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How Hand Sanitizer Drives Safety and Connectivity in the Workplace

AV Product News

As we return to the workplace, we are looking at new technologies that help us achieve the goal of keeping our employees healthy and safe while engaging those still working from home.  Achieving that goal is assisted by cleaning our hands and having accurate, up-to-date information to prevent the spread of rumors or panic.Novatizer AVISPL Branded

Keeping our hands clean is one of the best things we can do to prevent the spread of COVID-19.  We have all come to realize just how many items we touch in a day, so sanitizing common workspace high-touch elements is important.  Individual hand washing or hand sanitizer usage adds another layer of protection and safety to this goal.   Ditch the giant communal jug with a safer, touch-free option – one that can remind employees to use the sanitizer.

The Novatizer comes equipped with a 21.5” digital signage display, enabling you to broadcast your corporate message and important reminders to those in the office.  The device can be wall-mounted or placed on a floor stand for portability and can be wrapped to match your corporate brand. With policies changing faster than ever before, the Novatizer combines a valuable resource with the information your workforce needs. 

While hand sanitizer is among the most valuable resources of 2020, it’s possible that information is even more valuable.  With policies that can change faster than you can order a pizza, tools to distribute that information are critical.  Not that I have ever completely ignored any emails from HR, but let’s say that blast emails are… slightly less than perfect at getting information comprehended by most employee populations. 

50605With the Digital Notification Suite, you can combine the messaging on your digital signage with a closer-to-home (quite literally, for employees working remotely) delivery method.  DNS is a desktop solution that can keep remote-working staff aware of all company announcements, news, and other live information in real time.  With the ability to push messages out to specific users, teams, or the entire organization, DNS keeps employees on the same page.  Scheduled messaging enables you to keep employees engaged with company activities while emergency notifications can be used to widely broadcast crucial alerts.  This solution ties in with larger 22Miles digital signage solutions, making it easy to reach your office and work-from-home populations.

It’s fair to say that 2020 hasn’t turned out like anyone expected.  Rise to the challenge with some germ-killing information and stay healthy.

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The Top 10 Reasons Why I Think AVI-SPL Symphony Is the Best

AV/IT

Over the past few years, I have seen the benefit that AVI-SPL Symphony has provided to my clients.  While I am convinced that Symphony is the best thing to happen to collaboration technology since the Bluetooth headset, I am often having conversations where people ask me about the one, singular reason why they should choose Symphony.  This is a hard question, because there are just so many ways that Symphony can provide real benefit to their organization.  Rather than select one, I have decided that there are 10:

  1. Gain enterprise-wide insight into rooms and technology usage with analytics. The heat map of the most popular days and times, along with most popular spaces and technologies always catches my eye.
  2. Automate daily room sweeps to proactively see technology issues before they become end-user complaints and thus avoid meeting impact.
  3. Integrate with your existing ticketing and scheduling – it’s your solutions talking to each other
  4. Provide your users a concierge experience, with VIP features and conference producers providing meet & greet and live meeting monitoring.
  5. Customize meeting, device, and incident reporting, providing data- driven continuous service improvement plans with the ability to compare locations, dates, and technologies.
  6. See all of your devices in one portal. Track and report software versions, warranty, lease and service expiration dates, and other relevant info to improve lifecycle management.
  7. The Symphony Adapter Marketplace enables native monitoring and control of any device or application, enabling any device or application to become part of the Symphony environment.
  8. Proactively find and fix trouble spots. Monitor for developing issues, remotely troubleshoot current issues, and create reports to show improved ticket closures.
  9. Room-based subscription models make it easy to scale Symphony. Management is simple with your team or ours.
  10. Never run into a question you cannot answer. Customized reporting with graphical views make it easy to find and interpret the information you need.

Interested in getting a demo of the application that does all of these?  Contact AVI-SPL today.

 

Chris Murgo

Today’s post comes from Christina Murgo, the service account manager for the central region.  With a wide background in the AV and UCC industries, Christina designs service applications to enable any organization to meet and exceed their business goals.

 

 

 

 

 

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Updating Your Higher Ed Campus for the New Normal

AV in Education

For higher education — as with many organizations — the story of COVID-19 has been about disruption, quick thinking, and adaption. During the last few months, the pandemic and its responses have placed major obstacles to continuing the business of education.  Teachers, students, and administrators have adapted to long stretches of closed campuses, distance learning, and remote work for faculty and staff. As guidelines relax, they’re entering a new phase, one that can include a modified arrangement for classroom learning. 

Enrollment numbers are expected to decline as millions of people who’ve lost their jobs due to the pandemic may not have the resources to attend college. Fewer students are filling out the Federal Application for Federal Student Aid, a sign that they may be unwilling to take on loans in this economy or are forced to give up schooling for the time being to help out at home. Declining enrollments lead to declining revenue, forcing some schools to face the possibility that they may have to close permanently.  

Amidst this disruption, higher education institutions have been planning on ways to safely reopen their campuses. Even if your school already had the infrastructure and culture for remote work, teaching, and learning, you’ve seen firsthand just how much people rely on each other when they can’t be in the same physical spaces. Routines change and are challenged when you’re not just a few feet away from asking a question, giving an answer, or providing an update. 

Schools will figure out a lot over the coming months: how students are guided through the system and what role technology will play in those changes. How higher education will build a model that grows enrollment numbers while providing an experience that builds a positive reputation. 

The past few months have emphasized the value of collaboration tools that bring teachers and students together from remote locations. When campuses reopen, teachers may lead classes from the classroom while students are remote, they may gather together in the same classroom while practicing social distancing, and they may broadcast instruction to other classrooms. That means they’ll need the technology and guidance to safely conduct and participate in classes while providing a high-quality experience. 

The new normal on campus will be influenced by technology solutions and practices that include:

Video collaboration: Remote learning — whether it’s from home or a separate location on campus — requires a high-quality, engaging experience for students and instructors. For university staff to productively and efficiently work from home and on site, they need reliable, simple-to-use collaboration solutions that integrate with their school’s network and applications. Here are some areas to consider as you incorporate video collaboration into the teaching and administrative processes:

  • Look at which courses can be taught online. Some schools are already experimenting with online learning.
  • Use unified communications tools that support active learning and engage students in the material.
  • In situations where classroom teaching returns, focus on connecting on-site and off-site students through collaboration technology. 
  • Increase video conferencing among staff and reduce travel between campuses for in-person meetings. As collaboration takes on a more prominent role and is an opportunity for problem-solving, we can expect a greater reliance on video collaboration and unified communications solutions like Microsoft Teams. 

Well-being: Schools are in the process of addressing their campus safety: pushing back the opening of their fall semester, temperature screenings, quarantine facilities, requiring masks to be worn, and COVID-19 testing. Consider taking action in the following areas to promote the well-being of your students, staff, and faculty:

  • Create social distancing guidelines that extend into the classroom. Limit the number of students in classrooms. Social distancing may change the dynamic of classroom interaction: Instead of leaving her seat to address content on an interactive display, a student can interact with it from a personal device.
  • Equip rooms with collaboration technology to bring together learners from different locations. Expect the quality of that interaction to guide the value that universities can promise to students.

Automation: Across campuses, staff and instructors book common classrooms and use a variety of control and collaboration devices that are also being used by their colleagues. By automating functions like scheduling and room control, you can improve the collaboration experience while also minimizing health risks by reducing the number of touch points. Some ideas for incorporating automation technology in your workplace include:

  • Help your instructors become comfortable teaching classes that are interactive by way of technology. These interactive solutions will allow them to connect with those learning from their homes, as well as with those attending class from different areas on campus.
  • Include classroom solutions like lecture capture and interactive displays that respond via wireless connection to a student’s smart phone or laptop. Automating the functions of these devices will allow for a largely touch-free experience that supports the health of faculty, staff, and students. 
  • Bring together distance learners with in-class students. The technology that connects them and that records these sessions must be reliable and easy to use, and it must deliver a high-quality experience.

Intelligent buildings: Intelligent buildings can anticipate and respond to the ways that teachers and students use a variety of on-campus spaces: classrooms, labs, libraries, common areas. These systems give insight into how spaces are being used so that you can use the analytics to decide if your university or college needs to reconfigure spaces and/or build new ones.

  • See which devices are being used most often, by whom, and in what ways. That intelligence will shape how automation tools provide an efficient, sometimes touch-free experience for teachers and students.
  • Use intelligent building technology to schedule spaces and limit how many people can gather in one room at the same time.
  • Identify campus hot spots — those areas where too many people are congregating to abide by social distancing guidelines.

Security: Providing for the health and well-being of students and staff will affect the design and user experience of collaboration tools and meeting spaces. Even as the effects of COVID-19 are mitigated on campus, remote learning and remote work will continue.

  • Focus on the security of video collaboration and UC applications, which may share sensitive content. Look for UC solutions with built-in encryption, authentication, user permissions.
  • Review the security of the applications themselves, as well as the security of your ecosystem of solutions, including application interfaces, the network, hosting capacity, room and personal devices, and end-user protocols.
  • Collaborate with IT to plan and build secure access to the campus LAN for your staff. Even as campuses reopen, remote work will continue.
  • Provide for secure access to the network and applications.  Classes will bring together off-site learners with classroom-based teachers, and they’ll connect different rooms on campus for socially distanced learning. Schools will also work to limit campus visits with a shift to more online recruiting and admissions. Universities will need the technology, infrastructure, and support to do this on a much wider scale than they have.

AVI-SPL is helping schools like yours create the new normal by sharing the knowledge that will help your faculty, students, and staff collaborate across campuses, rooms, offices and remote locations. Contact AVI-SPL and let’s start the conversation about preparing your higher ed campus for a bold, flexible learning and operational experience.

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Improve Your Higher Ed Disaster Collaboration Plan

AV in Education

We recently looked at items you should consider when evaluating your disaster plans for your collaboration environment. Higher education faces unique needs and challenges in collaboration and requires some additional thought and consideration when evaluating your current response and planning for the future.

When evaluating your current response, consider such questions as:

  • Were technology hand-out programs (such as laptops) adequate to meet demand? Did students utilize the devices they were given? Were there any hardware limitations or requirements for some programs?
    • While Chromebooks or other mini-notebooks may meet very basic requirements, students whose programs demand CPU-intensive programs may find it impossible to complete their coursework without a better-equipped device.
  • Which community resources were engaged by students?
    • Did local libraries provide internet access outdoors? Did ISP’s provide free home access or free Wi-Fi locations?  Consider coalition-building with local resources (both near your college or university, and across your state) to learn about their abilities to offer services during disasters, and design collaboration solutions that can cope with these bottlenecks.
  • Were standard university emergency notification channels used during the crisis? How can we expand visibility to these notifications via collaboration elements, such as digital signage?
    • Ensure your emergency notification system is set up to push content into your digital signage.

Accessibility for All

Each student comes to higher education with a unique background, needs, and goals. While many students are lucky enough to be able to move to a fully remote experience without much hassle, others face serious challenges in continuing their education. It is crucial that collaboration technology and resources be made available and utilized in ways that enable these students to continue their educations. 

ADA compliance should be more than a checkbox that is met with each project. Meet with your campus office of accessibility services to learn more about the unique needs and challenges that were met, and those that were not, during the recent crisis. Ensure features that are even more important as classes move remotely, such as captioning, are more than adequate for students to continue their education.

Tech developed for ADA compliance can be re-purposed to meet social distancing guidelines. Assisted listening systems can be re-purposed to meet current social distancing needs.  Rather than voice lift systems that could be complicated and expensive to retrofit to large spaces, products like the Biamp CrowdMics, Listen Tech’s ListenEVERYWHERE, and Williams Sound’s WaveCAST enable students to receive audio and communicate back to instructors and their classmates with questions. These systems are simple to deploy while utilizing a participant’s own devices – protecting them and simplifying your sanitizing requirements.

In many areas, broadband speed and cellular signal can be dramatically limited – if available at all.  Video streaming and conferencing can consume large amounts of bandwidth, making it impossible for students to participate fully. Consider making videos downloadable, and provide audio-only options, enabling students who may only be able to access the internet on a sporadic or limited basis the ability to receive material. 

Hybrids, Everywhere

While instructors scrambled to meet the challenge of quickly transitioning classes from in-person formats to online, courses for 2020/2021 are being developed with the understanding that a quick pivot back to fully remote courses may be necessary. 

While strategies vary as far as whether classes will be fully remote and led from a classroom or a home office, held in person in a socially-distanced manner or broadcast to classrooms on campus, it’s important to ensure your networks are ready for this traffic. While the Spring 2020 semester often relied on from-home recordings, hybrid models will bring new demands. 

With instructors back in classrooms, the recorded video may be of higher quality – and requiring more processing power and bandwidth – than those recorded from home. Comparing previous utilization of lecture capture and the amount of time for videos to be prepared with forecasted 100% utilization will enable you to provide realistic guidelines to instructors.

Streaming video can utilize a large amount of bandwidth. Look for options on your content platform to downscale simple videos of lectures to ensure you are not taxing your networks unnecessarily. Additional WAP’s (such as the Luxul XAP-810) may be required in areas with a heavy student presence. With students and parents already wary of online learning, sufficient bandwidth may be one of the easiest ways to ease the challenges of the Fall 2020 semester.

Define a Pivot Plan

While no one is looking forward to a second round of lockdowns and quarantines, it is crucial to be prepared to move back to fully online status within 24 hours.  Where businesses strive to maintain business continuity, higher education needs to maintain educational continuity while also maintaining channels of communication to anxious students, parents, and wider community.

Create a plan for utilizing existing tech, such as your digital signage platforms, to distribute information quickly and widely. AVI-SPL can work with you to develop a comprehensive digital signage strategy, ensuring your investment distributes information effectively. Your digital signage platform should tie in your emergency notification system, allowing emergency status information to be distributed quickly and widely.

Don’t Forget Your Standards

Many colleges and universities are currently scrambling to complete their usual summer technology upgrades while also equipping new spaces with video conferencing and content-sharing capabilities to aid in social distancing. While equipment can be in short supply, it’s important to ensure your dollars are still invested in ways that will be productive and compliant with your existing standards. 

Existing standards may need to be flexed, but they should not be completely abandoned. AVI-SPL is available as your trusted advisor to provide consulting and engineering teams to assist you in selecting equipment that is both available, high quality, and will be compatible with campus technology standards.

High quality is one of the most important aspects of online learning.  Poor video quality will contribute to the student impression that distance learning is lower quality (and thus, not of the quality deserving of their tuition). Maintaining the classroom-like experience will positively impact student satisfaction.

AVI-SPL has partnered with several manufacturers to design high quality, turn-key systems that can quickly be deployed anywhere around campus.  The All In One Classroom Bundle provides high quality from Newline Interactive’s display, Logitech’s MeetUp, and Bose speakers.  Without permanent installation, this bundle allows any space to be used for distance learning while being re-configurable to meet future needs post-crisis.

Use Your Community

While we can’t come together in person this summer, there are many virtual resources that will help you learn from colleagues about ideas that have been proven to work – and some that have been proven not to work. The Higher Education Technology Managers Alliance will be presenting their all-virtual (and free!) Technology Conference 2020 from June 8-10. This conference will include a variety of expert panels and sessions to exchange ideas with colleagues from a wide variety of geographic, socioeconomic, and institutional backgrounds.

This is also a great time to work on your own knowledge, utilizing free manufacturer trainings such as those from Crestron, Extron, Biamp, Shure, and more.

As always, your AVI-SPL team will be here to provide any support and products you may need to meet your developing requirements. If you run into a challenge, just contact us.

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CARES Act Funding for Online Learning Solutions

AV in Education

Schools all over the world are scrambling to reopen this fall and will likely provide at least some virtual classes. Did you know that The CARES Act: Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund—Institutional Portion assists with any significant change in the delivery of instruction and allocates funds for distance learning projects? Funding may cover upgrading audio visual and online learning equipment to deliver virtual classes, interactive on-site sessions, or both.

Specifically, The CARES Act states, “Institutions may use the funds for Recipient’s Institutional Costs to purchase equipment or software, pay for online licensing fees, or pay for internet service to enable students to transition to distance learning as such costs are associated with a significant change in the delivery of instruction due to the coronavirus.” (1) There is also dedicated funding for the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund—Minority Institutions Program and other special school populations. (2)

Which schools qualify for CARES Act Funds?

Institutions that entered into the Funding Certification and Agreement for Emergency Financial Aid Grants to Students under the CARES Act may receive funds for Recipient’s Institutional Costs. Visit this page to see if your school has allocated CARES Act funds.

AVI-SPL Online Learning Solutions

Through our network of suppliers, we developed ideas to help schools like yours prepare for the fall semester and beyond. No matter if you have standardized on Zoom, MS Teams, or other collaboration technology, we can help you deliver a positive student experience in the classroom, online, or design a hybrid solution for both options. Learn more about:

Barco weConnect Interactive Virtual Classroom

  • Teacher-friendly interface for classroom instruction while students learn and engage remotely.
  • Quickly deployable and no apps or extra configurations required for students.
  • Multiple built-in cameras allow students to customize their learning views while teachers engage with real-size views of students and large attendance capacity.

Newline All-in-One Classroom

  • Quickly pivot from face-to-face instruction to distance learning while instructors remain in the classroom.
  • Customizable product bundles are suited for every learning environment at a competitive price point.
  • Deliver highly interactive solutions, particularly for virtual labs.

SMART Podium and Interactive Pen Display

  • Ability to deliver lessons from anywhere and connect students in live remote learning sessions on 24” screens.
  • With a simple computer connection, instructors can present and use the interactive pen to add notes or illustrations on the touchscreen.
  • Podium comes with SMART ink™ and SMART Learning Suite, including SMART Notebook® or SMART Meeting Pro® software.

Panopto Lecture Capture

  • Integrates with all major learning management systems, and offers comprehensive recording tools, simple deployment, and top-rated support.
  • Flexible recording and uploading tools let teachers create video lessons anytime and anywhere.
  • Offers personalized learning experiences for students, including inside-video search and variable speed playback.

Helpful CARES Act links

For more information on the CARES act, and how to request funds, visit these helpful links.

The AVI-SPL team is here to help you deliver digital classes and interactive learning solutions. Contact us now or call your local office.

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6 Ways to Keep Experience Environment Staff and Visitors Safe Post COVID-19

AVI-SPL

While businesses are reopening amid the post-COVID-19 reality, keeping staff, visitors, and customers safe in offices and collaboration spaces is essential. Experience environment and briefing center managers face an additional challenge — how to support social distancing and safety in areas designed to encourage people to explore, touch, and interact with exhibits and demos.

Briefing center managers must protect the well-being of visitors and employees while still providing a compelling user experience. Explore these six ways to promote health and safety in your customer experience centers.

Update Your Reception and Welcome Practices

You can show your commitment to safety and put visitors at ease as soon as they arrive in your experience center by adding layers of precautions.

mobile phone with chat to welcome experience environment visitor

  • Have virtual or video-enabled greeters and live chat options to limit direct contact with guests.
  • Provide hands-free check-in via mobile app or a kiosk with a QR code scanner. Avoid the use of touch screens or tablets, if possible.
  • Use thermal imaging to detect at-risk guests.
  • Post your updated cleaning and sanitizing procedures on your digital signage screens and mobile app notifications.
  • Prepare staff to answer visitor and employee questions regarding enhanced health and safety measures.

Implement digital wayfinding and automated scheduling

Once a guest completes your welcome process, deliver wayfinding instructions to a mobile device or via digital signage. Recorded audio tours must be delivered via mobile app as well. Eliminate the use of paper maps and schedules, and headphones, and other shared devices.

For 3D or other exhibits that require gear such as glasses or visors, consider single-use disposable options. Alternatively, use equipment once daily to allow for deep cleaning during off-hours.

Social distancing may be a prolonged or permanent way of life in experience environments. Automate staff schedules to limit how many people will work each shift. This will help ensure your employees can comply with social distancing requirements. Communicate guidelines to all employees and identify which managers will monitor compliance among employees and visitors.

Leverage intelligence from IoT applications

If your center hasn’t fully adopted IoT applications, now is the time to put this technology to work for you. Automated tasks that promote health and safety among staff and guests include:

  • Employing sensors to monitor visitor density and alert staff if areas are approaching capacity
  • Adjusting the experience center environment based on occupancy patterns (lighting, HVAC, on/off of technology)
  • Wrapping virtual concierge services into one workflow – invite, schedule, greet, preset experience content and technology, assign seating, deliver catering, etc.

Strengthen your cleaning regimen

Keeping public spaces “clean” has taken on new meaning amid COVID-19. Clean and sanitize your shared technology devices, demonstration areas, communal areas, and restrooms before you open your doors and several times each day. Pay extra attention to touch screens, and other devices visitors handle multiple times a day. You may need to alter your business hours to allow ample time for deep cleaning as needed.

Communicate with staff regularly

Maintain an open dialog with your teams to answer questions and listen to feedback and ideas. They are your eyes and ears on the floor and can identify potential problems or confirm that your new guidelines are working as expected. Offering anonymous employee surveys online can encourage open responses from your team.

Offer Virtual Experiences and Events

Consider if you can offer meaningful experiences to visitors in the comfort of their homes to keep staff and visitors safe. Ways to deliver virtual events include:

  • Deliver virtual reality simulations and exhibits for users online
  • Create virtual conferences, 360 tours, or product demonstrations

If you need assistance getting your experience environments and briefing centers ready to promote health and safety for employees and guests, the AVI-SPL team is here to help. We can also produce your virtual tours and conferences. Contact us online now or call your local office.

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