Press Room
Orangeburg Consolidated School District Five to Partner with Sprint for Latest Education Technology Solutions
Charlotte, N.C.— June 21, 2004 South Carolina’s Orangeburg Consolidated School District Five moves to the head of the class by partnering with Sprint to implement innovative communications solutions throughout 13 schools, including the Empowered Education Desktop, Sprint TekNet IP, ParentLink and Sprint Voice Solutions. The school district, which serves roughly 8,000 students, becomes one of the most recent school systems nationwide to benefit from Sprint’s Empowered Education initiative which enables educators to advance learning beyond the traditional classroom boundaries while lowering total cost of technology ownership.
“Sprint brought a complete, integrated communications package to the table that is enabling us to increase family involvement, promote a sense of community, monitor student progress and offer engaging homework assignments and projects,” said Russell Zimmerman, director of Information Technology for the District. “By implementing the various education technology solutions offered by Sprint, we are able to bring all the pieces together needed to achieve our district’s goals.”
The Empowered Education Desktop, powered by LearningStation, combines Sprint’s communications network with online delivery of a comprehensive listing of high-quality educational learning tools from a wide range of K-12 content providers. In addition, the Empowered Education Desktop provides the unique capability of tracking student application usage in order to support data driven decision-making at both the school and district level. This unique combination of capabilities enables schools to extend the learning experience beyond the classroom while also providing critical tools that ensure the appropriate applications are used to help improve student achievement.
A significant benefit of Sprint’s Empowered Education Desktop system is that it reduces the need for schools to maintain software content on the desktop computer in the classroom or on facilities-based servers, helping them defer significant hardware, operating software, distribution, support and maintenance costs. This “virtual” environment makes classroom and learning software available to students and teachers on any computer with Internet access.
“By implementing the various technology solutions like Sprint’s Empowered Education Desktop, Sprint TekNet IP and ParentLink, Orangeburg Consolidated School District Five is showing its commitment to providing a rich learning environment using advanced communications technology,” said Mike Werth, director of education marketing for Sprint Business Solutions.
In addition to deploying the Empowered Education Desktop solution, Orangeburg Consolidated School District Five has implemented Sprint TekNet IP, a unique, centralized system that automates bells, clocks and public address systems and allows teachers to control a variety of centralized media and video systems right from their classrooms via a telephone handset or desktop PC. Further supporting a connected learning environment, Sprint also deployed voice communications capabilities to every classroom.
Sprint also implemented a family engagement solution called ParentLink that provides two-way communication between families, teachers and students. Through ParentLink, parents throughout the Orangeburg Consolidated School District Five will have secure access to their child’s grades, attendance records, school announcements, past-due library notices and homework information over the Internet using a unique ID and password.
By deploying the latest technology solutions from Sprint, Orangeburg Consolidated School District Five will be able to maintain a high quality learning environment while delivering on its mission of bringing parents, students and teachers together to improve the learning process beyond the classroom walls. And, a portion of the funding is expected to be provided through the Federal E-Rate program. Funded at $2.25 billion annually, the E-Rate program provides discounts of 20 to 90 percent on telecommunications services, Internet access and internal connections.
Editor’s Note:
Sprint is proud to be a tier one sponsor of the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in New Orleans, LA, June 21-23, and will be showcasing a variety of new and emerging education technology solutions at booth 1500.
Sprint is a leading provider of education technology solutions that help school districts overcome the barriers of time and space while lowering total cost of technology ownership. To learn more about Sprint’s educational technology applications, visit www.sprint.com/education.
About Sprint
Sprint is a global integrated communications provider serving more than 26 million customers in over 100 countries. With approximately 65,000 employees worldwide and over $26 billion in annual revenues in 2003, Sprint is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying state-of-the-art network technologies, including the United States’ first nationwide all-digital, fiber-optic network and an award-winning Tier 1 Internet backbone. Sprint provides local communications services in 39 states and the District of Columbia and operates the largest 100-percent digital, nationwide PCS wireless network in the United States. For more information, visit www.sprint.com.