New video-conferencing service for schools

A new video conferencing bridge service will be available to 72 schools throughout New Zealand for the start of the 2004 school year with a further 17 schools linking in later in the year, Education Minister Trevor Mallard announced today.

The video conferencing service will be available free of charge, and replaces the user pays service which currently costs schools an average $50 per 50 minutes of link-up, plus $150 month for support.

"This free service is an exciting development for education in New Zealand. For an increasing number of rural schools, video conferencing means they can collaborate with schools in other areas, sharing teachers and resources," Trevor Mallard said.

"It's great to see school clusters throughout the country using video conferencing to widen the subject choices available to their students. This is excellent news for students and means we are really starting to grasp the benefits which the digital age can bring to education.

"Through video conferencing there are also some real opportunities and savings in professional development. Teachers, who otherwise may have had to travel considerable distances, can use video conferencing to take part in professional development from their own school.

"Making sure New Zealanders have the skills to equip them for life and work in the 21st century is a key education priority for our government.

"That's why we are deliberately focussing on information communications technology (ICT) to support student learning, but also as an important means of developing a more innovative economy.

"The gains in teacher use of ICT in the classroom, and the imminent rollout of high speed broadband across New Zealand through the government's Project PROBE all add to this goal."

Trevor Mallard said the Auckland company Asnet Technologies Ltd. had won the tender to supply the video conferencing bridge to schools for the next three years.

The video conference bridge project involves:

• hardware to allow all schools currently using video conferencing to continue to use it free of ongoing bridging charges;
• hardware to allow the Ministry of Education to use video conferencing free of ongoing bridging charges across 25 ministry sites, saving staff travel time and costs;
• user support for all schools and the ministry;
• software and systems to make the scheduling and booking of sessions on the bridge as easy as possible for all users;
• hardware to allow free bridging to audio and tele-conferencing for schools and the ministry; and
• capacity to make future growth as simple as possible.

The service is funded at $2.7 million over four years.

Attached:

• list of schools around the country that will be able to make use of the video conferencing bridge