Panasonic revolutionizes classroom style learning

Debuts Elite Panaboard – an interactive whiteboard for educational institutions and businesses

New Delhi, May 20, 2008: Panasonic, one of the leading manufacturers of electronic and electrical products for consumer, business and industrial use, today announced the launch of its revolutionary Elite Panaboard (Model No: UB-T780), an interactive whiteboard for educational institutions and businesses in India. The elite Panaboard allows direct display of the contents of a computer screen onto the board with large 77 inch screen for high-impact lessons and presentations, thus, enabling the users to operate their own software applications for business presentations or school lessons.

Windows® applications like PowerPoint and Excel, and even special educational software, can be operated right on the elite Panaboard, which also features a book software that can enable users to write or draw onto the screen, add notes, diagrams, text and images, providing powerful support for both business and education, with persuasive presentations backed by Internet resources for the office, and engaging lessons filled with large-screen visuals for the classroom. Its suppressed light reflection and durable surface allows clear viewing whilst being resistant to everyday bumps and knocks.

According to Mr. Sean Morita, Assistant Manager, Panasonic Communications Company (Document Solutions Company), “Usually the classroom style learning sessions tend to be dry and lack visual stimulation. For educators and trainers it is a challenge to create interactive content that has colourful visual elements to captivate and engage the audience. They find it is either too time-consuming or very expensive. Our latest innovation, the elite Panaboard is an advanced educational tool developed and tested with Australian teachers. It can help the presenter (teachers or trainers) and their audience (students or trainees) integrate images, video and the internet into everyday lessons for an enhanced and engaging learning experience.”

The Elite Panaboard makes it easy to create effective, eye-catching teaching material promotes a style of active, visual-based teaching and learning that makes classroom fun for both teachers and students. By connecting the interactive Elite Panaboard to a PC and projector, huge amount of information available on the web or on the PC can be brought right into the classroom enabling active visual-based education

The Elite Panaboard comes with an amazing device, Ergonomic electronic pen allows for smooth and easy mouse-like operations and lets users create vividly coloured drawings and illustrations that make lessons and presentations come alive. Also, the electronic pen also works as an eraser such that the presenter does not have to put it down and find a separate device every time a change needs to be made. A keyboard can also be displayed on the elite Panaboard screen allowing operations as that of a PC keyboard such that one can easily add or change information on education materials produced while teaching.

According to Mr. Ajay Madan, Business Head (Digital Imaging Systems), Panasonic Asia Pacific Pte Ltd. (India Office), “It is quite a challenge in itself for any presenter to engage an audience. Elite Panaboard offers a helping hand to such users and provide them with a solution to enhance their presentations so as to make them more effective and engaging. Panasonic’s dedication to quality and service is unparalleled and its long-standing experience in manufacturing projectors and interactive whiteboards makes the buying decision easier for our customers.”

The bundled Elite Panaboard book application enables smooth and easy lesson preparation and contains Panasonic tools for creating and editing teaching materials. A variety of tools are provided with the Elite Panaboard including virtually everything one might need to produce creative materials like Marker, Line, Highlighter, Shapes and Text. The shade tool allows hiding parts of text, illustrations or figures until the presenter wishes to reveal them thereby allowing preparation of simple quizzes with hidden answers.

The Gallery contains illustrations covering a wide variety of fields and topics enabling users to create teaching material and include animal photos, maps and other images that can be archived in elite Panaboard’s gallery for quick, easy retrieval. Part of the images displayed can be enlarged for viewing ease using the Magnifier tool (maps, small characters etc.).

The Elite Panaboard’s Attachment function lets one organize materials produced using the elite Panaboard book, files to be used in the classroom, shortcut icons and website addresses such that the material ready may be kept ready and is easily accessible again and again

The height of the Elite Panaboard’s display can be lowered to suit younger children and one can also attach hard copy material to the board using magnets

The Elite Panaboard’s surface has suppressed light reflection for minimum glare and durability. The main board has no electronic components and therefore slight scratches do not affect operation.

Price and Availability:

Panasonic Elite Panaboard (Model No: UB-T780) is available at Rs.1,35,000 plus applicable taxes through all authorized Panasonic channel partners in India.

About Panasonic

Panasonic is a brand of Matsushita Electric Industrial (MEI). It is the leading manufacturer of electronic and electrical products for consumer, business and industrial use. MEI is ranked 4th in Fortune 500 index for ‘Electronics and Electrical Equipments’ and ranked as a ‘World Super 50′ in Forbes. It is the world’s largest producer of consumer electronics and 34th largest company in the world with an annual spend exceeding US$5 billion on research and development. Panasonic has been delivering superior products and services in India since 1994. It has eight manufacturing establishments in the country with four sales outfits. It currently provides consumer products, household & home Appliances, office automation products and electronic products. The focus of the Company is on making everyday office tasks simpler, convenient and more energy efficient.

For more information, please contact:
Sundeep Mehta
Team Orange Communications Pvt. Ltd.
Mobile: 9868779770
Email: sundeep {at} teamorange(.)in