In Cooperation with IBM, TE Data Provides Distant-Learning Technology to Schools, Universities, Education Institutes
15/12/2008

In a new step to curb the negative effects from the recent spread of swine flu, TE Data unveiled the launch of its new distant-learning program 'TE Learning' that allows schools, universities and other educational institutions to deliver to students their courses and curriculums directly via the Internet and regardless of location and time constraints for teachers and students, said Managing Director Tamer Gadallah.

He added that providing distant-learning technology goes well with the company's strategy that aims to offer solutions and services specifically designed to fulfill the needs of the various segments of society cost-effectively. The executive asserted that distant-learning technology will be a very efficient and adequate means in the current conditions that have made it difficult for large numbers of students and teachers to gather in one place at the same time as is the case with schools, universities and the likes.

Gadallah pointed out that TE Data's collaboration with a high-flying corporation as IBM made it possible for the first time in Egypt to introduce integrated solutions for the application of this technology that combine the operating systems required together with the infrastructure of servers, hosting domains and so on. He said the new service will be hosted in the company's data center while streaming will be done through IBM servers at the information center of TE Data, which will spare customers the burden of buying these equipments and allow teaching institutions to only deal with TE Data to get and promptly activate the full service.

The General Manager of IBM Egypt, Engineer Amr Ghanem, stated that his company was "delighted to play a strategic role in this undertaking through which schools in Egypt will be provided with software programs and integrated solutions to help them carry out their educational functions in a straightforward, flexible and attainable manner at all levels of education, especially at a time of an outbreak of the swine flu." "IBM, through its strategy for building a smarter planet, examines the main problems facing the Egyptian society - such as those relating to health, education and traffic – and provides the appropriate solutions to assist this society in tackling those issues."

As for the way of using this technology, Gadallah said every school or university will be able to utilize this service by accessing the TE Data portal for which every student will have a special user name and password. Institutions subscribing to the service will thus be equipped to provide their curricular programs live and directly via the Internet, in what can be dubbed spread-out classrooms that are not bound by any specific venue.

 He added that the new technology offers highly developed facilities and features. While students can see their teachers and listen to their lectures through web cameras, it will also be possible to know the names of students participating in those cyber schoolrooms and who will be able to see the whiteboards or folders and control all of them remotely. Moreover, a student can have full audio-visual interactions with both the teacher and classmates to secure the necessary lively exchange of questions, answers and discussions.

The new service also makes it possible to save materials presented in the class, retrieve them at any time and save all of the relevant presentations and texts in special folders. These are real added values for users, Gadallah said. All after-sale services and technical support will be provided by TE Data teams and through customer service center reachable at 19777.

It is worth noting that TE Data has in recent times been keen to introduce products and solutions especially tailored for various sectors, industries and segments of the society, which led to major technological enhancements achieved by the company for the Egyptian society.