"Extreme Home Makeover" Adds New Video Conferencing Technologies to Latest Dream Home

Technological advancements continue to change and improve our lives daily. Through new Internet services and communications solutions, for example, it has become possible to connect people across the world that would have never had the opportunity.


On an upcoming episode of ABC’s show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” the advantages this technology can bring will be highlighted as the Cerda family is built their dream home to include all the newest telecommunications technology available.

To make this possible, nationwide business phone and Internet services provider Telesphere and Polycom, have offered their solutions so that the family’s daughters, Molly and Maggie, who are homeschooled because of a disorder which keeps them from attending school, can stay connected and “transform their classroom into any place in the world.”

For the project, Telesphere’s (News - Alert) Las Vegas employees volunteered more than 100 hours of their time at the site and donated $$8,000 in materials to ensure that the build and run of the new technology was smooth.

Polycom is a telepresence, video, and voice solutions provider whose technology makes it possible for participants located in different parts of the world to communicate and collaborate face-to-face, as though they were at the same physical location. For this project, their HDX7000 Video Conferencing Unit was installed in the classroom. 


Videoconferencing and Internet technologies are growing in popularity for the education market and allowing students to have improved experiences and overall quality of education.

Research from Compass (News - Alert) Intelligence also shows that K-12 and higher education institutions were expected to spend about $47.7 billion on IT in 2008 with a 5.6 percent annual growth from 2011 to 2012 in areas such as applications, professional services, telecommunications, computer equipment, network hardware and staffing.

“Polycom (News - Alert) connects classrooms across the globe, and created the opportunity to learn via video conferencing no matter where a student is located,” said Russ Colbert, Polycom’s global education market director.

 “We are excited to be a part of this amazing project. Through Polycom’s video conferencing solution, the Cerda girls will truly be able to see the world in their own global classroom.”

Last year, Polycom also made headlines when it provided its RealPresence Experience (RPX) HD offering to Georgetown University to help create a global classroom that bridged the University's Washington, D.C. and Doha, Qatar campuses.