Jefferson County Schools Deploys Polycom's RealPresence Solutions

Jefferson County (Jeffco) Public Schools, a district school catering to the needs of more than 86,000 students across half of Denver and into the mountains west of the city, has announced that its educators and staff members are now able to connect securely face-to-face through video with colleagues, classrooms and district offices on the same mobile devices and PCs they rely on every day.

This is made possible using Polycom’s (News - Alert) RealPresence Mobile 2.0 and Polycom RealPresence Desktop 2.0 solutions. Thanks to these innovative solutions, the Colorado’s largest school district is able to stretch its resources, spread teaching expertise across schools and geographies, and save time and transportation costs with mobile and desktop video solutions.

“School districts everywhere are adopting tablet technology because teachers and students want to work and teach on the devices they use at home,” said Steve O’Brien, Jeffco’s director of data center operations. “We’re leveraging that BYOD phenomenon to put Polycom video in the hands of more teachers and staff. It’s just right there where and when they need it.”

Jeffco also encourages the concept of burgeoning BYOD (bring your own device) and many employees have embraced this with over 3,000 iPads currently being used by staff.

O’Brien added that school employees are using the Polycom RealPresence Mobile app on their iPads and Polycom RealPresence Desktop software on their PCs – environments that expand the district’s six administrative conference rooms and one high-tech classroom equipped with Polycom HDXSeries group systems.

“In the past three days, 51 percent of the people who logged into a video conference were using the RealPresence Mobile app on an iPad, and 49 percent were using RealPresence Desktop solutions,” said O’Brien. “Virtually everyone who taps into our video conference network was using video right in the classroom or the office. They don’t even have to go down the hall.”

This way, teachers are able to use the video collaboration to connect classrooms across the district or around the world.

To find out more about Polycom, visit the company at ITEXPO Miami 2013, taking place Jan. 29- Feb 1 in Miami, Florida. ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the world’s premier IP communications event. Visit Polycom in booth #516. For more information on ITEXPO, click here.