IPEVO are an interesting company. They make simple, affordable teaching tools and 32% of all primary schools in America use their products. Compupac IT Solutions are the company responsible for reselling in Ireland and have a great selection of their products. For example, if you’re looking for a visualiser for under €100, these are the people who can offer it. The latest product that has been created for the classroom is an attachment for these visualisers: it’s a wireless station for the visualiser which wirelessly allows you to “project” whatever the camera is looking at on to an iPad screen or any Windows or Mac computer.
Setting the station up isn’t difficult and if you’re using an iPad, you just need to download the accompanying App and you’re away. The uses of this station in an Irish classroom are dependant on what type of set up you have. If you have your visualiser quite close to your laptop, which is in turn quite close to the projector, this product isn’t really necessary. Its real power is if you’re using Apple TV and you want to manipulate what’s happening on the iPad while not being restricted by wires. For example one has the ability to annotate directly on the iPad with the image that is in front of the webcam. The video below tells you a little more about this.
The IPEVO Wireless Station can stream to 5 iPad simultaneously, which is ok if you only have 5 iPads. It’s a mystery to me why it can’t be unlimited. There’s a few classroom ideas on the IPEVO web site, some of which are worth checking out. Aside from all that, the wireless station also functions as a wireless USB drive and an SD card reader thanks to a dedicated SD card slot. This means one can save and manage files wirelessly with a browser-based interface. For me, this is probably the most useful function of the device.
For me, there isn’t a lot wrong with the Wireless Station in that it performs its function well. The only thing that I could say against it is that I can’t think of too many classrooms that need them right now. If I’m really looking for flaws, it’s only the fact that the device works solely on iPad tablets rather than Android-based ones but I’m sure that is easily rectified.
Overall, the Wireless station is a niche product that has limited use but if it is needed, it performs its job very well. Its most interesting component is the fact that it doubles up as a wireless shared storage device, and this alone makes it worth investigating. You can buy the IPEVO WS-01 Wireless Station from Compupac IT Solutions by visiting their web site.
