IPN and CISCO Systems will create model of large-scale hybrid education

• The IPN´s General Director, Arturo Reyes Sandoval, and the head of the company CISCO Systems of Mexico, Isidro Quintana, signed a General Collaboration Agreement • The Secretary of Public Education, Delfina Gomez Alvarez, has stated that digital tools are a permanent component in the teaching-learning process • The pandemic presented a historic opportunity to propose new educational practices, where the reinvention of institutions will be permanent: Reyes Sandoval

To expand the technology that will allow maintaining the education of excellence offered to students, both face-to-face and virtual, the National Polytechnic Institute General Director, Arturo Reyes Sandoval, and the head of the company CISCO Systems of Mexico, Isidro Quintana Garza, signed a General Collaboration Agreement, through which the company will add its technological potential to create, in conjunction with this house of studies, a model of hybrid education on a large scale, which will allow to reach more places and serve a greater number of students.

The Secretary of Public Education, Delfina Gomez Alvarez, has stated that digital tools are a permanent component in the teaching-learning process, so they must be available to teaching staff and adolescents and young children, especially for those who live in remote communities.

At the ceremony, Reyes Sandoval said that hybrid education will allow the Polytechnic to reach more students and highlighted the importance of what it means for the Institute to have the opportunity to collaborate with CISCO, a leading global company in the provision of technological architectures of collaboration, networks, security and internet of things, for the creation of advanced, safe and resilient paradigms of hybrid education in both the virtual space and the physical space of the classroom.

This agreement, he stressed, will strengthen the multiple projects that the IPN has drawn up to meet its objectives, based on the experience that the pandemic left us and the optimal use of new technologies. "For CISCO it will be very useful to have the valuation of its equipment and educational technology, by the leading institution in technological education in Mexico."

This collaboration between the IPN and CISCO, he explained, will promote digital transformation initiatives that contribute to the fields of teaching, research and the dissemination of culture, in addition to contributing to the consolidation of the hybrid education paradigm for the IPN, in the new normal generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, computer security, the promotion of cybersecurity and analytics, the generation of digital skills in students, teachers and officials, as well as the strengthening of its technological infrastructure.

He recalled that the company CISCO entered into a donation contract (March 22, 2021) through a subsidiary, with the Polytechnic Foundation, A.C., in which the IPN is the beneficiary of a Networks and Connectivity Laboratory, through which more than 2 thousand students have been trained in the design, configuration and maintenance of networks; cybersecurity and the internet of things. With this donation, he said, three spaces were also enabled to implement hybrid education in different academic units, which include two teaching rooms, two multipurpose rooms, four educational cubicles and the expansion of the Webex platform for 22 thousand users.

Reyes Sandoval emphasized: “At the Polytechnic we are clear that the pandemic presented a historic opportunity to propose new educational practices and other ways of being and interacting in this era, where the reinvention of people and institutions will be a permanent task”.

The CISCO´s General Director, Isidro Quintana Garza, stressed that this collaboration agreement has a very important transformative element, because what is being formed is a pilot of large-scale hybrid education.

“This is the largest on the planet, which not only requires technology, but the will to change processes and add wills. So if we are successful in this model and it starts to grow, we will have a model that can scale the Polytechnic's ability to bring high-quality education to many more places and to many more students”.