There is a frenzy of activity around these topics as universities, colleges and schools all realise that sooner or later the wave of technology which enables exciting and stimulating learning is going to become the standard.
Just as a boat on the tide, the wave of technology will lift the standard level, quality, and excitement of education to a new high. The fear of some about budgets is real, not to mention that these take time to plan and allocate. Any institution not beginning to put these resources in place is one that may be in fear of being "left behind".
Many students from all spheres have grown up with technology and feel completely comfortable in its presence, this is in spite of the varying degree of experience and knowledge of technology within the body of educators that teach these very learners.
Notwithstanding this, as more and more students locally and internationally are seeing their peers making use of electronic forms of learning (e-learning) as a daily part of life, the demand is growing that learners will expect this from their educational institutions and will begin to select their schools and universities based on the implementation and availability of these facilities.
Africa is hungry for education and has the potential to ripen rapidly, powered with the assistance of expert WiFi and implemented e-learning. UC-Wireless, a company with passion for education, drive and innovative vision, is the perfect recipe to feed this very desire.
The quality of the solutions deployed however is key to the success. The danger is that, in light of budgets, institutions make decisions that are thwarted with failure from the start.
Many independent studies have been carried out, the results of which are freely available on the Internet. Most of these have been conducted at significant expense of the bigger international universities to pro-actively ensure they did not make erroneous decisions for technology, especially WiFi, which stands apart from any e-Learning in that it is the key foundation. Failings and short-cuts here will ultimately result in a higher price being paid.
Therefore the question should be asked: "Can we afford not to make the best choice for enterprise WiFi?". We have already encountered too many schools and universities that have installed your "run of the mill" so called "enterprise" solution which, if one referenced independent surveys, ranks near the bottom of reliability and performance. High density! We at UC-Wireless can't stress this enough! For WiFi to "cut-it", it must be able to have at least up to 100 users (i.e. tablets, PCs or smart phones) on it simultaneously - per access point!
Not many solutions out there can do this, let alone with reliability and performance. So whether you have a school with 60 students or an institution with 2 000 - 10 000 students, you still need enterprise tried-and-tested WiFi, which can be scaled accordingly and even implemented in phases.
After intensive research we at UC-Wireless found only one solution on the market that has the most number of patents protecting their innovation on the wireless part of WiFi. Yes, there are enterprise brands and yes, they have worked in sites but cost, reliability and performance combined with the expertise of the vendor in the market all need to be weighed up together.
As a registered professional Electrical engineer specialising in RF (radio frequency) Quentin Daffarn, Managing Directorof UC-Wireless, had to do his homework on what solutions the company would support so that, as a professional in the industry and with a specialised vertical in education, it would be able to stand proud and know that all educational institutions that chose to be its clients, would be getting the best value for their hard-earned and limited budgets.
The company's passion and expertise is evident as the head of its Education vertical (Michael Berger) is deeply involved in education such that his passion is a benefit to all that he engages even on a consultative capacity.
So the bottom line is: start now and make wise choices for the foundation of your e-learning.
Quentin Daffarn - PR Eng. BSc Eng. (Elec), Managing Director - UC-Wireless
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