We are thrilled to see a school district using WebEx in such a creative way - allowing them to tap expertise and bring a rich educational experience to their students.
Anoka-Hennepin schools are using a $170,000 federal grant to make the sprawling district's world a lot smaller.
The grant is financing a still-expanding video and audio conferencing system that allows students, teachers and administrators to meet and study together, no matter where they are.
Patrick Plant, district chief technology and information officer, said the new computer Web service can allow groups to get in touch via e-mail, Internet, cell phone, regular phone, or television monitor. That, Plant said, will make it much easier for teachers in far-flung schools to hold conferences, for Superintendent Dennis Carlson to deliver important messages to the entire district and field questions from anyone who's plugged in, and for students in an entire school to invite an author or scientist more than 1,000 miles away into their classrooms.
The system, called WebEx and licensed from Cisco Systems of San Jose, Calif., can also be used to expand district course offerings.
"A college teacher might come over to teach economics," Plant said. "Now, we can bring a teacher in without those teachers having to leave their campuses." District officials are also hoping they can use the new system to tap into resources available in other Twin Cities schools.
"There might be courses we want to offer, but the costs are too prohibitive for us to be able to do that," Plant said. "Through a mechanism like this our students would be able to participate in taking courses collaboratively with another school district."
This is just a portion of an article that ran in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune. You can see the entire article here.
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