Teaching Wall for 3 classrooms
This summer Fusion have installed 3 teaching wall designs for Audley School in Caterham. Designed for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 classrooms the interactive teacher walls have extra low centre cabinets to allow the smartboards to be fixed at a height for KS1 children to see and use.
The Teacher wall with whiteboards is installed in two of the three rooms and uses a sliding whiteboard designed to be positioned in front of the screen if required. All three of the school teacher wall cabinets have an integrated teacher desk with cable routes from the teachers PC to the interactive screen. Classroom teaching wall is a great way to integrate interactive displays, storage, whiteboards and teachers desk all in one unified design, concealing cables and sockets in the process. During the school teaching wall installation we had electricians in attendance to move sockets as necessary.
The large back panel in the teacher walls is strengthened to provide a secure mounting point for the smartboards weighing over 70KGs. The lower sections have runners for Gratnells trays.
Designing the 3 teacher walls involved a careful site survey. One wall was reduced in height to clear a fire alarm bell, and access holes created inside the cabinets to enable data cables to be plugged into ethernet ports without disrupting the network cabling.
The white finish on these 3 teaching wall cabinets really helps to ‘clean up ‘ the front of the classroom, which in turn helps with the prominence of the interactive display and integrated teacher wall whiteboard.
Fusion offer several formats for teaching wall with whiteboards. The images here show sliding whiteboards that can be positioned in front of the screen or to the side as a teacher prefers. A second format is to have the whiteboards as hinged doors. Whilst not as flexible this does win out in one aspect as the contents of the cabinet are not on view if the whiteboard is moved.
As the 3 classroom teacher wall units are for Reception and KS1 the height of the ‘break’ between trays and interactive screen is set at less than 500mm, stepping up to desk height (730mm) for the teachers desk. Overall the height is just over 2m for the 3 units, relatively low to allow for low ceiling heights, fire alarm bells and light fittings. Its worth noting that placing an interactive screen at such a low height does have an impact on viewing angles if a whole class is seated at tables. There’s a chance that children at the back of a room can be unsighted if the screen is low. Designing the classroom layout in conjunction with the teacher wall elevation is the best approach.
Fusion produce designs for teaching walls which reflect the requirements for hardware and teaching materials, storage and cable routes, ergonomics and viewing angles, as well as integrating trays, teacher desks and wall teacher materials. If you want designs and costs for teaching wall contact Fusion for a free design survey and quotation or click here to see more teacherwall installations.
