How Video Helps Schools Reimagine Education

Imagine a school where students use mobile devices to learn from anywhere at any time. Students can interact face-to-face with classmates around the world. Where students and educators who can’t be present in a classroom can still be part of the class. Educators, superintendents, administrators and deans come together virtually to collaborate with video conferencing.

Imagine a school where learning has no limits. This is the power of video.

Education institutions constantly look for ways to make learning more accessible for students. Making access easy and convenient for students can lead to an increase in registration, participation, and engagement.

“The technologies of tomorrow are already being tested in select classrooms today, laying the seeds for the future of how students could learn. A few of these technologies have already made headway into education, and others are poised for mass distribution, with the promise of ground-shaking change in their wake,” notes EdTech magazine.

Video helps schools:

• Optimize learning experiences
• Extend classroom environments
• Increase administration efficiency

“Online video in education is the new normal. It has become one of the dominant ways people learn. This trend does not negate the value of traditional education, nor does it indicate that YouTube cooking tutorials can replace a good culinary school education,” states an article, The State of Education Video 2016.

How Schools Can Transform Education
This transformation starts with three principles.

• Bring educators and students together to collaborate in real-time. Use interactive, media-rich experiences to address evolving student learning styles. The Journal reports that one-third of students access online video on their own initiative to help with their homework, and 23% of students access video created by their teachers.
• Simplify access to experts. Extend learning beyond the traditional classroom. Give students, teachers, and guests the power to connect and collaborate across geographic locations. U.S. education spending has doubled over the past 20 years. The fastest-growing segment of spending is digital education technologies, which is expected to increase by 3.2 million by 2018, reports Deloitte University Press.
• Make mobile teaching and learning possible. Deliver access to services and support on any device. Broaden the learning experience by enabling distributed, virtual classes. “On average, college students spend more than 3.5 hours per day using their mobile phones, and Information Week reports that students own an average of 2.7 devices,” states a 2015 Higher Education Horizon report.

Many schools are already benefiting from video to transform across physical and virtual environments. Check out these real-life examples of how schools are experiencing the transformation:

• Meet Thorben, a 10-year-old inspiring, funny, and smart boy battling cancer. Video helped keep him connected to the outside world and his classmates while he was unable to attend school in person.

• San Jose State University uses Cisco WebEx Meeting Center, Cisco Jabber, and video conferencing end-points to offer flexibility to students and faculty, and extend collaboration with learning institutions internationally.
• Australia is transforming education by incorporating digital strategies to extend learning.
• Monticello School District in Wisconsin has embraced video conferencing in classrooms to overcome staffing issues and gain maximum efficiency.

“Cisco’s video and collaboration solutions enable educators to teach and students to learn from anywhere on any device,” says Greg Mathison, a senior manager of education solutions at Cisco. “It does this while enabling virtual face-to-face relationships that are fundamental to education.”

The opportunity is here. The technology is available. There’s no better time to use video to improve education.

Get more information and case studies that show how you can incorporate video into education