The new iPad’s 3MP Retina display leverages VidyoMobile’s data sharing feature, offering greater detail in content collaboration for vertical market applications like healthcare, government, education and manufacturing. Several Vidyo customers already use content sharing to enhance collaboration, for example, schools conduct virtual learning sessions using iPads, geographically dispersed manufacturing organizations enhance productivity by collaborating globally, and construction companies sharing blue prints to expedite decision making on remote projects without requiring expensive travel.

“VidyoMobile on the iPad provides physicians at Miami Children’s Hospital with a critical tool for treating patients as well as for clinical decision-making with other physicians,” said Ed Martinez, CIO at Miami Children’s Hospital. “The superb clarity of VidyoMobile on the iPad allows real-time collaboration. The new iPad’s increased screen resolution has the potential to enhance the ability of our physicians to diagnose and treat patients from wherever they are, not just in their offices or within the hospital boundaries.”

For the rest of the article, go to Vidyo First to Demonstrate Telepresence Quality Video Conferencing on New iPad with 3 Mega Pixel Data Collaboration

This session, Bush and his nonprofit organization, the Foundation for Florida’s Future, have helped to fast-track a stream of legislation that could reset the education equation in Florida. The bills, moving steadily through both the House and Senate, could gradually shift the financial and competitive advantage away from traditional public schools to private schools and charter schools, which are often managed by for-profit companies. Other proposals push virtual-learning initiatives.

The foundation says it supports high standards and accountability for all schools: public, charter, private and virtual included. Its supporters say the efforts will lead to dramatic improvements in student achievement – and make the Sunshine State a national leader in education reform.

For the rest of the article, go to Jeb Bush’s foundation has shaped education policy in Florida

We are just at the start of the virtual learning movement, and there is so much promise in the short term regarding access to high-quality content, targeted instruction, peer tutoring and resulting stronger socialization around academics (rather than who’s cool and who’s not). Long term, virtual learning has more muscle to grow organically than other reforms in the past, given that a large group of virtual learning vendors are aiming to meet the needs of the individual market. As a result, VL is not subject to the whims of policymaking (and the politics behind it).

But policy will rear its head. The fault lines around how best to teach kids how to read, conceptual understanding, and what should be in the standards and curriculum are all important topic well into a virtual future.

And politics will come. It is unavoidable. The NY Times was to run an expose by Stephanie Saul, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has spent much of her career at the Times on the pharmaceutical industry and fertility treatments, on the well-known digital learning company K12. Many in the school choice movement saw the article as a likely hatchet job.

All I can say to school reformers who support digital learning is: Such articles and such scrutiny are going to come. It is inevitable and ultimately it is good.

For the rest of the article, go to Some lessons for virtual learning

Neighborhood elementary school buildings should become year-around virtual learning centers. By keeping the library/computer areas open, students below grade level could continue to make progress and high achievers could be pushed even further. Through the use of existing programs elementary students could teach their parents English. It’s a win-win situation.

Best of all, these changes can be made within existing resources. There’s NO NEED to increase taxes! It requires a 3 percent reallocation of existing funds. That’s something most organizations could accomplish without a blink of an eye.

For the rest of the article, go to Neighborhood elementary schools must drive district’s future