SWOT-NET Powers up 24/7 learners

One of the things about working in IT as an industry is, that we have been following a 24/7 "work as a state of mind" model for as long as I can remember. The ability to see work as a continuous process enables us to better manage the complexity of our fast moving industry. Further, it allows us a chance to balance home life commitments since I can work from home just as well as I can in the office.

Technology has allowed me personally, to work in a constant state but, at a level and pace that suits me. I know from time stamps on emails within the SWOT team, my staff also follow a similar pattern of anywhere, anytime working.

It is not a company policy, I must stress this. When I talk to my team about there working practices, it is clear that working with technology, especially systems that support true mobility, enables them to work as and when it best suits them. Of course we all have deadlines to meet in our business lives, but, working with technology, allows a greater level of flexibility as to where and how we work or learn.



Part of working in IT is about keeping up, and rightly so. Technology shifts ever onwards as we all know. To keep up our commitments professionally to both our vendors and ultimately clients, all of the SWOT team are in a constant learning cycles, with exams and assessments taking place bi annually in most cases, but with so much tech, this is a constant stream of research, understanding and proving competency, believe me.

Luckily for us in IT, much of our learning at least, is managed via distance e-learning. A lot via learning outfits such as Pearson Vue who many of you may know. Some of the great courses include a combination of many media streams, video, audio and all can be accessed on demand, securely and at a pace and time to suit us as individuals.



So why am I telling you about this stuff.....?



At SWOT, we can see a big shift in education within our schools system. The change is being driven largely by the students. Many young students attending school in the UK today will almost certainly be using technology at home, either network enabled PC’s Laptops or Tablets, or mobile devices such as, smart phones or cellular devices, Internet enabled TV’s or games consoles. The way they interact with the tech, what they view, at what time, in what location can all be determined by them. They are empowered by this ability and we see the young students really embracing technology in much the same way we have working at SWOT.

At SWOT we feel that simply having a device, with which you can access data at any time, and in a fashion to suit you the user, naturally leads to an anywhere, anytime curiosity and mental state.



So what for UK education?



We feel that by embracing technology within the academic system, schools could create a 24/7 learning state of mind within all UK students. Not only this but, it can be used to reach a more personal level of learning ensuring the pace and complexity of content is engaging and relevant to each student. Oh not just the students, the teachers who are also learners too.

The challenges for schools looking to move towards a 24/7 learning model can seem daunting.

Adopting practices such as, mobility and e-learning from the business world and repackaging these to suit schools, colleges and universities will enable delivery of your learning content and at a personal level to all students. SWOT-NET has a wide range of 1^st rate services, systems and applications to power up academic networks.

Being able to deliver and measure personal education really is possible today. There are real world examples where technologies such as, VWAN, Wireless, LAN, SAAS, LMS

+ CMS and Cloud Services etc are being successfully deployed within the academic community.

AT SWOT we have been working with schools and colleges here in the UK delivering world class systems to support Simple Ways Of Teaching and 24/7 learning.

We would be very happy to talk to you if 24/7 learning is something you feel your school or college might benefit from, or you would like to know more about our Simple Ways Of Teaching solutions, you can reach our friendly staff by using the following link here http://www.swotnet.co.uk/contact/



All the best

Andy and the SWOT Team

Distance Training Gets Better: Interactive Whiteboards Plus Video

Travelling to teacher training classes subtracts from productivity and adds to a schools/ college’s carbon footprint.

Now, the growing availability of video endpoints in educational establishments means teachers and staff don’t necessarily need to travel for training. “Increasingly, teachers are joining live training sessions over the network, using PCs, IP phones, or high-end telepresence systems,” says Scott Aukema, Cisco’s telepresence architecture manager for the public sector.

Even interactive whiteboards can serve as video endpoints, with the necessary tools. Then remote participants see everything the trainer displays or writes on the whiteboard as if they were in the same room as the trainier.

I See What You See

Suppose a new teacher named Sarah is hired and needs training on school security policies. Just before class begins, she can log in to the video collaboration session from her desk, a conference room, training room, or telepresence room.

When class begins, the instructor initiates the video call, and Sarah and her fellow trainees in all locations see and greet each other. Then the trainer starts sharing the desktop of a PC connected to the whiteboard to show a presentation, diagram, image, webpage, form, or anything else. As Sarah watches her display, she sees as the trainer annotates the diagram appearing on the interactive whiteboard. The trainer might circle an area on a facilities map and draw an arrow pointing to a critical location.

Keeping Perspective

Until recently, the in-person experience broke down after the trainer made the presentation or video window larger or smaller. “Then the annotations no longer aligned with the image and did not change size proportionately with the image,” Aukema explains. “As a result, a circle the instructor drew on part of a diagram might no longer be around the item of interest.” This was distracting, shifting people’s focus to the technology instead of the training content.

The solution is Cisco® Synch technology, which works with Cisco devices used to display live video on the whiteboard (Figure 1). Trainers can freely add video calls from multiple locations to their interactive whiteboard training sessions, and rearrange and resize the presentation and video however they’d like. “You can repeatedly move and resize the PC image display, and all your markups will move with it, retaining the right size and position relative to the image,” says Kerry Best, manager for public sector telepresence at Cisco. “Combining interactive whiteboards with video helps trainers keep remote participants engaged, making it practical for schools or local authorities, to offer more types of training at a distance.”

To watch a video showing Cisco Synch in action, visit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A4imn7SzY8 To read more about Cisco Synch, visit: http://www.tandberg.com/interactive-whiteboards-video-conferencing-synch.jsp

To find out more about Synch and SWOT-NET you can reach us here http://www.swotnet.co.uk/contact/

Simple Ways of Teaching Presents Green Practices That Save Money with Cisco Systems

At SWOT NET, we are constantly looking at how technology can deliver, while ultimately remaining light in terms of both energy consumption and complexity.With rising costs on one side and budget cuts on the other, colleges and universities need creative ways to save money. “Energy consumption is a good target because it also supports campus green initiatives,” says John Speicher, public sector industry solutions manager for Cisco.

Here are four ways that campuses are reducing costs and their carbon footprints at the same time.

1.Collaborate Over the Network Instead of Across the Highway

“Web sharing and video conferencing can often replace travel between campuses, saving money, time, and greenhouse gas emissions,” says John Tuohy, education solutions manager for Cisco. University of Notre Dame, in South Bend, Indiana, uses Cisco WebEx® technology for meetings ranging from collaborating with remote architects on building blueprints to training alumni association members on development. Travel costs decreased by $1 million in 2009 alone, significantly reducing the university’s carbon footprint.
Similarly, the 53-campus Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system uses Cisco WebEx for staff software training. “The trainer reduced travel by 90 percent by eliminating three roundtrips a week of up to 10 hours apiece,” Tuohy says.

2. Build Smarter Buildings

Constructing new buildings with a single IP network instead of multiple separate networks for building systems can also reduce energy consumption. Ave Maria University in Florida took this approach in new construction, adding thousands of network-connected sensors to monitor the environment in every building on campus. The sensors communicate with automated building systems to conserve energy while making sure people are comfortable. For example, lights turn on and off automatically, depending on whether a motion sensor detects a person in the room. The university is saving an estimated $600,000 in annual utility bills and avoided $350,000 in annual personnel costs.

3. Green the Data Center

Campus data centers also are good targets for energy reduction. “A popular project is consolidating different application servers onto a private cloud platform to lower data center space, power, and cooling needs,” Speicher says. “In addition to saving energy, campuses that virtualise their applications save time for IT staff, freeing more time to work on projects for learning or administrative efficiency.”
Other campuses are reducing data center energy use by consolidating to fewer network switches with more ports apiece. The University of Arizona reduced power consumption per port by 30 percent by using Cisco Nexus® switches in the data center. And the Apollo Group, parent company of University of Phoenix, freed up several rows of power-consuming devices in the data center by implementing Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches.

4. Green the Desktop

Yet another green IT strategy is replacing desktop PCs with more energy-efficient thin clients. Each person’s applications and data reside not on the desktop, but on a cloud platform in the data center, like a Cisco Unified Computing System™. “You just turn on your thin client and your desktop appears just like it would if the information were stored on your PC,” says Tuohy. This arrangement is called a virtual desktop infrastructure, or VDI. “Not only do VDIs reduce energy use, they also lower capital costs because thin clients cost less than PCs and don’t have to be replaced as often,” says Tuohy.

Claremont McKenna College in Southern California uses a Cisco Unified Computing System to host a VDI for the Joint Sciences Department, which also serves other colleges in the Claremont University Consortium. During classes or research sessions, students check out specialized scientific software, returning it to the shared pool when finished.

Calculate the Savings

Cisco has developed Green Business Value Calculators that colleges and universities can use to project economic as well as environmental benefits of several technologies. The projected green benefits have been validated by Domani, a leading environmental consulting firm, and are consistent with customers’ real-life experience.

To use the calculator, visit: www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/ppt/Cisco_IBSG_Green_Business_Value_Calculators.ppt

To read about Cisco® Connected Learning solutions for higher education, visit: http://campustechnology.com/microsites/cisco-connected-learning_10a/home.aspx

To read about Cisco solutions for environmental sustainability, visit: www.cisco.com/web/about/citizenship/environment/

To find out how SWOT NET and Cisco can help reduce your energy consumption and move towards a greener ICT infrastructure to support your teaching and learning needs, please use the link here to reach us http://www.swotnet.co.uk/contact/

SWOT Net and Cisco: Extending the Classroom Outside the Walls

The old classroom staples of chalk and slate have formidable competition from electronic whiteboards. Teachers are embracing these whiteboards to enliven classroom learning by displaying and annotating digital content, such as applications and programs, maps, diagrams, or webpages. “Instead of having to stand near their PCs, teachers can stand at the front of the class as they do normally, and control the application or computer by touching the electronic whiteboard,” says Kerry Best, manager for public sector telepresence at Cisco.

Now campuses with networks designed to carry video calls can use their interactive whiteboards as telepresence and video endpoints, extending the classroom beyond the physical walls. “Students on U.K. campuses can see their peers in India, or take a virtual field trip anywhere in the world,” says Scott Aukema, Cisco’s telepresence architecture manager for the public sector.

Keeping Perspective

The good news is that teachers can now more easily combine presentations and video on the same interactive whiteboard. The experience used to break down if the teacher made the presentation or video window larger or smaller. Then the annotations no longer aligned with the image and did not change size proportionately with the image. As a result, a circle the instructor drew on part of a diagram might no longer be around the item of interest. “This was distracting, shifting students’ focus to the technology instead of the content,” Aukema says.
The solution is Cisco Synch® technology, which works with Cisco devices used to display live video on the whiteboard (Figure 1). With Cisco Synch, teachers and instructors can freely add video calls from multiple locations to their interactive whiteboard training sessions, and rearrange and resize the presentation and video how ever they’d like. “You can repeatedly move and resize the PC image display, and all your markups will move with it, retaining the right size and position relative to the image,” says Best. “Combining interactive whiteboards with video helps teacherss engage students and visually interact with people anywhere in the world.”
For more details on the solution please contact the SWOT team by using this link
http://www.swotnet.co.uk/contact/

Learning Without Frontiers - Our Blog - Sir Ken Robinson

Learning Without Frontiers - Our Blog - Sir Ken Robinson

The SWOT Team love Sir Ken and the LWF'ers. Some great clips here from some great thinkers in the learning space

SWOTNET Meets with the SAVI Foundation to enhance learning events with ICT

This week, SWOT NET met with Selina Patel, the dynamic driving force at The Savi Foundation, responsible for some innovative events, helping to develop interests in education among our inner city students.
Our team are jumping at the bit to begin developing engaging systems to support future projects and we look forward to embracing the upcoming events....Watch this space...

You can follow Selina's great work on Twitter http://twitter.com/savifoundation

SWOT Partners on most ethical companies list

Avaya, Cisco, Juniper named to ethical companies list

By Alex Scroxton on March 16, 2011 12:45 PM | No Comments

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Ethisphere, a think-tank specialising in business ethics, corporate social responsibility, anti-corruption and sustainability, has named Avaya, Cisco and Juniper Networks to its 2011 rundown of the world's most ethical firms.

This is the fifth year that Ethisphere has published its WME rankings, which recognise 110 firms that surpassed their industry peers in areas including codes of ethics, litigation and regulatory infraction; investment in innovation and sustainable practices; activities that improve corporate citizenship; and nominations from peers, suppliers and customers.

"As companies strive to maintain a competitive advantage, good ethics translate into better business, and better business means better bottom lines," said Ethisphere executive director Alex Brigham.

Brigham talked of the "important role" that role that principled practices play in brand reputation, which he claimed was "ultimately ... the most valuable asset for a corporation".

Other tech firms listed include Adobe, Hitachi Data Systems, Ricoh and Salesforce.com.