Georgia School Districts Innovate With SAFARI Montage

Staff Report From Georgia CEO

Monday, September 28th, 2015

Over half a million students in 20 Georgia school districts are now receiving digital instruction on the SAFARI Montage platform. Fulton County Schools just began their second year of rolling out the Learning Object Repository, Video Streaming Library and IPTV solutions, and will be introducing the Digital Learning Platform shortly to teachers and students. Forsyth County Schools has used SAFARI Montage for years to fuel their internationally renowned BYOT initiative. Newton County Schools has leveraged the SAFARI Montage platform to manage teachers’ use of digital cameras in the classroom for self-reflection and professional development.

“These innovative Georgia school districts have had an enormous impact on our product development, as they provide invaluable feedback on the challenges they face in the digital transformation of their classrooms and learning ecosystems.”

Other innovative uses for SAFARI Montage include Hall County Schools’ LTI integration of the Learning Object Repository to host video on premises for their Canvas LMS. Bibb County Schools deployed SAFARI Montage as the foundation of a massive digital overhaul, which is now providing teachers and students with digital resources previously inaccessible. Recently, Gwinnett County Schools has purchased the SAFARI Montage Learning Object Repository and educational video resources to anchor their interoperability with their Learning Management System district-wide.

All of these districts and others in Georgia have a few things in common which have led them to SAFARI Montage. They recognize that video and digital content are essential if not driving forces in education which require special treatment. SAFARI Montage has adopted an industry-leading approach to managing digital video with an on-premises appliance at the district combined with IMS technical interoperability tools to facilitate a comprehensive digital learning ecosystem with third-party platforms and educational publishers. Additionally, all of these digital learning objects must be seamlessly integrated, readily accessible and appropriately tagged with metadata to provide the required flexibility for personalized learning.

SAFARI Montage has invested in top Georgia educator talent to insure the success of projects in the state, including Dr. Mike Hall, former Deputy Superintendent of Information Technology for the Georgia Department of Education, and Dr. Tim Clark, nationally recognized thought leader on BYOD and formerly Coordinator of Instructional Technology at Forsyth County Schools.

Tim Beekman, President and Co-founder of SAFARI Montage, praises Georgia's national educational leadership: "These innovative Georgia school districts have had an enormous impact on our product development, as they provide invaluable feedback on the challenges they face in the digital transformation of their classrooms and learning ecosystems."