MediaXtreme Schools Educators on Potential of Technology

Like a lot of teachers, Deepwater Elementary school’s Kelly Grigg spends a portion of each school day in front of her computer, pointing and clicking, dropping and dragging and entering important data.

But unlike most of her colleagues, Grigg’s efforts aren’t aimed solely at tweaking lesson plans, entering grades or creating class handouts. Rather, the technology support leader at the Pasadena, TX, grade school spends her time creating information channel displays that deliver everything from high-tech pats on the back for budding grade school readers to activity schedules and menus.

“Before we did a lot of paper information dissemination -especially for the kids,” explained Grigg. “But now we just turn on the TV tuned into our character generator channel and what the students need to know is right on the television. It’s much more visual, and the kids really like it.”

Deepwater Elementary is one of 14 schools in the Deer Park School District to have modernized its communications efforts with the help of a Keywest Technology MediaXtreme information messaging system and a district-wide fiber optic wide area network (WAN) and CATV installation.

“The great thing about the MediaXtreme,” said district director of network systems Ryan Petru, “is you can put anything in there -not just text but pictures and snippets of live video, even sound can be used.”

Each Deer Park School District campus has its own channel on the broadband WAN/CATV system to display unique messaging from its own dedicated MediaXtreme system. Campuses can look at each other’s messaging pages simply by changing channels, and district headquarters can override the campus messaging channels with its own information pages in an emergency.

To get Deer Park educators started on the right foot with the MediaXtreme, QCTV Corp. in Houston, which sold the systems to the district, invited Keywest to conduct a day-long training session at the district’s WAN/CATV headquarters.

The MediaXtreme has given the district an easy-to-use tool to inform, inspire and motivate its students. “I use the MediaXtreme everyday,” said Grigg. “It’s great, and easy-to-use. It always works, the connections are good, the graphics are great, it’s fast, and I can look on the TV and see what I’ve just created.”