Nortel's Education Solutions are comprised of the following:
Secure and Voice Grade IP Infrastructure
All communications systems within the school campus are connected to the school network infrastructure. Using a Nortel converged IP infrastructure consisting of data, VoIP and wireless platforms, enables the school to support new applications such as e-learning, SMART boards, video surveillance, lecture capture, streaming video, video on demand, video-based distance learning and virtual worlds.
IP Telephony
By using a combination of Nortel's IP Telephony IP Phones and features such as mobile extensions, education institutions empower their staff to be more effective and save money. For example, staff can have a single phone number and be reached wherever they are. They can also use broadcasting to send out alerts to students, parents, etc. Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering deployed Nortel's education solution focused on the Unified Communications, which allowed them to create a collaborative, student-centric approach to no-boundaries communications while helping them save in both the initial investment and operating costs.
Contact Center
Colleges and universities use Nortel's Contact Center portfolio to better serve students, prospective students, faculty, parents and suppliers. Agents can communicate with callers via phone, email, chat and multimedia, and route them to the appropriate staff or faculty member with the right skills. This results in happier students, parents and suppliers.
Mobility
Many schools such as North Kansas City Schools and Prince George Community College are deploying wireless solutions from Nortel to break down the walls of the classroom and enable students to learn from any place at any time. Students show up to school with multiple mobile devices such as laptops, PDAs and cell phones and demand wireless access to the school network. Students and faculty can securely access the institution's portal to submit an assignment, purchase a book, register for a course, see their grades, etc. Parents can securely access the school portal and take a look at their kid's grades, homework assignments or teachers' notes. Using Nortel voice over wireless LAN, teachers can also receive text messages notifying them of specific events like staff meetings or emergencies, allowing them to respond more quickly and effectively.
Unified Communications (UC)
To truly empower your staff and faculty to be more effective, education institutions must give them the tools necessary. With UC platforms, teachers and staff have the collaboration tools to mentor other faculty members and share best practices, tutor students remotely or get input quickly from an expert using presence. At Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, all students now have an MCS 5100 soft client available for their laptops, offering conferencing, instant messaging and presence for enhanced collaboration. In addition, VPN solutions are providing students with access to campus portals, allowing students to upload complete assignments and download study and research materials.
Distance Learning
Web.alive is Nortel's offer into the world of 3D virtual environments for immersive distance learning and recruiting. It provides the next-generation communication and collaboration tools to answer training and educational needs while delivering individualized and engaged learning. It also offers the ability to customize the environment to suit schools' individual needs. Students are able to talk to one another and the facilitator in a real-time 3D audio-based immersive setting. Students can share work, collaborate on assignments and physically move around the classroom to interact. Web.alive learning environments strike a balance between familiar learning spaces and allowing and new virtual features that are difficult to recreate in the physical classroom. These features allow lessons to be paused, rewound or replayed; objects to be magnified, multiplied or repositioned; history lessons to be contextualized by visual metaphor to link students to bygone times and places; chemistry to be brought to life with life-size replications of complex molecules and compounds. In addition, institutions can use web.alive to offer virtual campus tours on their portal so that prospective students can decide whether or not they want to visit the institution. This tour not only saves students money by avoiding travel but also gives them a much more immersive feel for the school. Institutions can also use web.alive for orientation and career fairs.
Integrate Communications into Your Processes
Take UC one step further and integrate communications into your campus portal using Agile Communication Environment (ACE). Embed a contact menu within web-enabled applications such as Administrative ERP/SIS systems so that users can click to communicate from the Web page itself. As a result, students will have a positive experience as they will be able to quickly get to the right person at the right time.
Managed Telepresence/Video Conferencing Service
Enable a campus to open a satellite location via a Telepresence solution and simplify the task of managing video conferences by adopting the Nortel Managed Telepresence/Video Conferencing Service. Telepresence benefits for your campus include:
- Learning-on-demand allows students who miss class, or those who need to review a lesson, to go back and view a class in its entirety.
- Increase student enrollment and revenues by delivering media-rich courses to satellite classrooms via visual communications, leveraging top faculty
- Enhance research by collaborating with distant colleagues on common projects and connecting researchers across the globe
- Expand global reach by extending your programs globally to new markets of interest
- Enable new forms of collaboration by allowing students, faculty and staff to interact across boundaries
Security
Nortel helps you increase the security of your campus through its layered defense approach. Layered defense ensures that there are no single points of failure in your network and that your network can adapt to security threats dynamically as they occur. Nortel security solutions help enable you to:
- Block unauthorized users with authentication, network access control policies and firewalls.
- Prevent eavesdropping with encryption and key management
- Track network activity through application-aware bandwidth management and auditing
- Provide VPN connections that increase the accessibility of your school campus through secure remote access solutions
- Ensure that devices connecting to your network meet security policies you define such as the existence of virus and firewall protection through the Identity Engines portfolio
- Enables users to easily and securely access school applications from any windows PC in any connected location through a Secure Portable Office USB device
- Provide a Rapid Response notification solution to outdial all contact phone numbers and even dispatch emails to mobile phones via text messaging
- Connect your campus safety radio network with almost any communications device, including two-way radio systems, phones, PDAs and PCs for enhanced communications in case of emergency
Managed Services
Nortel Managed Services covers all the tasks, tools and infrastructure vital to maintain and manage a reliable communications network. This portfolio consists of Managed Data and Managed Voice Services as well as Assisted Operate Services leveraging a 20 year proven track record of Nortel expertise and processes to streamline network management for improved network performance, maximum reliability, ability to deploy new technology quickly, reduced OPEX and maximum return on CAPEX. Education institutions are able to improve staff utilization and effectively address scarce skills requirements, temporary peak in workload and staff shortages.
Hosted Services
Hosted Services enables education customers to save money, reduce the need to increase IT staff and increase employee productivity by deploying IP based communication applications such as Hosted IP Telephony, Unified Communications, Contact Centers and IVR. Schools can buy only what they need, when they need it, and for how long they need it through a simple and predictable monthly pricing plan. Nortel's Hosted Services helps the customer stay ahead of the technology curve to deliver personalized and unique services to their students without adding complexity.
