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• 3Com Education Module Datasheet
• Connecting for Learning: Achieving Education Excellence
• Campus Communications for the 21st Century
• Promoting Education with Secure Converged Networks

K-12 schools face a host of new challenges as their networking needs expand. Moving beyond basic connectivity, they require high-performing, secure communication platforms to prepare students to succeed in the 21st centruty, meet the call for educational reform, and enhance campus safety. Moreover, because they must meet these objectives at a time of tightening budgets, solutions must be easy to use, simple to manage, and economical to own.

Performance and Availability

The digital revolution has forever transformed K-12 education. Schools increasingly rely on networked communications for the delivery of current events, curricula, and administrative tools. Students and teachers access web-based resources ranging from NASA's space imagery to Shakespeare's sonnets. They use sophisticated applications for visualizations, video demonstrations, modeling, and data analyses. Staff and faculty deploy advanced systems to track enrollment, attendance, grades, purchasing, and payroll.

Converge Voice and Data Services for K-12 Educators

For schools around the world, converged network infrastructures demonstrate their cost-saving and efficiency-enhancing benefits everyday. By leveraging existing cabling and management resources, by eliminating the need for many out-sourced services, and by offering built-in productivity tools, they save money and facilitate collaboration. In addition, built with interoperability and deployment flexibility in mind, 3Com® convergence solutions can overlay existing network installations for impressive return on investment.

For system users, the benefits are equally impressive. Particularly with 3Com convergence solutions, cutting-edge communications are immediately and easily available. Users unfamiliar with IP telephones or Voice over IP (VoIP) applications can quickly benefit from collaboration tools. Call forwarding, ad-hoc conferencing (both audio and video), find-me/follow me options can be accessed from a PC in the classroom or remotely from any network-connected location. Call handling controls are intuitive, yet offer sophisticated service options. Voice mails can be retrieved from email or from IP phones. Users can even move their own phones from one network location to another without losing any customized features.

Furthermore, converged communications systems can be more responsive in emergencies, allowing call recording and call broadcasting services that might otherwise require a diverse set of software and hardware installations.

Freeing K-12 Educators and Students from Tethered Connectivity

Today, boundaries of location and time have been largely obliterated by technology. Learning can occur anywhere and anytime from resources in the next room or from those thousands of miles and time zones away. Technology innovation has raised expectations for immediate, anytime connectivity and entertaining, interactive content by devices such as cell phones, iPods, and video games. It has also unleashed a new and increasingly potent array of security threats requiring the attention of school administrators as they build and maintain their communications networks.

Educators are meeting these challenges with powerful, secure wired and wireless networks that let teachers and students use laptops and handheld devices anywhere on campus—in a hallway, in the cafeteria, or on a practice field. Innovative teachers and coaches are leveraging these broadened boundaries to meet the expectations of their communities. In some K-12 school districts, wireless solutions are becoming the networking choice for school curricula and services.

Particularly in hard-to-wire buildings, temporary classrooms, and outside locations, wireless access point connectivity is ideal. Easy to install, practical to use and cost effective, 3Com® wireless mobility solutions also offer secure, seamless roaming and exceptional per-user or per-group network access control. Management and security features of 3Com wireless networks let them match the effectiveness of a school’s wired network.

For additional economy and enhanced connectivity, rugged, high-speed 3Com wireless LAN bridges with integrated antennas transmit data over secure wireless links. School districts can easily deploy them to reduce telecommunication costs between buildings and between campuses, using them to carry converged traffic affordably to support data, voice, video, and conferencing services throughout a school campus.

Protect the Resources of K-12 Education Communities

Schools are looking for ways to both physically protect their students and faculty and ensure the confidentiality of their networked resources. As their IT staffs research options, they are learning why 3Com® secure converged networks are winning awards for their high-performance and high-value solutions.
With 3Com solutions, schools can economically enhance physical security. Networked IP surveillance cameras can be deployed for twenty-four hour monitoring of schools and campuses. 3Com IP phones, available with a broad range of features to meet various budgets, can speed E911 and other help responses when made available in classrooms. 3Com IP telephony applications can support systems that record and pass malicious call information to authorities to facilitate prompt and effective actions.

Because networks are only as secure as their weakest access link, protection in 3Com networks is fully integrated into all components and standards-based for flexible implementation and cost-effective scalability. To secure data resources, 3Com networks—whether wired or wireless—provide advanced access and encryption solutions to control information availability and prevent unwanted network intrusions. Administrators, staff, and students and their families can enjoy high-speed connectivity, optimized bandwidth, and leading-edge protection.

Since the sophistication and speed of network threats is increasing, protection must be proactive rather than reactive. A 3Com TippingPoint™ Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) can operate at wire speed, examining all packets and identifying frivolous or unwanted traffic. With Quarantine Protection, it automatically blocks malicious traffic, informing the user of device infection and quarantining the device for remediation. Supported by intelligent 3Com switches, it can help avoid potential damage. And since dangers from Trojans, worms, virus, and Denial of Service attacks continually evolve, 3Com security solutions include the TippingPoint Digital Vaccine® Service that provides preemptive and automatic updates and protections against the latest network vulnerabilities.

Improve ROI for K-12 School Networks

Just as collaboration among parents, teachers, administrators, and students is critical to developing proficiency in the presentation and application of information, a school network must be integrated and interoperable. To cost-effectively optimize student learning, schools must carefully plan how to increase efficiencies, productivity, and access to online learning resources while leveraging existing infrastructure.

An infrastructure design should consider how to manage evolving capabilities and assure return on investment. To stretch limited budgets while delivering strong educational returns on public expenditures, enhancements to a district’s technology plan must be integrated and focused on creating a unified district architecture.

To address present and future needs, communication networks need to be standards-based and interoperability-tested. These are the hallmark of 3Com® secure converged networks. The company recognizes that standards-based solutions provide educational institutions with greater purchasing options, both in terms of solution choice and cost. They are often easier to install and manage, and can require less training than proprietary solutions.

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