Avaya Expands Work With a Growing Number of K-12 Schools on Bring Your Own Device Mobile Learning Programs

BASKING RIDGE, NJ--(Marketwire - Mar 5, 2012) -

• Confronting budget constraints, K-12 schools across the U.S. are accelerating implementation of Bring Your Own Device and One-to-One Computing programs
• Economic realities are resulting in changing policies and attitudes; more schools are favoring BYOD programs to encourage students to bring mobile devices to school
• Avaya's device-agnostic approach and expertise in unified communications and networking are cited as key factors in school district IT vendor selection

Avaya, a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions and services, today said it is working with a rising number of school districts across the nation on programs designed to tap the vast array of student-owned computing devices and boost mobile learning initiatives.

Avaya will exhibit its solutions for K-12 schools, including infrastructure services that support Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs, at the 2012 CoSN Conference, March 5-7 in Washington, D.C. CoSN is the acronym for the Consortium of School Networking, which develops and implements programs to foster K-12 technology leadership.

BYOD is quickly taking hold as districts encounter widening gaps in the number of computers they can afford to provide to their staff, teachers and students. Amid dwindling budgets to buy such equipment, demand is growing among educators, students and parents alike for greater student access to computers and wireless devices to access new digital content and online data as part of advanced K-12 curricula.

Avaya works with K-12 school districts to create a modern college-like campus that is more mobile and connected, supporting thousands of disparate mobile devices, ranging from PCs, netbooks, and laptops, to iPod, iPad, iPhone, and BlackBerry devices, along with other tablets and smartphones. Such partnerships are building advanced communications infrastructures that are simpler to operate and maintain, ultimately transforming and improving the education environment to advance student achievement.

Avaya's ongoing work on BYOD and one-to-one computing programs encompass various initiatives at different deployment stages, including:

Kenton County School District, Ky. -- Avaya is working with this school district on the outskirts of Cincinnati, Ohio, supporting wireless Internet access for 23 school facilities, 1,500 teachers and staff and 14,700 students. A commitment to BYOD has quickly closed what had been a yawning gap between the computing needs of students and staff, and the 4,600 district-owned laptops and PCs. To date, the program has more than doubled the number of computing resources previously available, with numbers often exceeding 6,000 personally owned devices on the network at a single time.

Johnson County School District in Eastern Kentucky is adopting a similar approach and, likewise, is seeing immediate momentum. With some 3,800 K-12 students and 600 teachers and staff, the district is working with Avaya on a unified communications platform, while piloting BYOD with 500 students. The district oversees ten facilities, including six elementary schools and an administration building.

The district's network infrastructure will be completed by the fall, and will eventually support wired, wireless, and voice access for nearly 5,000 daily users, including campus visitors.

Erie 1 Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) serves 74,441 students in 20 school districts in and around Buffalo, N.Y. Erie 1 is driving to a hybrid IT environment, encompassing web- and app-based instructional resources, as well as virtual desktop applications. It's part of the district's ongoing drive to offer one-to-one computing, supported by an Avaya networking solution.

Quotes
"In the past, primary and secondary education was all about memorization. The Internet and BYOD are changing that, driving critical thinking and student creativity, fueled by wider access to information. Since our wireless network was built, new equipment has been pouring into the district every day. The influx of technology has been contagious."
-- Vicki Fields, district technology coordinator, Kenton County School District, Ky.

"Currently, there are only one or two computers in each of our upper grade classrooms, greatly restricting student access to online educational resources. Given funding cuts faced by most school districts, it's simply impossible to provide devices to every student. BYOD, however, changes that equation by driving one-to-one computing. Avaya's device-agnostic approach fits with our goal of encouraging students to use of a broad number of wireless devices to tap technology resources."
-- Harry Burchett, CIO and district technology coordinator, Johnson County School District, Ky.

"The ultimate question we ask ourselves each day is: How can we provide the educational and technical resources that our kids need? Paradoxically, soft economic conditions will help the BYOD and one-to-one computing movements take hold sooner rather than later. Due to the budget realities, these types of programs are vital to fill the computing needs gap. In a year or two, programs like ours inevitably will be the norm, not an outlier."
-- Jill Holbrook, associate director, Technology, Erie 1 BOCES, Buffalo, N.Y.

Additional Resources

• Mobile learning and BYOD (whitepaper and how-to handbook)
• Avaya Networking
• Avaya Unified Communications

Tags
Avaya, education, wireless networking, BYOD, one-to-one computing, unified communications, UC, K-12 schools, primary education, secondary education, school budgets, mobile learning, bring your own device, cell phones, Department of Education

About Avaya
Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, networking and related services to companies of all sizes around the world. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

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