Hardware

John Abbott College taps Kramer for classroom revolution

Photo: Kramer

August 15, 2025

John Abbott College in Quebec has deployed technology from Kramer, which provides audio-visual experiences, to deploy all-new connected capabilities to classrooms using a range of AV over IP solutions.

The technology deployment, led by Canadian integration partner AVI-SPL, provides a new benchmark for scalable, flexible and user-friendly learning environments, according to a press release.

With a campus area of 1,600 acres, John Abbott College is an English-language public college located in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, near the western tip of the Island of Montreal. It was facing the challenge of creating additional teaching space without undertaking a major construction project and undertook a modular approach to increase classroom capacity.

Completed in just four months, 32 prefabricated units were installed to form Maple Hall, housing 13 classrooms designed to adapt to the evolving needs of educators and students alike.

The college chose Kramer, following a rigorous selection process, to replace traditional point-to-point cabling with a fully networked solution. This design enables any source to be routed to any display — across classrooms or even campus-wide — opening the door to more interactive and collaborative teaching methods.

"Technology should enhance the lesson, not interrupt it," Ryan Forster, coordinator of end user experience at John Abbott College, said in the release. "That's what Kramer helped us achieve. Instructors walk in and everything just works. They can focus on teaching, not on technology."

Each Maple Hall classroom features:

8-inch Kramer KT-208 touch panel with preview monitor for intuitive, one-touch control.
86-inch SMART interactive display and two additional 86-inch LG displays for optimal visibility.
Kramer PA-120Z audio amplifiers and GALIL 6-C ceiling speakers for crisp, consistent sound.
Kramer KDS-DEC7 video decoders ensure ultra-low latency over IP.
Kramer VIA GO devices enabling wireless 4K streaming from any laptop, phone or tablet.

All AV equipment is housed in podium racks, while AV traffic is routed through a network backbone of Cisco Meraki and Ubiquiti switches. Motion sensors and integrated controls for lighting and shades further streamline the user experience and improve energy efficiency.

For both audio and video, the system supports real-time flexibility, allowing instructors to:

Split displays for breakout group content.
Broadcast a single presentation across rooms.
Annotate shared content from any device.
Instantly adapt classrooms for different teaching styles.

The setup enables instructors to split screens by group, share content from one class to another or spotlight student presentations with a tap on the control panel. Instructors can annotate content directly on the interactive display or from their laptop and have it appear instantly on every screen in the room.

John Abbott College plans to expand Kramer's AVoIP infrastructure throughout the wider campus, redefining how learning spaces are designed and deployed.

"This is more than an AV upgrade," Forster said in the release. "It's a long-term investment in how we teach and learn. We're no longer locked into single-purpose rooms. If a classroom needs to serve a different course tomorrow or scale up for a guest speaker, we can do that without new infrastructure."