• School: CSG Het Streek College
• Location: Ede, the Netherlands
• Solution: Projection whiteboard walls paired with short-throw projectors
• Scale: 46 classrooms
• AV partner: AVINTER

A standard glossy whiteboard was never designed to be projected onto. Point a short-throw projector at one and the same gloss that makes marker ink look crisp also throws back a bright hotspot exactly where the lens sits, washing out whatever is on screen. Schools that want both a projector and a genuine writing surface in the same room are usually offered a choice: keep the whiteboard and accept a poor projected image, or install a projection screen and lose the writing surface.

At CSG Het Streek College, that choice had to be made 46 times over, across standard classrooms, technical rooms with lab benches and sinks, and workshop rooms finished in bare concrete with open shelving for student work. A single fix that worked in every one of those room types, not just the easiest ones, was the actual brief.

Chameleon supplied a projection whiteboard wall for each room: a ceramic steel surface with a matte finish that keeps the projected image glare-free while remaining fully magnetic and just as easy to write and erase on as a standard whiteboard. In several rooms the wall is built from three panels joined edge to edge, wide enough to match the short-throw projector’s throw ratio without the image spilling past the writing surface on either side.

Each wall is sized to the room’s projector, mounted overhead on the same wall so the image cannot be blocked by a teacher standing at the board, and wired through a single power point and cable channel rather than a visible tangle of cabling. Every panel uses the same TÜV-certified magnetic mounting system as the rest of the Chameleon range: steel plates fixed to the wall carry the panel, which has its own magnetic backing sheet, so the board sits flush against the wall with no visible screws or brackets.

In a standard classroom, the wall sits above rows of desks with nothing more than a wall clock and a small marker and eraser holder alongside it, so the board reads as the only fixture in the room. In a technical room, the same wall runs directly above a fitted sink and workbench, positioned so students working at the bench can still see the projected content without craning around equipment stored beneath it.

Some of these rooms are painted in warm terracotta or soft pink tones rather than plain white, and the same board and projector combination sits just as comfortably against those colours, mounted flush rather than as an obvious add-on.

The workshop rooms are the most demanding setting in the school: bare concrete walls, open shelving, and stacked storage crates labelled by class group for ongoing student projects. Mounting a projection whiteboard directly onto exposed concrete asks more of an installation than a plastered classroom wall would, yet the finished result reads no differently to the boards elsewhere in the school, the same panel, the same short-throw projector overhead, and the same reflection-free surface, just set against a rougher backdrop.

Every panel installed at CSG Het Streek College uses the same ceramic steel surface as the rest of the Chameleon whiteboard range: a magnetic, scratch-resistant enamel layer with a lifetime warranty on writing and dry-erase performance. That standard construction is what makes a school-wide rollout practical. Every one of the 46 rooms gets the same durable surface and the same warranty, whether it sits in a bright standard classroom or a concrete-walled workshop.

A rollout this size only works if the whiteboard and the projector are specified together rather than as two separate purchases layered on top of each other. AVINTER handled the projector side of every room, short-throw Epson units mounted overhead and wired through a single power point and cable channel, while Chameleon supplied the panel sized and finished to match. The result is a consistent setup from room to room: a teacher moving from a maths lesson to a technical class works with the same board and projector combination instead of relearning a different AV system each time.

For CSG Het Streek College, that meant a school-wide AV upgrade that didn’t force a trade-off between projecting and writing in any of its 46 rooms, delivered as a single coordinated rollout with AVINTER handling the projector side of every installation.

Planning a similar upgrade for your school? Discuss your project with our specialists, or visit our projection whiteboard page to see the surface in more detail.