Today’s students are wired -- which is now an old school way of saying connected!
In fact today they are wireless! They have grown up with technology. They have integrated it into their lives. They socialize through technology. Technology, supported by robust and secure networks, gives them instant access to information at home and on the go.
But, what about their classroom experience?
Some forward thinking educators have realized that technology is a key ingredient in driving student engagement and learning outcomes. These educators are embracing new learning programs that feature netbooks or a tablet. In the hands of students, these Internet-based devices can help to increase collaboration and engagement, creating a technology-rich learning environment that feel familiar to students.
Virtual desktops are not new to education. Virtual workspaces are. What’s the difference?
The Cisco Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) delivers virtual workspaces that go beyond traditional classroom desktops to unify virtual desktops, voice, and video. Through VXI, every computer and mobile device can now be a learning resource. Education IT leaders now have the ability to deliver next generation education workspaces, without compromising the user or educational experience, as is common in traditional VDI deployments.
Cisco is partnering with T.H.E Journal, Citrix and NetApp to host a live Twitter Chat on K-12 Next-Gen Learning Environments on May 17, 2012, at Noon, U.S. Pacific Time. We’ll discuss the findings of a recent survey on incorporating next-generation computing devices and mobile learning in K-12 education.
Video and education are a natural pair in many ways. With distance learning on the rise, it’s no surprise that more universities are turning to video as a way to scale their faculty and brand in ways never before thought possible. But what about K-12 education? Does video make sense in this learning environment?
To answer this question, we decided to take a look at one of our most innovative K-12 education customers, Mobile County Public School System (MCPSS) in Alabama. With 91 schools, 60,000+ students, and 8,100 employees spanning 1,200 square miles, MCPSS needed a comprehensive solution to help connect and share knowledge across campuses.
Campus communications, professional development, inter-school collaboration and lecture capture were just some of the areas that MCPSS was looking to address with Cisco’s Video solutions. With this in mind, MCPSS installed digital signs in the lobbies and cafeterias to help keep students, parents and teachers informed, while also helping to spark “incidental learning”.
Schools, colleges and universities around the world are using video technologies as a fundamental agent in the process of education transformation. A new white paper commissioned by Cisco and conducted by Wainhouse Research concludes:
In concert with global macro-economic changes and the growth of social interconnectedness worldwide, education is undergoing a major shift, as brick-and-mortar classrooms are opening up to rich media content, subject matter experts, and to one another. This shift has been influenced largely by technological and pedagogical trends, greater worldwide access to the Internet, an explosion of mobile phone users, and the appreciation for these technologies by young people, as well as by teachers. Video appears poised to be a major contributor to the shift in the educational landscape, acting as a powerful agent that adds value and enhances the quality of the learning experience.
In the wake of the Apple iBooks announcement back in January, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan quickly called on USA schools to fully deploy digital textbooks by 2017. To any observer of the glacial speed of digital conversion in our schools today, this goal seems aggressive.
What could help speed up the pace of these conversions? Well for one, large technology companies.
Owning diverse school curriculum and procurement customer relationships by the thousands, broad product lines, large-scale resources, partnerships, and professional services support, large technology companies could spark more BYOD and 1:1 conversions with more complete, more innovative, and more easy-to-use products and services. And they could help fix the massive challenges schools have when they look to plan and tackle these digital conversions.
He recorded a fantastic talk via WebEx about his experiences getting kids excited about technology in education. His enthusiasm is contagious as he passionately discusses the results of his efforts.
Woz, as he is affectionately known, is a huge supporter of teachers and education. He speaks of his great experiences in school as a child and his incredible respect for his teachers and the schools that he attended.
He acknowledges that testing has its problems, that it’s not as powerful as a subjective judgment. He’d rather see a way to evaluate students that takes into account the individual and his or her talents and needs.
You probably saw the headlines about the devastating tornadoes that swept through the Dallas, Texas metropolitan area a few weeks ago. Our hearts go out to those who suffered damage.
As the Lancaster area of the storm-hit region undergoes its recovery, I recently read that at least its public school students have much to look forward to in the months ahead. Lancaster schools recently announced a plan to create a “STEM District”—a union of schools committed to systematically changing teaching practices to promote state-of-the-art education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. It’s an exciting opportunity for the historically economically disadvantaged district to become a national model for teaching these critical topics. Read More »
Having worked on Cisco’s London 2012 programme for more than two years, it seems strange that the Games themselves will last just four and a half weeks in total – which seems far too short for all the effort going in from everybody !
Thankfully, we see the Legacy component of this partnership lasting for many years to come, and our “Building A Brilliant Future” programme has been designed to build a lasting legacy based on learning, skills, innovation and entrepreneurship that will hopefully create jobs and drive business growth particularly in SME’s.
Ah, the fieldtrip! Brings back memories, doesn’t it? Well, actually, the memory I always recall is not entirely a happy one. Sure the zoo was fun, but what I remember most was the bus breaking down, the monkey hitting my friend in the eye with a butterscotch candy and a dark-haired boy promptly throwing up when we walked into the hippo area. It was still fun, though, to get out of school for the day and explore what we were learning hands on. An opportunity for real-life engagement in the learning process. Unfortunately, with budget struggles, time constraints and often just a school’s rural location, fieldtrips are few and far between for many schools.
More and more schools, however, as I’ve written before, are finding ways to take virtual fieldtrips (or VFTs) allowing students to participate in the same live, interactive experience without bus rides, transportation costs and loss of instructional time. Read More »
Classes just got a little more interesting at Harvard Law School, Columbia University and Sciences Po, an elite university in Paris.
A 65-student class dedicated to making students think critically about reimagining society, “Progressive Alternatives: Institutional Reconstruction Today,” is using telepresence to create a discussion that transcends three campuses located in different parts of the world.
According to an article in The Harvard Crimson, the class is taught by Harvard Law School professor Roberto M. Unger and includes commentary from Columbia University professor Jeffrey D. Sachs and Laurence Tubiana, a professor from Sciences Po.
With its telepresence system, the instructors and class are able to interact in realtime. The first hour of the class is a lecture and comment from each professor and the remaining one hour allows times for questions and a lively discussion. Read More »
Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane. As a child, did you dream of making it as a professional athlete? Or, perhaps, as you grew a little older and your own athletic prowess gave way to other skills, you wished to someday work among the sports stars you so loved and admired?
Thanks to the extensive education outreach programs provided by the Pro Football Hall of Fame, today’s youngsters who aspire to careers in professional football can learn how to make these dreams into realities. Using telepresence, the Hall of Fame reaches students in all 50 states with virtual fieldtrips to National Football League (NFL) offices and museum collections and archives. The in-person, real-time telepresence connections let participating students speak directly with NFL doctors, accountants, public relations leaders, sales staff, and more, enabling them to learn how these employees earned their positions and what it takes to succeed. The telepresence links also let the Hall of Fame use special document cameras and computers to bring some of its 15,000 football artifacts “directly” into classrooms. Read More »
Mobile devices are an absolute necessity for the current generation of students. The 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report found that two-thirds of students (66%) cite a mobile device (laptop, smartphone, tablet) as “the most important technology in their lives.” At the same time, educators at schools, colleges and universities are embracing mobile learning and “Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives to provide engaging and collaborative 21st century instruction and learning. These emerging trends are creating new demands on school and university networks to accommodate this unprecedented influx of users, devices and applications.
To help education leaders respond to these challenges and opportunities, Cisco recently announced Beyond BYOD, a next-generation solution which allows schools, colleges and universities to implement multiple device strategies without compromises.
Since the earliest days of education television, teachers have recognized the potential power of video. As successive studies have shown, video has the power both to reinforce the educational message and to engage the student – not only the motivated student but the student who would rather be somewhere else!
What will our educational system look like in a decade? Will there even be physical classrooms? Will school have evolved into some sort of theme park full of interactive technologies and fun learning gadgets?
Technology will certainly play a part in creating the exciting atmospheres that educators seek to provide for their students. Educators and administrators have even taken the conversation about educating our youth to the next level by utilizing social media tools such as Twitter and Edmodo.com to communicate with each other for fresh ways to inspire youth to find their own education intriguing.
Today’s students are wired -- which is now an old school way of saying connected!
