Samsung Smart Classroom for Gold Coast School

Samsung Smart School classroom

A.B Paterson College, a progressive private school on the Gold Coast, has today announced that it has been selected by Samsung to be the first school in Australia to be a part of its ‘Lighthouse Program’.

In a letter to parents, school principal Brian Grimes had this to say about the Samsung program:



“Samsung is at the forefront of technology development with the 21st Century skills as their (sic) focus. This partnership will bring many benefits to our students, including having the latest Slate PCs and learning software available well in advance of other educational institutions. Our work in eLearning is set to provide much leadership to schools and developers of technology in the very near future.

We are now in the process of developing state-of-the art collaborative learning spaces within the College. This initiative will include a ‘Samsung Smart Classroom’ for student and teacher development. This will enable us to further engage with people and educational research anywhere in the world, and provide many opportunities for our students in their learning journey.”

The devices will be rolled out to students from next year. In 2013 years 4 to 6 will receive the computers, while students in the Senior school will do so in 2014, and Lower Junior students in 2015. This new focus on eLearning will also inform the design of any new building work that the school undertakes.

Additionally, the school also announced that it is changing its learning management software from EduKate, to Desire2Learn, that, according to its website,  “is a global leader in Cloud-based (SaaS) learning solutions and provides an open and extensible platform to over 700 clients and over 8 million learners in higher education, K-12, healthcare, government and the corporate sector (including Fortune 100 companies).”

Mr Grimes also wrote that more detail will follow in the coming months, along with information nights for parents. I’ve also written to Samsung for more information on the Lighthouse Program, and the hardware that the school will receive. No reply was received at the time of writing, but I will update this story when I do so.

Samsung Tomorrow, Samsung’s Global Blog, provide this overview of how the Samsung Smart Classroom program works:

1. Interactive Management Solution allows teachers to easily deliver contents to students, share their own or an individual student’s screen with the class, and monitor student progress in real-time. Instructors can conduct group activities, Q&As, tests or instant polls, and then instantly call the class to attention by locking student screens via voice command.

2. Learning Management System allows teachers to provide course materials including e-textbooks, learning apps and timetables, as well as delivering school notices and forums for extracurricular activities, which can be accessed by students at any time.

3. Student Information System is a management tool which enables teachers to track student attendance, general information, grade history and prizes or demerit points.