CDW Berbee and Cisco Partner to Help "21S" Initiative Schools in the Gulf Coast Region

Communication is Better, Students are Safer at East Park Elementary School in Mississippi

July 26, 2006

By Jenny Carless, News@Cisco

Through the Cisco Systems 21st Century Schools (21S) Initiative, teamwork among volunteer companies and organizations is helping make school and community life better and safer for children and their families in Hurricane Katrina-affected schools.

At East Park Elementary School in Mississippi, bull horns have been replaced by CDW Berbee's InformaCast® system - a state-of-the-art broadcasting program - along with other hardware, software and services donations from Cisco and others. As a result, parents and children now have a direct line of communication with each other, and classrooms are safer because teachers have an immediate, always-on connection to the world outside.

A 21S Partnership

CDW Berbee is one of several Cisco partners that are participating in the $40 million, three-year Cisco 21S Initiative. The program is a blueprint for reconstructing and improving schools that has begun with Mississippi and Louisiana and can be replicated around the country. Its vision is to transform the approach to learning - creating a 21st century education model that improves the quality of education, prepares students with 21st century skills and creates a foundation for economic opportunities and community success.

To achieve this vision, Cisco has brought together a coalition of education and community leaders, corporations and organizations to drive the initiative. CDW Berbee, an Internet Protocol (IP) telephony application provider and Cisco global channel partner, has donated to all 21S schools its InformaCast software, an IP telephony audio and text broadcasting application that, along with CDW Berbee Power over Ethernet (PoE) IP speakers, provides bell scheduling, clocks, paging and more.

East Park Elementary: Reaching Beyond 21S

East Park Elementary (part of the Moss Point School District on the Mississippi coast), a public school with approximately 300 students, serves a low-income community in which 99 percent of the children qualify for federal free- and reduced-cost lunch programs. The school suffered a double blow in 2005: first, it was badly damaged during Hurricane Katrina; then, over the Thanksgiving holiday, one of the school's three wings was destroyed by a fire.

At that point, with the antiquated intercom system destroyed, the school's broadcast system consisted of a bull horn, which Principal Marie Henderson used to communicate class time changes and any necessary announcements.

Moss Point is one of the districts chosen to participate in the 21st Century Schools Initiative, but only the high school is part of the official program. East Park Elementary wasn't immediately eligible for the Cisco 21S grant. "When we learned of their predicament - and that they were going to have to replace much of the school's intercom system - we stepped in to help," said Lori Bush, strategic relationship manager for the Cisco 21S Initiative.

Cisco enlisted the help of CDW Berbee, which donated its InformaCast software that, along with IP phones and switching equipment donated from Cisco, created the foundation for an application that replaces the school's overhead paging system. The school district purchased a variety of CDW Berbee indoor IP speakers for classrooms and hallways and several outdoor IP speakers. And the new, combined broadcast system gave East Park significantly more functionality than its old one: it now provides phones in the classroom, speakers outside the school and the capability to not only broadcast announcements down the hall but to create groupings of rooms and halls for specialized announcements. The CDW Berbee speakers are powered by the network, eliminating the need for a paging system that is separate from the data network.

"We're very appreciative of the support we've received from Cisco and CDW Berbee," said James Glover, director of Technology, Moss Point School District. "Once we received the equipment, it was installed in less than two days. This can be directly attributed to how efficient Cisco and CDW Berbee were in meeting our needs and how well Cisco partners BCI and Teklinks, and the cabling company, Reach Communications, worked with Cisco and us."

The InformaCast system requires just a single server, plugged in to the Cisco network. The IP speakers have internal clocks, so adjusting programmed announcements and bell schedules for daylight savings time, the different schedules of individual schools within a district or unexpected program changes can be handled instantly and automatically from one location.

The convenience of changing all clocks and bells from one computer - compared to the time and cost involved in having staff manually change every clock throughout a large school district - can be dramatic. "Some large school districts with traditional systems have told us that their yearly costs were very high just to change all the clocks for daylight savings time," pointed out Ken Bywaters, vice president of Voice Products at CDW Berbee.

Improved Communication and Safety

"The teachers love the new system," enthused Henderson, "It's such a convenient way to get to the children, and I also view this as an important safety feature."

"With the Cisco IP phones in the classroom, teachers have a direct line to the office and parents have a direct line to their children. For example, if there is a family emergency or when a child is ill teachers can speak with a parent directly from the classroom." Henderson continued. "It's really improving communication between the home and school - and that's what we need."

From a safety standpoint, teachers can call the office if there's a problem in the classroom, so an administrator can respond immediately.

East Park Elementary is also enjoying the improved paging system, which works through the IP phones and/or the school-wide speaker system - replacing the bull horn.

"I can speak to one class, two classes, one hall or one wing - either through the speakers or through the phones," Henderson pointed out. "With the InformaCast system, we can pre-record announcements to play at specific times. For the school's bell system, for example, we have an announcement at 7:20 a.m. reminding the children that they should report to their classrooms, and another at 7:30 a.m., that they should be settled down to work for the day."

"In the afternoon, our children are dismissed in several ways - so we can call the van riders, car riders and then bus riders each out separately," Henderson continued. "It's wonderful."

"I hate to pin too much on technology; it's just a tool," said Bywaters. "But I was told that the looks on people's faces were quite something when announcements and bells were first delivered through the new system."

"I hope these school communities will feel like this is something useful - that in some way it can help make up for all they've lost through these difficult times," he added.

Jenny Carless is a freelance writer based in Santa Cruz, CA.