Alcatel-Lucent Brings Unified Communications, VoIP to Georgia Students

Looking to extend the classroom beyond its campuses, the Gwinnett County Public Schools agency in Georgia reportedly has chosen collaboration technology from Alcatel-Lucent. The county aims to create a more interactive learning environment for homebound students with its new technological capabilities.

 

Normally, teachers would have to travel several miles to teach a homebound student. Even if they use an audio bridge to conduct group lessons, it lacks the graphics and visual aids to make the lessons more interactive and interesting.

 

Reducing the telephone charges of Gwinnett County Public Schools and providing more interactive options in delivering lessons, the new Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) VoIP solution will link 114 schools in Gwinnett. The company will also provide its OmniTouch My Teamwork Unified Conferencing and Collaboration solution to better connect teachers and homebound students.

 

“Effective and efficient communications technology is critical when creating a dynamic learning environment that makes it possible for students to connect with teachers, fellow students and other knowledge resources safely and securely -- anytime, anywhere,” said Tom Burns, who heads Alcatel-Lucent enterprise activities. “My Teamwork will help Gwinnett County Public Schools expand access to education beyond the four walls of the classroom.”

 

Gwinnett County Public Schools and Alcatel-Lucent have partnered before to provide the latest technologies to students. Earlier, GCPS offered the bandwidth and security needed by students and faculty for on campus communications by using a wide variety of Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch Ethernet switches. In an upcoming facility, GCPS can extend also remote call servers with back up circuits at each school building by centralizing its main voice switches at the district headquarters.

 

The company recently came up with a global multi-industry initiative, the ng Connect Program, to bring together device, application and content providers to drive the development of innovative services for 4G, Long Term Evolution, Gigabit Passive Optical Network and other ultra high bandwidth networks. The ng Connect Program plans to help customers stream more content, run more sophisticated applications on-the-go, and communicate in the most popular formats of today and tomorrow.