Samsung School 2.0 Taps the Cloud to Enhance its Classroom Technology SolutionLowers Cost, Embraces Parents, Administrators via The Cloud

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During the past 30 years, computing and communications tech-nologies have transformed nearly every industry sector and every societal niche. Kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) classrooms are no exception. Beginning with the introduction of computer labs and in-classroom desktop PCs a generation ago, technolo-gies ranging from the Internet to mobile devices have proven themselves as valuable teaching tools and resources. In fact, the availability of new technologies has driven a number of changes in basic teaching methodologies and student learning processes.

However when different platforms and software applications aren’t well integrated in classrooms, realizing the potential benefits of the educational technologies could prove elusive. Complicating matters is the fact that deploying and managing on-premise technology solutions can strain the capabilities of school administrators and teachers.

When well designed, planned and implemented, however, classroom technology solutions can boost student engagement and achievement, improve teacher effectiveness and satisfac-tion, and simplify educational administrators’ jobs.

One proven classroom technology solution, Samsung School, removes much of the guesswork and uncertainty often associ-ated with selecting and implementing classroom technologies. This easy-to-use, integrated solution combines hardware, software, and communications to deliver a variety of high-value educational functions and capabilities. More than 1,000 K-12 schools around the world already use Samsung School. Samsung is now rolling out a new generation of its solution that leverages cloud computing to provide even more powerful capabilities while reducing deployment and management costs and overhead.

Taking Technology to School

In many ways, the proliferation of technology in K-12 classrooms is inevitable. Today’s students have grown up as “digital natives,” for whom online interactions and collaborations, mobile device usage and near-instant feedback has become second nature. For these students, traditional teaching tools and top-down teaching methods can prove frustrating and ineffective.

Thoughtful classroom use of the same tools and technologies students use in their everyday lives, by contrast, can boost student engagement and achievement. Among the benefits reported by more than 500 K-12 teachers surveyed by PBS Learning Media in 2013 were:

• 74 percent of teachers said technology enabled them to reinforce and expand on content

• 74 percent of teachers said technology helped motivate students to learn

• 73 percent of teachers said technology helped them respond to a variety of learning styles

• 69 percent of teachers said technology allows them to “do much more than ever before” for their students

Surveys of students back up the teachers’ perspective. The global education nonprofit organization, Project Tomorrow, surveyed more than 431,000 students throughout the United States for its Speak Up 2014 National Research Project. Among its findings:

• 46 percent of 3rd – 5th graders, 68 percent of 6th – 8th graders and 82 percent of 9th – 12th graders were smartphone users

• 75 percent thought every student should have access to a mobile device during the school day to support learning, and 58 percent were using their own smartphones for classwork

• 67 percent said that using technology within learning increases their engagement and interest in the subject content

• 48 percent used email and 16 percent used texting outside of school to communicate with their teachers about school-work questions

Although these and other surveys highlight the benefits that educational technology can provide, there are still a number of challenges that teachers and school administrators must

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overcome. Often, they are less technically savvy than their students. And even those educators comfortable with the latest technology may be at a loss when it comes to determining how to best integrate it into the classroom. This challenge is exac-erbated by the wide range of software and hardware solutions available in the educational marketplace, which can overwhelm educators trying to select the best solutions for their needs.

“If the plan for technology isn’t well thought through and integrated into the pedagogical process, the technology can be more of a nuisance than a help,” warns Andrew Ko, vice president of the Enterprise Business Team at Samsung. “Making it easy to implement is the key, and we have put a lot of effort into ease of implementation with Samsung School 2.0.”

In short, educators need all the help they can get when it comes to the optimal use of educational technology. Samsung designed its integrated Samsung School solution to address this need.

Samsung School First Focused on Classroom-centered Capabilities

Since its introduction, Samsung School has gained momentum as an educational platform within K-12 classrooms around the world. The solution combines Samsung tablets, interactive software and Wi-Fi networking with a variety of optional tech-nologies such as PCs and interactive whiteboards.

As an interactive, easy-to-learn and teach solution, Samsung School has quickly made an impact in many classrooms. The Croatian Academic and Research Network, for example, deployed Samsung School in K-12 classrooms as part of a nationwide educational services initiative. “This new approach keeps my students more engaged,” says Arjana Blazic, a high school teacher in Zagreb. “They are more interested in what they are learning, and they are more creative.” (For more information about the deployment in Croatia, see www.samsung.com/uk/business/search/?q=croatia.)

Memphis, Tennessee-based Geeter Middle School realized similar benefits through the use of Samsung School. Struggling with low student achievement rates, the school decided to deploy the Samsung solution initially in the sixth-grade math class. Among other benefits, Samsung School supported the “gamification” of student lessons, provided instant feedback for students and allowed teachers to move throughout the classroom to interact individually with each student. The solution made an immediate difference in students’ engagement and enthusiasm.

“I walked into a classroom where students had severe issues the year before, and now they were genuinely excited about math,” says Cleon L. Franklin, director of the Office of Instructional

Technology at Memphis City Schools. “During one math class, I heard a student say ‘This was the best day of my life.’ How often does a student feel that way about a learning environment?”

In addition to helping students achieve greater academic engagement and success, Samsung School also gives them computing, communication, and collaboration skills that they will need throughout their lives. “Technology and innovation are at the core of the ever-changing world of education,” says Dr. Kriner Cash, the former superintendent of the Memphis City Schools. “Academic success is our top priority, and incorporating [Samsung School] technology into academics better prepares our students for the world outside school walls.”

Cloud-enabled Samsung School 2.0 Brings Parents and School Administrators into the Mix

As Samsung School deployments proliferated around the world, Samsung continued to explore ways to enhance and improve its solution. In its latest iteration, Samsung School 2.0, the company has adopted a cloud computing element to simplify deployment, reduce equipment, operational and maintenance costs, cut personnel expenses and enhance the solution’s functionality.

Some of Samsung School’s core functions and capabilities include:

• Screen sharing – Offers teachers the ability to share screens and material with students in a synchronized, near-real-time fashion for more dynamic classroom interaction. This feature not only allows content synchronization but also on-screen annotation.

• Screen monitoring – Permits teachers to view all their students’ screens to monitor their progress and activity, while a Private Coaching feature lets teachers remotely give individual students assistance when they struggle or fall behind.

• Student device control – Teachers can control individual student devices or all the devices in the classroom as needed. This control includes limiting student access to only those applications and URLs appearing on an approved whitelist.

• Lesson toolbar – This feature gives teachers a variety of ways to interact with students, using diverse lesson mate-rials from web browsers, dictionaries, multimedia files and numerous Android education applications. Samsung School can simultaneously display this material on students’ screens, as well as any annotations written by teachers.

• Group activity – Up to six participants can join the group activity and simultaneously write on the common screen visible during screen sharing.

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• Quiz and poll – Teachers can use templates to easily create and administer quizzes and polls, and can check the results and display them using graphs or tables.

• Content management – A Public Library feature allows teachers and students to access information stored on a central server that functions as an information hub. A Local Library feature allows the teachers’ and students’ PCs or tablets to store and share content.

• Course administration – teachers can use simple manage-ment tools to create and organize courses tailored for their classes’ specific needs, using only basic information such as the names of the teachers, students and courses. Also, they can prepare for the class in advance by setting up the course materials using Lesson Planner.

For some Samsung School users, the former requirement to deploy and manage a dedicated server on the school campus has proved challenging. The server, which runs the core Samsung School software and stores content (supporting, for example, the Public Library function), acts as the central hub for the solution. Although this on-premise solution is relatively straightforward to deploy and manage, many schools lacked the funds to purchase the required server. On top of that, budget-constrained schools also faced extra costs associated with maintaining and operating the server, not to mention additional personnel expenses.

Samsung School 2.0, by contrast, replaces the on-premise server with a cloud-based platform. This approach greatly simplifies and speeds the initial deployment of Samsung School, and eliminates the capital costs of purchasing, operating and maintaining an on-premise server. Instead, schools pay a yearly service fee to use the cloud server, making costs more manage-able and predictable.

Also, Samsung School 2.0 for the first time expands the solu-tion’s reach beyond the classroom walls by leveraging the anywhere, anytime access capabilities that cloud-based services provide. With Samsung School 2.0, children can log into a web portal to access and preview course material together with their parents from home, and can complete work and submit it remotely, for example.

And it isn’t just students who can access their study materials when outside of school. While the earlier iterations of Samsung School addressed the needs of students and teachers, Samsung School 2.0 now enables parents to also become involved more directly with their children’s schoolwork and progress. Parents can review their children’s in-class participation as well as achievements from report cards that teachers post on the system. With this information, parents are better able to help identify their children’s strengths and weaknesses and to help them develop study plans accordingly. Figure below illustrates Samsung School 2.0 benefits during the course of a typical day.

One Day with Samsung School 2.0

Preview course files and materials

at home

Share screens and ideas with

classmates during class

Receive immediate feedback with the Quiz and Poll feature

Preview the results of rewards, quizzes,

assignments and the performance

through the Report Card feature

Join a forum anywhere/anytime and submit assign-

ments online using the cloud

server library

~8AM

In Class After SchoolBefore School

10AM1PM

3PM5PM~

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To support these functions while also ensuring student privacy, Samsung School 2.0 provides a number of security and manage-ment capabilities. Parents and their children, for example, can’t see the work or grades of other students, but can only see their own grades and work by using their own confirmed accounts. In addition to this, the solution’s server runs in highly secure and dependable Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers.

Samsung School 2.0 also offers school administrators a wide variety of capabilities that cloud-based services have been shown to deliver. Schools, school districts or national education departments that expand their usage of Samsung School 2.0 can easily tap the scalable cloud resource to add new school sites. Supported schools could be nearby in the same community or dispersed across an entire nation. Also, administrators — including principals at an individual school, school board superintendents or department of education heads — can easily find and manage the status of Samsung School 2.0 and how the schools under their jurisdiction are using the solution. Depending on their level, administrators can easily see and chart information such as the number of student devices registered with the solution, the number of classrooms or schools using Samsung School 2.0, which features are in use, or the distribution and prevalence of different courses deployed and used by teachers.

Making the Grade with Samsung School 2.0

Samsung, as a global technology leader, is prioritizing educa-tion to realize how innovation can make difference in our next generation. Samsung School has a proven track record of easing the introduction of classroom technology and of boosting student engagement and achievement. In one early deploy-ment, for example, Samsung School was shown to improve student concentration by 23 percent and to improve teacher productivity by approximately 10 percent.1

By offering Samsung School 2.0 as a cloud-based solution, Samsung is building on — and extending — the earlier capabili-ties of its educational platform. The cloud deployment model will lower schools’ capital costs, decrease their management burden, simplify solution scaling, and provide anywhere/anytime access, all of which bring great benefits to students, teachers, administrators and parents. As important, by assuming the responsibility for deploying and maintaining the Samsung School 2.0 platform itself, Samsung is letting educators focus on education rather than on IT system management.

For further information about Samsung School 2.0, please email smartedu@samsung.com.

1 Source: The survey of Samsung Smart School pilot class in Gyeseong elementary school, Embrain, December, 2011.

“Academic success is our top priority, and incorporating [Samsung School] technology into academics better prepares our students for the world outside school walls.”

— Dr. Kriner Cash former superintendent of the Memphis City Schools