ViewSonic is offering a Canadian school a “technology makeover” made up of $10,000 worth of the company’s gear.
With the Canadian School Makeover contest, the Walnut, Calif.-based vendor is offering schools a chance to tell them why they deserve the high-tech treatment, and one classroom will get one.
Canadian classrooms can register for the contest on the company’s Web site. After enrolling in the company’s ViewSchool program, teachers can submit 200 words on why they believe theirs is the most worthy. The contest runs through April 30, and will result in the $10,000 grand prize winner as well as a pair of second prize winners that will receive $1,000 in ViewSonic products. Winners will be announced in May.
“I love the solutions that are going into schools today, and we’re excited to be part of it,” said Colleen Browne, director of North American reseller and enterprise sales at ViewSonic. “There’s so much to choose from and so much to utilize in the spirit of teaching.”
ViewSchool is the company’s initiative to reach out to education customers, offering case studies, education-specific promotions and evaluation unit programs, among other tools and information for educators.
The contest comes at a time when the company and its partners are seeing an uptick in business in schools. While ViewSonic was once a monitor vendor, its expansion into other fields, including interactive and 3D projectors, full digital signage solutions, all-in-one PCs and tablets has opened up a variety of solutions for schools, Browne said.
“Interactive projector solutions are in very high demand right now,” she said. “Teachers can use them with their traditional whiteboard. They don’t like to part with their whiteboard and we understand that.”
Other top opportunities include the company’s ViewPad Android-powered tablet lineup, which are finding a variety of roles in school, including as presenting devices, for one-to-one classroom usage and even as a device for testing.
Browne said the company is making sure its partners are aware of the promotion and know how to make sure educational clients are signed up for it. Along with being a way of demonstrating thought leadership for educational clients, it’s sure to drive interest in the company’s products and solutions around them. And who knows, there might be some good opportunities to build compete solutions around that $10,000 in free ViewSonic hardware.
The Canadian School Makeover program is the first such program the company has offered, but Browne suggested that if the program meets expectations for performance and results, it will likely be done in the U.S. next.
