Partnership extends innovative video conferencing approaches to three districts
Education Networks of America (ENA), in collaboration with Wainhouse Research, today released a rich suite of resources [2] [1] that illustrate how school districts are advancing the use of today’s video conferencing technology to connect, collaborate, educate, and optimize learning experiences.
Three school districts that are using desktop and mobile video conferencing in creative and innovative ways are featured as a set of companion case studies. These school systems vary in size, student demographics, and implementation strategies, but each is creating effective and meaningful collaborative learning and communication spaces for their students, educators, administrators, and the broader community.
The proliferation of mobile devices combined with new desktop and mobile video collaboration solutions enables educators and learners, as end-users, to engage in anytime/anywhere video communications via their smartphones, tablets, and/or computers.
Next page: Key components of the video conferencing resources
“Today’s dynamic student-centered classrooms will likely transform video technology from a “nice to have” to a “must have” in education in order to meet students’ evolving learning and collaboration needs. Forward-looking districts are taking the steps now to evaluate and integrate a robust, scalable and managed video collaboration suite of services that enhances learning and administrative efficiencies,” stated Monica Cougan, senior product marketing professional at ENA.
The resources include several key components:
• White Paper, titled We Are Connected: The Power of Video Collaboration in Education, examines video’s expanding role in education and how it has evolved from a costly, complex, and cumbersome tool to a personalized learning and communications tool.
• District Case Studies of the Metropolitan School District of Decatur Township (Indiana), Monroe County Schools (Tennessee), and Franklin West Supervisory Union (Vermont) that capture the innovative ways they are leveraging video collaboration today.
• Tool Kit with Model Use Cases and Getting Started Guide provide actionable insights into how districts can shift away from traditional classroom and administrative support models and transition to digital and flexible learning environments.
“We are seeing a remarkable shift to what I like to call ‘walking endpoints’ in education. These endpoints are getting much attention for addressing a broad set of personal digital education requirements via 1:1 and BYOD initiatives, but they also signal a shift in how real-time, blended, and online learning take place. I’ll add that this applies to non-traditional learner activities as well, such as peer-to-peer collaborating, learner content creation, and learners socializing using real-time video and web collaboration. Video is still in its early days in terms of mass adoption – there are some campuses far ahead of others. But one in four educators and educational service providers told us in our recent Distance Education and e-Learning survey that more than half of their learners engage in those non-traditional activities. Those numbers are only going to increase over time,” added Alan D. Greenberg, senior analyst and partner at Wainhouse Research.
The suite of resources provides information about the emergence of video collaboration in K-12 education, as well as identifies best practices that educators can examine and replicate in their own districts.
Material from a press release was used in this report.