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Improving Education One Virtual Connection at a Time

Improving Education One Virtual Connection at a Time

Apr 09, 2020 — Madisen Andersen

The Customer Story blog series highlights how Cisco’s collaboration technology has helped customers solve their business challenges. Learn how Cisco is meeting customers where they are helping them achieve their business goals.

Creating Impactful Virtual Learning Experiences

“How can we improve our school for our students?” is a question that most teachers find themselves asking, including Racheal Castricum. Racheal never intended to be a teacher but decided she wanted to make a difference after graduating with an art and design degree. She is part of a school improvement team at Beechworth Secondary School located in Victoria, Australia. She turned to Webex Teams for better collaboration. The team’s goal was to expand their learning curriculum and figure out a way for students and teachers to meet virtually with students at other schools.

Rachael turned to Webex Teams to help achieve this goal. Not only did Webex Teams help her achieve the goal of easy collaboration but it also facilitated the means to achieve the rest of the goals. Before she knew it, she had a web of connections of teachers from different locations with the same passion of wanting to enrich education for the students, creating “ not a network of wires but of people.” Through Webex Teams, Rachael was able to meet virtually with education professionals around the country.

The Webex Teams platform is used to deliver quality virtual learning experiences for students. Here are four areas they focused on to make it happen:

Encourage collaborative learning and encouragement of team/project-based learning which prepares students for further study and work
Support distance learning and allow remote schools that don’t have specialist teachers (e.g. in languages and music) to access a comprehensive curriculum
Facilitate virtual excursions and access cultural experiences not available to remote students, through Cisco’s Digital Schools Network
Support teacher and leader professional development and access to evidence-based expertise

“Your classroom can only provide so much. There’s so much more to the world than the four walls of your classroom. Webex is exciting because it’s expanding the world not just for me but for my students.” Rachel Castricum, Teacher, Beechworth Secondary School

Students are growing up in a digital world. Schools are needing to meet students where they are and teach them in a manner that sets them up for success to operate in the new world they live in. Webex brings Cisco technology into the classroom that allows for greater connections and opens many new doors of possibilities for students and teachers. Watch this video that shows how joining Webex helped Rachael to communicate better around improving school improvement goals.