As a member of the Cisco Public Sector team, and being married to an educator, I have been engaged in a few (sometimes heated) debates on students, teachers and staff bringing their own devices to school. Many teachers have seen impressive results from utilizing students’ own devices in the education process, and with school budget cuts, most teachers do not have any other mobile option, so it’s safe to say that BYOD is taking a strong hold in education.
As a result, schools find themselves addressing unique issues of scalability, security, manageability and budget when it comes to developing and implementing BYOD policies. How will they accommodate in real time the explosion of new devices and applications that students and staff want to use on the network? How will they regulate who uses what device from which location in what manner? How will they support BYOD within a restricted budget?
I recently read an interesting post by Amy Blanchard on this topic. You should check out her recent post on the Cisco Mobility blog, she includes reference to an interesting case study -- definitely worth the read!
By the way, what is your position on BYOD in schools? Love to hear your interesting stories and insights!
We all know something about the evolution of agriculture. Once upon a time, a horse pulled a plow, led by a man who spent days upon days in the fields. And small, local rivers were dammed to redirect water to crops. Today, monster machines plow acres in minutes. And irrigation systems feed farms that are hundreds of miles away.
The long-term evolution of productivity and efficiency was dramatic. But what does the near-term evolution of business processes look like?
I hope you can join Cisco at Gartner’s Symposium/ITxpo. You’ll get near-term business evolution insights from folks like Barry Libenson, CIO of Land O’ Lakes, Inc., and Ron Gilson, CIO of Johnsonville Sausage, Inc. They’ll join Marie Hattar, Cisco’s Vice President of Enterprise Segment Marketing and Bhavani Amirthalingam, World Wide Technology Inc.’s Vice President of Information Technology on Monday, October 22nd at 3:30 pm to discuss the topic, “Work Your Way: A Mobility Strategy for Business Success”.
Cisco’s Unified Workspace makes “Work Your Way” possible
Just a short decade ago manufacturers communicated by phone, by email and by foot. Many business conversations occurred in the same geographic location. Product management, operations meetings and training often occurred on the same campus. A company’s culture and reputation was defined by things like face-to-face meetings, hallway conversations, employee recognition and the attention provided to customers.
Today, employees, supply chains and processes are widely dispersed. Meanwhile, skilled workers are retiring and they’re harder to replace. What evolutionary solutions are manufacturers choosing in order to bring remote and shrinking resources together? Read More »
In a recent interview, I discussed the importance of prioritizing business processes that have the most impact when deploying virtual desktops. One common business process that can significantly benefit from a virtual desktop delivery model is in customer service. Cisco offers an innovative contact center solution that creates the foundation for positive customer service, resulting in greater customer satisfaction, loyalty and competitive advantage. With the latest release of Cisco Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI), we are able to support Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise, further improving the benefits to contact centers that are moving to desktop virtualization.
By deploying Cisco Contact Center Enterprise as part of Cisco VXI, IT can now Read More »
Working from anywhere has its benefits —and increased productivity is one of them! I speak from personal experience as well as from Cisco’s evaluation of the productivity of 20,000 full-time teleworkers, which found that 60% of the time employees saved by not commuting went back to the company. With those kind of numbers, it’s no wonder more companies are increasingly adopting telecommuting policies. The private sector is already reaping the benefits and now it’s time for federal agencies to experience the same rewards.
In the video below, Cisco Federal CTO Dan Kent discusses how adopting flexible telecommuting policies and boosting employee productivity go hand in hand.
A large part of my job is explaining things to people. You can have the greatest technology in the world, but if you can’t explain to people why it is important, and how it will make a difference in their life or their business, then you have only done half the job.
That is why I am interested in different learning styles. One of the more widely-known models to describe different learning styles is Neil Fleming’s VAK/VARK model. Fleming postulates that there are three different types of learners: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. To vastly over-simplify Fleming’s work, some people learn best by seeing, others by listening and still others by touching and doing. While this might seem self-evident, understanding a student’s learning style can be a vital tool for teachers. Moreover, knowing your own learning style can significantly increase the amount you can learn and retain.
