December 2005 — Smart Classroom

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Plasmas: A New Angle on Learning

by Neal Starkman

Changing the Learning Landscape
“Economically viable.” That’s how Greg Kincaid describes the LG plasma displays he acquired for his school. Kincaid’s sober language, though, belies his enthusiasm.

Kincaid is the grant coordinator for the Ross Academy of Creative and Media Arts, located in a diverse socioeconomic area in Artesia, CA, outside of Los Angeles. But with about 670 students in grades 7 and 8, it could more accurately be called the Ross Middle School. Ross is a magnet school: It attracts students interested in music, video production, drama, art, and writing. And now, thanks to Kincaid, Ross has plasma monitors.

At the Ross Academy of Creative and Media Arts, students have the run of the monitors during the day for learning, presenting, and sharing. Grant Coordinator Greg Kincaid says, "It's Changed the complexion of the school."

As grant coordinator, he applied for federal money to purchase the monitors. He’d gone to all the conferences, seen all the different kinds of monitors, and he liked the idea that the LG plasma monitors could hook up to computers as well as play DVDs. It sounded like a better deal than the old 19- inch tube TVs (along with about 150 Apple computers) that Ross was getting along with at the time, so Kincaid bought the LG monitors.

As of a couple of months ago, they were bolted to the walls of 24 classrooms (it took two guys to bolt each of the new monitors to the wall), and Kincaid’s group is still installing computer interfaces. Unlike the projectors, hardly any space is taken up by the plasmas. “It’s changed the complexion of the school for many years,” Kincaid says. Indeed it has. The technology has made learning more accessible. Morning messages are broadcast on the network, and then students have the run of the monitors during the day—learning from them, making presentations with them, and sharing on them. The excitement is palpable. Kincaid talks about students who were once afraid to speak in class, but now “start expounding all this information.”

It’s easy to be swept away by the success of a school like Ross. But Todd Moffett, director of the Education Business Group at LG Electronics, offers this advice to plasma shoppers: “Analyze your scenario.” He doesn’t claim that plasma monitors solve everyone’s needs. For example, if you need to blow up an image for a big auditorium, then a projector is probably a better choice. But Moffett acknowledges that for an increasing number of teaching situations and circumstances, plasma monitors are becoming the norm. LG knows this. Thus, companies like LG that manufacture monitors are pushing ease of access. “We want it to be easy to use,” says Moffett. “We know that teachers don’t want to worry about their display monitors; they want to teach.”

A Community of Converts
What’s that you say? You think that in these times of tight finances buying a bunch of plasma monitors for classroom use is too extravagant? You’ve gone to friends’ houses and shaken your head at the profligacy of their plasma-TV purchases?

That’s the same reaction Matthew Hladun got from his community of Queensbury in upstate New York. Hladun is the director of technology for the Queensbury Union Free School District, which consists of about 4,000 students across four schools (K-3, 4-5, 6-8, and 9-12), all on one campus. Hladun met some opposition from folks who thought he wanted to put plasma televisions in classrooms, not monitors. An easy mistake to make, and one that was soon set right.