, to have centralized and remote control of complicated devices in the classroom, such as IFPs, document camera, air conditioners, fans, lights, microphones, speakers and teachers' laptops, Q-NEX provided its main product Networked Media Processor (NMP) in every classroom of the GIIS campus. By connecting all devices in each classroom to NMP, you only need to control and manage one NMP instead of all devices in the classroom. The control can be done locally by the teacher in classroom, or remotely by the IT admin in his office.
The GIIS faculty is pleasantly surprised by the convenience brought by NMP’s Touch Panel . Installed on the teacher’s table, it has become the most handy helper for the teacher during class. Every morning when the teacher walks into the classroom, the lights are on, the air-con is set at the right temperature, the interactive flat panels are ready for use, and the teacher only pairs the wireless microphone to the control panel within a click of a button and start his class right away. It’s that simple. Switching different video sources from his laptop to the document camera, adjusting speaker or mic volume can all be realized through the control panel. Teachers really become the technology master of their own class. As GIIS teacher said, “ I didn’t expect that one day I would be able to control these devices so freely, now I did.”
As for the Campus Wide AV Distribution solution for GIIS campus, we explored the places outside classrooms such as the canteen, library and corridors of the teaching building. These places are equipped with display monitors and amplifier systems for campus broadcast. These are where Q-NEX Media Box (MBX) comes to work. IT administrator can centrally broadcast text, audio and video content, and even push live streaming to the monitors that equipped with MBX. What’s more, he is capable of choosing to broadcast different contents to different destinations according to the environment. Even in the classroom, the broadcast can reach the NMP and be played through the interactive flat panel. In this way, all the campus environment is included in the broadcast network for AV content distribution.
As a mature campus IoT centralized control solution, QNEX not only offers hardware integration, but also software service. IT administrator of GIIS can take advantage of Q-NEX Console or mobile App to remotely control the devices. For example, the scheduled task can be set for powering on and off the devices, and distributing AV broadcast. It greatly reduce the amount of repetitive work. IT administrator can also have a inside look for device usage data on Q-NEX Dashboard, such as device status, repair process, usage frequency, power consumption and other information. With a web-based platform that can centrally control data, IT administrator have the ability to know the situation of devices on campus and realize better management without collecting information all day. Even if staying at home, all the devices in the campus connected by NMP and MBX can be effortless controlled.
Transformed by technology, GIIS SMART campus has become the top choice now for students and parents in Singapore who want to pursuit world-class education. Besides Singapore campus, GIIS has also adopted Q-NEX solution in other campuses including Tokyo and Dubai. Q-NEX brought unprecedented changes so that automation and intelligence have become the norm in GIIS.
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