Without seeing the video screen, one cannot guess that these McKenzie High School (TN) students are taking a dual-credit U.S. History course over video teleconferencing equipment. The course is taught by a University of Tennessee at Martin professor and “piped in” over ENA Video Connect.

As of 2012, the solution name became ENA Live.

September 7, 2011—For five years, students at McKenzie High School in Carroll County, Tennessee, have been taking two dual-credit classes from the University of Tennessee-Martin via video-teleconferencing equipment. It was a familiar, easy routine. The two classes—one English and the other U.S. History—would simply gather in the distance-learning room at the appropriate time, the teachers would start the big Tandberg unit, and the day’s class would begin. Professor lectured, students watched and listened, discussions ensured, homework was assigned, tests were taken—just like any other course, except at the end of it, passing students received both a high school and a college credit. A seemingly perfect operation.

That is, until, the high school needed the extra room. The principal called Dianne Anderson, McKenzie Special School District technology coordinator, this summer and asked her to find a workaround.

ENA Video Connect the perfect solution

She quickly found one: ENA Video Connect, a secure, cloud-based video-teleconferencing solution whose only requirements are connectivity and a computer or handheld device with a camera, speaker and microphone. In short order, she did a demo, purchased the service, got the laptops set up for the start of school and trained her two teachers. A few weeks into school, it turns out that ENA Video Connect is a more perfect operation.

“As soon as I heard about ENA Video Connect from my ENA account service manager, I knew it was the perfect fit,” says Anderson. “The teachers and the students can stay in their own rooms and don’t need any special equipment.”

No special equipment, no moving to a special room

Anderson was right. She reports that the classes “are going really well. The teachers love it because they don’t have to pack up and move to another room. It’s just so convenient having the power of video teleconferencing wherever you have a laptop. We are ecstatic to find this solution.” Besides the two ENA Video Connect accounts for the dual-credit courses, Anderson also has an account on one other laptop that is available to any teacher or administrator that would like it for video-teleconferencing in special content or a meeting.

A head start on college

McKenzie High School (TN) students watch, listen and take notes as their English professor lectures. The class is a dual-credit course offered by the University of Tennessee at Martin that is delivered remotely via ENA Video Connect.

ENA Video Connect easily answers the district’s call for more dual-credit classes. Their students “like to graduate from high school with some college credits already under their belt,” says Anderson. In order for a class to attain dual-credit status, the course must be taught by a teacher with sufficient graduate-level training and accredited by an institution of higher learning. With the nine credits available over ENA Video Connect (a second English dual-credit course with UT-Martin is offered in the spring at McKenzie High School) and two otherdual-credit math courses offered by their own teachers, McKenzie offers their students 15 college credits.

What Anderson could not have guessed was how much the two professors at UT-Martin like the new system. They, too, don’t have to go to a dedicated room with an H.323 system. They simply teach wherever they want from their laptops. Anderson says that staff at the campus have said to her, “This Video Connect is so affordable. At this price, we could do far more dual-credit courses.”

Benefits are so clear, “it’s a no-brainer”

“It is a no-brainer,” after all, according to Anderson. “ENA Video Connect is an extremely inexpensive, effective resource that helps my principal. It helps my teachers. It helps our students. I’ve been telling my peers in the region, ‘If you aren’t looking into this, you’d better.’”

As for ENA, she is similarly blunt: “You ought to be selling this thing coming and going.”

Click here to discover 50 classroom and operational uses of ENA Video Connect!

Contact ENA

For more information about ENA Video Connect, please contact ENA Technical Product Manager Mike Pfannenstiel at mpfannenstiel@ena.com.