We understand the extraordinary budgetary challenges that districts across the nation are facing. Properly implemented technological solutions can go a long way towards bridging the voids created by the massive funding cuts now wreaking havoc on our schools. We have heard about the following ten problems encountered by school districts throughout North America; this is how we can help.

With face-to-face Professional Development being reduced, if not eliminated altogether, how can our district find ways to continue to support teacher training?

Districts need to find ways to provide anytime, anywhere, cost-effective opportunities for teachers to develop their skills, collaborate and learn new ways to improve student learning outcomes. SAFARI Montage^® Live! (SML) delivers live, synchronous, interactive videoconferencing to the desktop in school or at home. Therefore, Professional Development costs, such as stipends, substitutes, mileage reimbursements and meals, are reduced or eliminated, as are those associated with duplicating, replacing and delivering hard copy Professional Development programs on DVD. In addition, recorded best practice teacher trainings, which promote exceptional teaching, can be uploaded via SAFARI Montage CreationStation^® and delivered via WAN Manager for on-demand access in school via Managed Home Access for easy on-demand access from home. SAFARI Montage Live! H.323 Gateway, available as a complement to an existing SAFARI Montage Live! server, allows you to include participants in your SML conference who are using traditional H.323-based videoconferencing systems, such as those offered by Tandberg^® and Polycom^®.

Cable distribution through a coax/RF network is expensive, and TVs are being removed, but our students still need to see Digital TV content in order to experience historic, teachable moments as they happen.

By switching to a digital delivery model using the SAFARI Montage Selective Video Streaming module, along with a SAFARI Montage Digital Encoder^™, the high costs for Cable TV, TVs, coax/RF cabling and maintenance, as well as the personnel needed to maintain Cable, are eliminated. No longer requiring the coax/RF infrastructure, Chicago Public Schools saved $500,000* on one new school construction site alone, Westinghouse High School, by eliminating the need for in-house media distribution, cable distribution through a coax/RF network and other infrastructure. SAFARI Montage SD and HD Encoders offer another cost-effective option to deliver a digital cable TV signal over your data network and output it to any projected display for higher quality viewing.

Chicago Public Schools saved $500,000 on one new school site alone by eliminating these costs:
Video Retrieval System - $367,000
Cable Head-End - $50,000-$60,000
Coax Drags (MMTV) - $42,000-$52,000
Videoconferencing Suite - $22,515
Classroom Monitors & IR Controls: N/A
SOURCE: Chicago Public Schools, Westinghouse High School

Our Technology Coordinator positions have been eliminated.

Managing the demands placed on schools and districts to get students and teachers excited and able to use technology is a real challenge. Our integrated Pathways SM^™ module can provide the necessary tools for all technology to be easily managed without the labor-intensive needs of the past, so that even more can be done with less staff. The SAFARI Montage Media Player is intuitive and easy to use, and it standardizes the playback of dozens of file types from one media player, thereby simplifying technology for all users. Additionally, district Help Desk staff can see the status of classroom technology remotely without having to send personnel to the building.

New textbooks are too expensive to purchase, but we still need to teach the subject

You can deliver a fresh, digital curriculum by using a multimodal approach to teaching and learning using the SAFARI Montage Digital Curriculum Presenter^™ (DCP) platform. DCP provides district staff with the ability to develop and deliver a digital curriculum that is tied to both IMS GLC interoperability standards as well as to Common Core and State standards. One of the great benefits of DCP interoperability is that district staff do not need to spend time trying to facilitate an integration between disparate and incompatible systems. Using DCP, districts can cost-effectively procure digital curriculum assets from any publisher or other districts, or they can create the digital curriculum assets themselves, augment them with video and 3D content, and deliver them on an open standardized digital curriculum platform.

Because DCP is integrated with Moodle^® and other Learning Management Systems (LMS), teachers can be more effective in the classroom since their entire lessons can be delivered by using a single interface without having to switch between multiple media players and technologies. Not only does this amazing classroom lesson presentation tool simplify your lessons, DCP also offers real-time formative assessment, which gives teachers instant feedback, thereby enabling them to teach more effectively. With the DCP formative assessment tool, intuitively labeled Get it?^™, teachers have the capability to deliver differentiated instruction by allowing them to automatically assign content for remedial coursework as needed while keeping the rest of the class moving and engaged. Another aspect of successful education today is parental involvement in a child's learning progress. DCP allows parents to review their child's formative assessment results daily.

Teachers have been laid off, and our class sizes are larger as a result.

School districts are being asked to make do with hundreds or thousands of fewer teachers. With the SAFARI Montage suite of products, districts can leverage existing staff to reach more students through technology. This can be achieved through SAFARI Montage Live! videoconferencing, which allows students in multiple classrooms to attend classes in other buildings. Costly traditional field trips can also be replaced with virtual field trips via SML, while still preserving the essence of the experience for students. Homebound students can stay connected with teachers efficiently and economically by allowing them to monitor classes and learn from home. Teachers can monitor students in other rooms remotely through digital cameras. All of these functionalities are controlled in one efficient user interface, thereby saving valuable teacher time.

Our district can no longer afford to purchase clickers for formative assessment.

Real time formative assessment has proven to be a very effective means of optimizing teaching time and student engagement. Now, with SAFARI Montage Digital Curriculum Presenter, you can leverage student’s smartphones, iPad^® mobile devices, or Android-powered devices as virtual student response systems through the Get it?^™ feature in DCP.

District Curriculum staff have been laid off.

One way to cope with this is to utilize lessons created by star teachers and other district curriculum staff to generate multimedia lessons for the entire district. Take outstanding curricular materials generated anywhere by great educators and enhance them with video, 3D content and the best K-12 curriculum presentation tool in the U.S. — DCP.

DVD budgets have been cut.

Access outstanding digital media resources via SAFARI Montage at a fraction of the cost of physical DVDs. Individual DVD titles have a wide range of costs, anywhere from $9.95-$99 a piece. These hard copy videos are only available to one user at a time, occupy significant space in the school library and need to be managed every time they are checked in or out. With the finest quality educational programs available on SAFARI Montage, educators can access these titles for as low as 50 cents/title/school/year. Plus, these titles come segmented and aligned to state standards, can be easily added to multimedia lessons, accessed from home and more.

Our district cannot increase Internet costs.

SAFARI Montage WAN Manager can utilize your existing WAN/LAN bandwidth, thereby eliminating public Internet bandwidth consumption. Our flexible and scalable solution thus delivers a high quality of service that works efficiently inside the district, to the home and to mobile devices.

Our district has cut funding for school librarians at various schools.

Leverage the power of SAFARI Montage's expertly developed digital media packages to save the time devoted to proper collection development.