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Cisco Teaches School Convergence |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Thursday, 15 June 2006 |
Cisco Systems partner
Dimension Data has completed a roll out of a new data and voice communications
infrastructure network for Melbourne
Grammar School.
About 1,300
students and 200 teachers can use notebooks to connect wirelessly to the School's
local area network from any classroom, library or staff room across three
campuses in South Yarra and Caulfield.
Cisco Unified IP
Phone 7960G handsets and portable soft phones allowing teachers to use their laptops
as their primary desktop telephone device replacing an old PVX system where one
phone was set up with multiple extensions and staff members had to share the
line and take messages for each other.
The new system
not only gives each teacher their own extension number, but allows them to take
it with them everywhere they go.
The system is making
much better use of the School's existing investment in notebooks by linking them
to school resources via 100 wireless access points connectivity at the two South Yarra campuses.
The junior
school in Caulfield is connected via a point to point microwave bridge, and
also has Cisco wireless installed for the students in years 5 and 6. Additional
wireless access points are due to be rolled out in the June term break.
All managed from
the CiscoWorks Wireless LAN Solution Engine server and all linked to their Microsoft
Outlook email accounts the teachers use the Unified Communications system can
now use their notebooks as their primary communications platform, receiving
communications on or off campus including voicemail online as audio wave files
delivered to their email accounts.
Teachers can
also perform administrative tasks such as managing attendance records, tutoring
groups, emailing, and marking students' homework submitted through the school
portal.
The School has
also extended the portal to parents who are able to use it to remotely monitor
their children's academic progress.
The kids aren't
left out of the system either. Students use their notebooks to wirelessly
access school resources such as online databases, printing facilities and the
school portal, plus Internet services such as newspaper journals, email and
forums.
Students can
publish work electronically on the school portal, or print a hard copy, making
the library or classroom a one stop shop for assignments.
Sue Lines, the
school's director of information technology, said: "Migrating to a Unified
Communications environment has major benefits for our school, for our students
and our staff.
" Moreover, we believe that networking technologies are playing an
increasingly important role in supporting the overall school community and in
helping us provide a world's best practice learning and teaching environment."
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