When people are working remotely or engaging in distance learning for the first time, they face a bit of a learning curve to become proficient and productive. The same goes for organizations, as they learn and truly understand what it takes to respond and support these new requirements.
As you may have seen in the blog from our SVP and GM for Cisco Collaboration, Sri Srinivasan outlines what we at Cisco Webex are doing to proactively expand our meeting capacity to respond to the incredible volume of new users looking to take their work and daily activities online. Cisco is committed to helping through this difficult time, and one way we are doing so is by expanding on capabilities for the free Webex offer, in all countries where it is available.
Announcing Webex Ecosystem integration offers
This free offer has inspired many of our Webex Ecosystem partners who build upon our unified platform, to create offers of their own, helping in this time of technological need. Our software partners have joined with us to provide unique and even free offers to protect and enable distance learning, while minimizing the disruption that comes with the change.
When addressing the needs of educators, the power and extensibility of the Webex platform delivers the best in class distance learning experience for the instructors, students and IT staff. Specific to education, our Webex Ecosystem is stepping up to provide integrations with these fantastic solutions:
VBRICK
When a larger live stream event is needed to communicate to the student body, faculty and staff, Cisco’s partner Vbrick has a free limited time offer for schools looking to leverage live streaming events, to replace cancelled large-scale destination events. This is a simple, effective and easy way to reach out and communicate to the education audience. Also, in Webex Meetings there is a new streaming option for Vbrick Rev from the native Webex Meetings client.
Learn more about Vbrick Free Large Event Streaming.
INVOLVIO
Higher education institutions around the world are moving teaching and learning to completely online methods. To help institutions deliver continuity, community, and support for students who are newly virtual, Involvio is introducing “Remote Campus.”
Remote Campus helps institutions rapidly deliver the core components of the campus experience to students on their phones anywhere they happen to be. Through integration with Cisco Webex and the Cisco Webex Education Connector, students can easily stay connected on video and seamlessly join live classes from anywhere. Remote Campus is free for all Involvio customers, regardless of license tier, and discounted for all Cisco Webex customers.
VYOPTA
Potential challenges in supporting remote learning and instruction have also become a great concern for IT administrators. IT departments want to deliver best secure experiences as well as provide proactive support in this new era of online education. Vyopta offers help in a few valuable ways such as providing student attendance compliance reporting, ensure high quality video performance, tracking student engagements with the meeting platform and more. They’ve launched a free plan to help measure engagement of students in virtual classes, and monitoring call performance and quality with their special offer. Be sure to check out their upcoming webinar with Cisco’s own Dr. Lance Ford on distance learning.
Thetalake
Ensuring students, faculty and institutions are well protected, tools are needed to detect risks in audio, visual, document, spoken, shown, and shared content in audio and video content. Thetalake provides a purpose-built compliance product suite for automatic policy detection of regulatory risks, compliance workflow, and archiving for video marketing, video conferencing, and audio recordings. They are offering their Compliance and Supervision Suite for Webex Meetings/Teams at no cost for 3 months.
Appspace
For those students and faculty that have on campus commitments, it is important to keep information visible and available. Many schools have enabled digital signage on campus devices with key messages and reminders. Appspace provides a Coronavirus playlist for signage on Webex Devices service for free up to 25 devices to Educate students and faculty with an informative channel about protecting against the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Okta
For IT staff’s deploying new services can be overwhelming. Okta provides efficient process to rapidly deploy Webex organization wide and simplify end-user adoption. This offer has been made available at no cost to easily onboard users to new Webex service with seamless SSO and full provisioning and security.
Prezi
Moving from the physical class to a virtual is an adjustment. The need to make online learning engaging can be a real challenge. Prezi Video helps you create compelling and creative video content for students in online learning environments. Present or record with your content right alongside you on the screen, so you can maintain a human connection with your students without losing important context and visual aids. Make classroom/training presentations more fun and engaging using Prezi with Webex Video. Get your free account and check out the blog on best practices in education.
Kaptivo
For instructors that relish teaching in a more traditional method by using whiteboards, Kaptivo will connect your analog whiteboard to Webex Meetings and post to Webex Teams to create a digital classroom. To assist teachers/staff who are new at providing remote learning, Kaptivo is offering a free whiteboard for those working from home who purchase a Kaptivo camera.
CirQLive
If your school uses an LMS (Learning Management System) that is not covered with the Webex EDU Connector, or you have other requirements, CirQLive is offering free usage of their Webex LMS integration platform for 90 days. They are also offering consulting services that include best practices in online learning.
With the combination of Cisco’s powerful Webex platform and these unique partner integrations, students and teachers can quickly ease into the transition of remote learning and get back to what really matters. IT admins can also feel confident that these solutions have the right level of security and control to protect their education environments. Learn more about our partner solutions by visiting the linked partners.
For questions on the above Ecosystem offers, reach Cisco’s partnership team at webex-ecosystem@cisco.com
Learn More
Blackboard Learn and Webex join forces to expand the reach of education
Teachers, here’s why you need Webex
Howe Public Schools uses video conferencing to create more opportunities for its students
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