Olivetti is targeting the “digital classroom” market with the first all-inclusive school environment computerization package. “Scuola Digitale Olivetti” brings together interactive multimedia blackboards, Olivetti notebooks, netbooks and Tablet PCs for teachers and students, servers, projectors, and a platform of on-demand services supplied via Telecom Italia’s Data Centers, in a package designed to foster interaction between schools and home, share classroom lessons over the Internet, distribute multimedia teaching content, and offer technical assistance services nationwide.
In this new venture, Olivetti is targeting a market worth more than €1.8 billion worldwide, and is looking to expand onto the corporate training market too. Between now and 2012, average annual growth rates of 56% are forecast for the interactive whiteboard market in Italy alone.
After its initial roll-out on the Italian market, the new offering will be launched in France, Spain, Germany and England, where Olivetti has a consolidated sales presence, before a launch in South America. This new venture is part of Olivetti’s strategy to reposition itself on the software solutions and IT services market, where it can offer both hardware products and advanced services and applications.
Olivetti’s “Digital School” range leverages the “Oliboard” series of multimedia interactive whiteboards to stimulate active student participation in their lessons, and foster the integration of differently-abled pupils. Whiteboards are supplied alongside related products such as Olivetti notebooks, netbooks and tablet PCs for students and teachers, servers, and video projectors.
The range draws on the Olischool Portal, which is a platform of services for online lesson sharing and school/home communication. Available on demand in “software as a service” mode via Telecom Italia’s Data Centers – which means that schools have no need to set up their own internal dedicated IT infrastructure – the Olischool Portal offers parents a chance to view their children’s marks, reports, test results, attendance records, and information notices online, using a personal password, and actively take part in the teacher/parent Forum.
The portal can also be used to book time with teachers online, and to be informed about children’s absences via text message. Used in conjunction with multimedia whiteboards in the classroom, the
Olischool Portal allows schools to put teaching materials online, so that students can access an archive of lessons from home for revision, follow remedial courses, and be part of a dedicated social network.
The Olivetti package also offers multimedia teaching content from top education publisher RCS Libri, along with technical assistance services provided by the Company’s highly-skilled network of nationwide concessionaries.
Milan, 8 March 2010