NEC Announces Partnership, Showcases the Intelligent Campus at EDUCAUSE 2009

IRVING, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NEC Corporation of America, Inc. (NEC), a leading provider and integrator of advanced communications, networking and IT solutions, located in booth #622 at the EDUCAUSE 2009 conference, today announced that Tidebreak, Inc., a leader in interactive workplace and learning space technologies, has joined the UNIVERGE Solutions Partner Program. Classroom collaboration solutions from Tidebreak are among the innovative technologies and services being demonstrated by NEC at EDUCAUSE 2009, November 3-5 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver.

“Tidebreak’s ClassSpot PBL solution – supporting flexible environments that support both teaching and learning - can be seen in action with NEC’s classroom technologies in our booth.”

“We imagine the campus of the future as an augmented-reality environment where real and digital worlds meet to stimulate collaborative learning, where mobile devices, interactive learning spaces, and social networking communities are seamlessly integrated,” said Dr. Andrew Milne, CEO, Tidebreak. “Together, Tidebreak’s learning space systems and NEC’s intelligent campus solutions bring together the elements that will deliver this future, slightly ahead of schedule.”

By joining the UNIVERGE^® Solutions Partner Program, Tidebreak will work with NEC to provide its collaborative classroom environment for education customers. In addition to innovative learning space technologies, Tidebreak’s interactive learning space technologies support three major ideas: transforming large displays into communal work surfaces, enabling the easy movement of content among students, instructors and devices in a classroom or group meeting, and automatically capturing and disseminating information to participants as they co-create new ideas. Tidebreak’s technology offers campuses a software-based alternative to the traditional but costly audio/visual hardware infrastructure, creating the potential to lower total cost of ownership and maintenance costs to a point where advanced technology classrooms can scale across the entire campus.

“NEC has a strong product portfolio for the classroom; Tidebreak introduces an original approach that fosters student learning based on peer-to-peer interaction. Together, NEC and Tidebreak offer universities a complementary solution that completes the modern classroom,” said Sydney Burton, director, education markets, NEC Corporation of America. “Tidebreak’s ClassSpot PBL solution – supporting flexible environments that support both teaching and learning - can be seen in action with NEC’s classroom technologies in our booth.”

Throughout EDUCAUSE, NEC will be showing additional technology demonstrations at the booth in four areas, set up to offer insight into communications mobility and flexibility for students, faculty and staff as they move around the campus.

Mobility – technologies that can increase flexibility, productivity, collaboration and improve resource allocation throughout the campus. Technologies include: UNIVERGE UC for Enterprise (UCE) suite of applications with UC700 Desktop Client and UCE Mobility (MC550). The MH160 mobile handset, part of NEC’s UNIVERGE Assured Mobility solution, and RFID location tracking to help prevent loss of assets.
Student Services – communications management to connect with prospects, students and alumni via multiple media-types, including NEC’s Digital Signage Solution, Automated Message System (AMS), and TellMe^® hosted voice applications. Additionally, click-to-call capabilities to enhance the campus web site, contact center solutions, which help to streamline and support student services, and web phone communication alternatives to enhance student interactions with faculty and staff.
Campus Management – support green initiatives and allow reduced costs through increased energy efficiency, and improve protection of people and assets. NEC’s green initiatives help universities maintain a socially and fiscally responsible campus by enabling management and monitoring of building system’s power usage to make informed decisions about energy consumption planning. Other technologies include: E911 from Amcom™ to help optimize emergency response, remote monitoring systems and network security for enhanced safety through crisis planning and management.
Classroom – including Tidebreak’s ClassSpot technology and the NEC’s UNIVERGE Sphericall Enterprise Softswitch which provides a complete, software-based unified communications system that will support IP phones, unified messaging, video conferencing, presence and more. During the show, universities interested in obtaining a FREE copy of the Sphericall software for academic lab and software development use can visit NEC booth #622 to register. The UNIVERGE Sphericall SDK will allow a university to incorporate this fully-featured service oriented architecture within its IT curriculum.

For additional information about NEC’s solutions for higher education, please visit us online at www.necunified.com/highered.

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For more information about Tidebreak, please visit http://www.tidebreak.com/.

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