How schools’ transition to virtual impacts future events

Slightly nervous children have been heading back to class in recent weeks, the lucky ones are discovering that their school has been transformed while they were away. Education has probably been the most impacted of all industries by the global lockdown during 2020, partly because the education systems of most countries had fallen so far behind in their use of technology.

The countries that have the resources to invest in education have woken up to a historic chance to reinvent the school system. They have discovered many children equipped with laptops can study successfully from home, at least for some of the time. Teachers too have been on an accelerated learning curve to learn how to use Teams, video, OneNote, and record audio. They have discovered how much easier their lives are if children submit homework digitally, ideally via Google Apps or Office365. Children have found it much easier to save all their lessons and notes on a computer than to search through an exercise book.

Many teachers and schools will not want to go back to the way they taught before, even if the kids are back in front of them. This is driving a redesign of the classroom that suddenly needs large digital displays, WiFi, cameras, lapel microphones, styluses, cybersecurity, SaaS subscriptions, audio mixing capabilities, and powerful speakers. Classrooms will soon need soundproofing too, so they are not polluted by what is happening next door.

So why have the challenges of the classroom set the brains at Canapii whirling? Well, we passionately believe the future of events will be hybrid. Conference centers and hotels need to start enabling that by equipping meeting rooms similarly to the classrooms described above. The future will involve Canapii recognizing which room you have walked into and knowing who that meeting is with. Your devices should then auto-connect to the equipment in the meeting room, so your meeting starts smoothly and on-time. Canapii already has QR code and Bluetooth based location services, so that part is easy. We will soon begin work with the tech hardware industry on how to make all that tech in the meeting room Canapii-controlled.