IBM and Cisco Facilitate Remote Teaching in Madrid

All private and public schools in the Madrid will be able to continue attending their classes using free tele-teaching tools. IBM and Cisco have provided the Region of Madrid with the access, management and support of the Cisco Webex teleworking and collaboration tool, which offers simple and intuitive functionalities for e- education.

The solution, that is already in use, connects teachers and students in real time. More than 100,000 teachers from Madrid already have a personal account in the service to start virtual classes. All those teachers registered in EducaMadrid (in the 2019-2020 academic year) will be able to use the platform. The collaboration is also open to all regions of Spain and possible uses in other areas of the administration that may benefit at this time from this remote collaboration platform.

“At Cisco, all workers are committed to positively impacting the country with our collaboration and our technology. We want to help everyone benefit from digitization, especially in critical situations such as the current one“, highlights Andreu Vilamitjana, CEO of Cisco Spain.

“We want to contribute with our professionals, technology and knowledge in the collective effort to alleviate this health and social crisis. We are especially proud to be able to contribute, combining technology and professional volunteering, to reducing the impact of the COVID 19 crisis in our country“, said Marta Martínez, IBM Spain, Portugal, Greece and Israel General Manager.

Cisco Webex is a complete collaboration solution. Its Meetings version not only includes video conferencing, but also the possibility to share the desktop and applications, multimedia resources and surveys in real time. These functionalities provide a complete virtual classroom, where students participate in classes in guest mode, without the need for a user account.

Everything is managed from the personal room of the teacher, who "invites" the students, controls the audio -silencing the micro of the students when he needs it- and can record the session to share it or review it later. Teams version facilitates collaboration between teachers and school staff, with advanced chat, videoconferencing, and document and screen sharing capabilities in a more structured environment.