Standards and Exceptions: Where Pedagogy and Technology Align, When They Fight, and Handling Exceptions | Check My AV
The Higher Ed AV space can be one of the most exciting in AV as it allows for innovation and a captive audience. Add the idea that there are students whose whole purpose for being there is to learn, grow, and invent and the space creates innovation within innovation. Faculty learn what the space is capable of and want to focus on a specific application. They may also realize what the technology is incapable of and demand a change.
All of this can be amazing for design and innovation. It can also be a nightmare for the service team. As different departments have different pedagogical needs, strict demands may be made of the campus Audiovisual team. This can be especially daunting when many tech managers have worked diligently to create and implement classroom technology standards across campus.
The first resource to tap into for new demands is understanding what you already have! I come from an audio engineering background, and using digital audio workstations it always fascinates me on how much they can do and how little we actually do with them. Sure, get any group of 100 engineers together and they probably use the software to their full capacity, but take any 1 of those engineers and they work with what they know and what works best with their workflow. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, but it doesn’t mean the system is being used to its full capacity.
The same is often true of our classroom systems. My experience is that once we design and install a system, it tends to get used for that one design and purpose, but the components installed are capable of so much more. Discussing with your vendor rep, integrator, or other institutions can open up great new ideas for what you already have and are trained on. The department you make the changes for will be ecstatic, even if you actually made life simpler/cheaper/more streamlined for yourself. Maximizing resources you already have is the best first step.
Sometimes though, things aren’t that easy.
CheckmyAV was started in order to give AV techs a quick and easy resource to check their audio-visual systems. Tired of going to video sites and dealing with ads embedded in videos and inconsistent content, checkmyAV was created to give techs useful video and audio files to check their setup while being ad-free and user friendly. checkmyAV content is created by Craig Shibley.