Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Yamaha CS-700 Video Sound Bar Now Available With Promethean Collaboration Tool

Yamaha Unified Communications is partnering with Promethean Interactive Displays and DisplayNote to outfit conference rooms with a three-for-one enterprise-grade plug-and-play collaboration tool. Exclusively available from Promethean, the display system simplifies meetings, making them more productive than ever before. It provides conference and collaboration spaces with high-quality, professional audio, video, and meeting room software. Featuring Yamaha’s award-winning CS-700 all-in-one Video Sound Bar, Promethean’s ActivPanel™ Titanium Pro, and DisplayNote Launcher application, the solution is fast and simple to deploy, set up, and operate.

“Think of this system as your next enhanced collaboration solution, bringing together three of the industry’s leaders in interactivity and superior communication,” said Michelle Baeza director strategic partnerships, Yamaha Unified Communications, Inc. “Our solution is affordable, easy to deploy and operate, providing organizations with everything they need to launch a collaborative meeting with one touch.”

Engineered from the ground up leveraging Yamaha’s years of audio and UCC expertise, the CS-700 Video Sound Bar integrates an adaptive beamforming microphone array for perfectly captured conversation; four Yamaha speaker elements to provide the highest degree of audio intelligibility; and a wide-angle HD camera that captures guests and the room in clear detail. The solution eliminates the inherent inefficiencies of operating disparate video and audio during calls and the eye sore of cables snaked around the room.…Read More

Lifesize Acquires Kaptivo to Fuel Next Generation of Advanced Collaboration

Lifesize®, a global innovator of immersive enterprise communication solutions, today announced the acquisition of Kaptivo, a digital collaboration solutions company. With the addition of Kaptivo, Lifesize further expands its portfolio of cloud-based unified communications and collaboration (UCC) solutions for contact centers, video conferencing and meeting rooms with a new suite of advanced collaboration tools.

An industry pioneer in computer vision, image processing and artificial intelligence for visual collaboration, Kaptivo develops solutions that make remote brainstorming, education, planning and content creation more effective and productive. Kaptivo’s current products address an unmet need in remote meetings: Connecting the hundreds of millions of existing, traditional whiteboards to modern collaboration tools so that participants can brainstorm, teach, plan and draw as if everyone was in the same room. The Kaptivo solution pairs advanced image processing software that eliminates shadows, reflections and people in front of the whiteboard with an enterprise-grade, secure, cloud-based collaboration platform.

Along with the acquisition, Lifesize also announced the immediate availability of a new Kaptivo-powered digital whiteboard application, providing enhanced capabilities for remote collaboration and instruction within Lifesize video meetings. According to a recent report from Nemertes Research, more than half of organizations are using or planning to use digital whiteboards by 2021.…Read More

How to survive the school budget crisis

School budget cuts are happening across the nation, as this demonstration in New Jersey makes clear. (AP)
School budget cuts are happening across the nation, as this demonstration in New Jersey makes clear. (AP)

Times are tough, and that’s especially true for education. A survey this past spring by the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) found that the school budget climate doesn’t reflect the recovery beginning to take hold in other sectors of the economy. In fact, school budget cuts will be noticeably more significant for 2010-11 than they were in the previous two years, the survey suggests.

To help school leaders in this time of need, we’ve put together a special section at eSchool News Online, called “Surviving the School Budget Crisis.” This brand-new resource features a collection of the best articles we’ve published recently that can help you save money—or spend it wisely.

For instance, schools still had at least $15 billion in formula-based stimulus money remaining to be spent as of press time—and spending this money wisely could pay dividends down the road. In our special resource center, you’ll find five key ways to make smart education technology investments that will have a lasting impact for your schools.…Read More

Schools turn to unified communications to save costs, boost productivity

Schools are increasingly considering unified communications solutions.
Schools are increasingly considering unified communications solutions.

More K-12 schools, colleges, and universities are turning to unified communications as a way to streamline campus communication and save much-needed money in unpredictable economic times, a new survey suggests.

Unified communications is the convergence of enterprise voice, video, and data services with software applications designed to achieve greater collaboration among individuals or groups and improve business processes. Component technologies include video, audio, and web conferencing; unified messaging; and more.

The benefits that education technology stakeholders see in implementing unified communications are the same that executives in the government and business sectors see, according to the second annual Unified Communications Tracking Poll from CDW Government Inc. (CDW-G), which provides products and services to education and other sectors.…Read More