IBM and Cisco facilitate remote learning in Romania

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They offer free Cisco Webex tool and installation support in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Research and help so that Romanian students from 700 local schools can continue with their classes in a virtual way

Romanian private and public schools are able to continue attending their classes using free tele-teaching tools.

In Romania, the partnership provides schools with the access, management and support of the Cisco Webex teleworking and collaboration tool, which offers simple and intuitive functionalities for e-education.

The solution – already working since 16th of March – connects teachers and students in real time.““At Cisco, all workers are committed to positively impacting the country with our collaboration and our technology. We want to help everyone, through our people and technology, especially in critical situations such as the current one.”, highlights Dorin Pena, General Manager of Cisco Romania. We collaborate with the Administrations to guarantee the activity of companies, health centers and schools and help people preserve their health.”

IBM and Cisco collaboration to implement school distance learning tools is expanding rapidly across Europe. Currently the program is being adopted by 2,000 schools and 200,000 students and we have 3,000 IBM volunteers onboard.

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“From IBM we want to contribute with our professionals, technology and knowledge in the collective effort to alleviate this health and social crisis. We currently have morethan 300 employees from IBM Romania that are actively helping 700Romanian schools leverage technology for continuing the learning activities. We want to be there for the teachers as they are making an effort of changing the way they work and to help them quickly adapt to the digital transformation of the education.Joining forces with other strong organizations that also lead with their solutions and national education programs is the right thing to do, only by working together we can reach a greater scale of our impact.With the Ministry of Education support, together with Cisco, Vodafone Romania Foundation, Pro Art Development and Knowledge Association and World Vision Romania Foundation, we are finding creative solutions to this disruption of the education system.”says Marta Branska-Rybicka, Country Leader, IBM Romania.

The Romanian Ministry of Education and Research has highly valued this tool and thanked Cisco Romania, IBM Romania and all the partners for making it available to teachers and students in Romania to ensure distance learning in such an exceptional situation like the one we are experiencing.

From the Pro Art Development and Knowledge Association, the schools in the ReteauaEDU.ro network are helped by a team of eLearning volunteers into implementing WebEx education connector into their online classes. „The disruptive situation is a challenge for all Romanian teachers and entire families. It is our duty in helping all communities for access to quality digital education. Cisco and IBM laid the foundation for a strong partnership in education, with a robust solution,mature and highly secured. WebEx was easy to integrate into our network of schools withan increase in learning activities.”, LuciaPanea, Project Manager ReteauaEDU.ro.

“By incorporating the Webex solution in our School in a Box platform through which the teachers can create digital lessons, we have made it much easier for over 6,000 teachers and pupils to connect. This new tool is already used by the 10 schools from our School in a Box Program and additional 250 schools from the rural area have been invited to join.Despite the constraints of containment,teachers can reach out to their pupils delivering knowledge via interactive and compelling lessons. Moreover, Vodafone Romania volunteers are offering their support for this initiative carried out by our partners from IBM and Cisco. By uniting our forces, we can accomplish things that make a difference,” said Angela Galeța, Director of the Vodafone Romania Foundation.

“Education digitization is one of the major priorities of the World Vision Romania Foundation and this period clearly shows that this is a common priority. Children from the rural area, from the ten schools included in the School in a Box project, have done online classes ever since the schools closed. The involvement of IBM and Cisco in digital education helped reach an ever growing number of pupils from across the country. Furthermore, going digital in education meant that school lessons also answer the preferences of the new generation of students. All this wouldn’t have been possible without involvement in future generations of responsible partners such as Vodafone Romania Foundation, IBM and Cisco, and we thank them for that”, said Mihaela Nabăr, executive director of World Vision Romania.

Complete virtual classroom

Cisco Webex is a complete collaboration solution. Its Meetings version not only includes video conferencing, butalso the possibility to share the desktop and applications, multimedia resources and surveys. Everything in real time.These functionalities provide a complete virtual classroom, where students participate in classes in guest mode, without the need for a user account. Everything is managed from the personal room of the teacher, who “invites” the students, controls the audio -silencing the micro of the students when he needs it-and can record the session to share it or review it later. Cisco Webex Teams version facilitates collaboration between teachers and school staff, with advanced chat, videoconferencing, and document and screen sharing capabilities in a more structured environment.

Support to the teaching community

In addition, IBM offers the teaching community support for the adoption and use of the platform. About 300 company professionals signed up as volunteers, when the company opened the request, making itself available to teachers in record time.Volunteers from IBM Romania -who also telework from their homes using Cisco Webex -provide tutoring for teachers so they can make the most of the platform. Likewise, they also provide them with telematic help in real time in order to resolve any doubt or technical problem. Cisco has also created support video guides.

Privacy & Security

The Cisco Webex platform has more than 130 million monthly users worldwide, and processes more than6 billion minutes of meetings every month. It is a (Cloud Computing solution that does not consume storage resources on personal computers. Always accessible through an Internet connection, it guarantees the privacy and security of the data and content exchanged in the sessions using advanced security and encryption tools.

Additional resources:

Schools can enroll in the program here: https://forms.gle/cD7nsmTgm5xiWn8m8

Scoaladinvaliza (https://www.scoaladinvaliza.ro)

ReteauaEDU.ro (https://reteauaedu.ro/my/)