There’s a different kind of college freshman on university campuses these days. According to EdWeek’s report on The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2011 survey, today’s freshman bears more of the cost of his or her own education than did past first-year college students, and, as a high school senior, today’s freshman paid more attention to his or her studies than those who came before.

So what does this mean for colleges?

For one, today’s students’ higher academic engagement could translate into demand for more innovative, challenging courses. But with the survey showing more students taking out large student loans as their parents’ unemployment rates remain stagnant, universities cannot raise tuition price tags to hire more faculty to develop new classes. President Obama said as much in his January 24 State of the Union address, mandating that schools use tools like “better technology” to improve their course offerings without raising costs. Read More »

Tags: Cisco, classroom technology, distance learning, edchat, edtech, education reform, Education Week, sotu, tandberg, teleconferencing, video conferencing, videoconferencing, virtual

A few months back I shared some ideas on how telepresence could help raise student satisfaction with higher education programs. It’s exciting, now, to share a success story of telepresence’s invaluable contribution to one business school program that earned rave reviews from participants.

Using Cisco TelePresence, the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business conducted its first custom executive education program. The Moore School connected leaders at textile manufacturer Fiberweb in Frankfurt, Germany, with professors in Columbia, South Carolina, allowing them to work together on marketing and strategy projects … and no one had to step foot on a plane.

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Tags: distance learning, edchat, edtech, edu2011, tandberg, video conferencing, videoconferencing

STOP PRESS:  Here’s the recording of this Webinar for those folks who couldn’t attend! Very worthwhile for Cisco Partners! Click the link: 

Cisco Manufacturing Mobile Video Collaboration Solution

The Just a quick reminder for Cisco Partners to attend the Cisco and Librestream Partner Webinar tomorrow (9th June 2011) at 8.00am Pacific. Find out about the exciting new solution that’s being adopted worldwide by customers like Boeing, GE and FIAT.

Remember how I told you I was really excited by this new Cisco and Librestream MMVC solution. Lots of information out on the web, and lots of questions so I thought I’d put a brief video together to give you an introduction and to see if we can get a discussion going and also to see if we can answer some of the questions for you. It addresses what really matters to many customers. What are the pain-points that manufacturers and industry have today? How do they get hold of the right people to fix things if something goes wrong, and how can they say ‘I see what you mean now’ — and really mean it? My original blog gave lots of information.

If you are a Cisco Partner and interested in building a manufacturing industry practice, this webinar is for you!

Register here: Cisco Manufacturing Mobile Video Collaboration Solution. Remember, it’s just one hour starting at 8.00 am Pacific, 12.00pm Eastern -- lots of opportunity to ask questions!  Read More »

Tags: Boeing, Borderless Networks, channels, Chrysler, Cisco, collaboration, Factory, FIAT, ge, general electric, globalization, Industry, innovation, Manufacturing, mobility, operations, opprtunity, partner, plant, productivity, R&D, Research and Development, security, tandberg, TelePresence, unified communications, video, wireless

In my recent blog, From Cairo to Nairobi- Eye to Eye at the Touch of a Button, I explained how we are achieving massive cost savings and efficiencies at Cisco as a global organisation and more recently across the continent of Africa, thanks to immersive TelePresence.

In fact the vast majority of our sales force in Africa, 7 out of 10 employees, now have access to this flagship communication and collaboration tool at their local Cisco office. This means they can meet face to face in a life-size virtual meeting with colleagues, customers and partners across the globe without the need to travel, as if they were sat in the same meeting room just across the table from one another.  So what are we doing for the remaining 30% of employees on the continent who do not have access to this capability?

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Tags: africa, coc-collaboration, collaboration, communication, cost saving, desktop, Emerging Markets, face to face, high definition, tandberg, video

In my last blog, “Africa – Connected Continent – At last”, I described how the arrival of affordable internet bandwidth in Africa is enabling companies to use technology to transform how they do business. Today at Cisco we have realised huge efficiencies in how we conduct our business internally and we have fundamentally changed how we communicate and collaborate with customers and partners, thanks to TelePresence.

TelePresence allow people to meet face to face over the network without the need to travel. Participants enjoy a high definition, high quality, life-size video experience and can share rich media content. We can now bring in subject matter experts from over one thousand Cisco TelePresence rooms across the globe and put them together with the vast majority of our workforce in Africa as if they were sat just across the table from each another; all at the touch of a button. In fact we can connect Cisco’s TelePresence rooms with any customer or partner TelePresence room, provided they have a B2B exchange with Cisco, so the possibilities are huge.

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Tags: africa, coc-collaboration, cost saving, efficiencies, high definition, meeting, tandberg, TelePresence, video, virtual