Smart school equipment

Since 2014, students in Pully have taken part in a pilot project: a dozen or so classes in several school buildings were equipped with interactive whiteboards (IWBs), which work with a computer projector and offer new methods and educational opportunities. In the event of a favorable review, approval from the Canton, and the support of the Pully City Council, these whiteboards could eventually be extended to all the high schools in our city.  

A few years ago, Pully began to modernize its school infrastructure: eight buildings were fully wired and interconnected using fiber optics. WiFi coverage was also set up. For teachers, it is now possible to freely access the educational network of the Canton of Vaud and the public has access to the “Guest WiFi” when meetings take place in the school complexes. This necessary development preceded another point of progress: the installation of interactive whiteboards (IWBs), which work with a projector and have been tested in about a dozen classes.

When not connected to a computer, these IWBs look like traditional whiteboards. Once connected to the computer and projector, they turn into touch screens equipped with digital features, including that of writing on their surface with “virtual” pens. And besides the immediate interaction between board and computer format, IWBs allow teachers to save their courses (and annotations added to the board) on a server or share them online.

In Pully, several primary and secondary school classes, at Collège Arnold Reymond among others, as well as specific classrooms (computer or science labs), were provided with these smart boards. Different models of the board, from separate vendors, were installed in Pully, further optimizing the test phase. At the end of the pilot phase and once the Canton’s recommendations have been established, a review will be conducted to determine whether it is possible to expand this digital material to all school buildings. We will then have to wait for the City Council’s vote on the finance lease to imagine seeing all 112 Pully classrooms equipped with these digital boards. In the meantime, the City of Pully is taking advantage of the gradual replacement of the old blackboards with these interactive boards when it undertakes renovations in the classrooms.