The other night, I got to drive to Detroit for a Verizon 4G LTE Preview Party.

My Education Rep from Verizon invited us to this preview party, so Verizon could show us what is new.  So, I took my assistant principal and a teacher (So she could surprise her husband, my education rep from Verizon).  Although we were not allowed to win any prizes, being that we take state monies, we did swindle a notebook and pen.  We then were invited to a full course meal and open bar (which we did not partake in, water was fine with me).

We got to hear from top directors and senior managers about what 4GLTE does.  Their platform was four fold: Speed, Latency, Coverage, Innovative Devices & Solutions.  They are predicting that 3.6 exabytes per month will be downloaded by 2014, which is a 40X increase from 2009.

The second part of the night was seeing some of their products that they have.  Remember this wasn’t just for educational use, but overall possibilities.  As I took everything in, I was thinking about how can that technology be used in my school.  My assistant principal and teacher loved the Samsung Galaxy (Verizon’s own Tablet Device).  The first thing that caught my eye, was Verizon’s mediatile  (see picture).  This was an interactive kiosk. We could have all of our newsletters, blog updates, podcasts, schedules, directory, the possibilities are endless.  We can have maps to away game, and when you click on the team, Google/Bing map appears with the best way to get their from our place.  You could set it up with a live person if they needed a question answered.  I see this as a main informational point in our school, that would increase our technology value and parent interests.

There were other items that could be use like the security cameras, but I was stuck on this mediatile.  My hope would be that Verizon could partner up with my school.  We could be a wonderful piloting school.  We have Kindergarten to 12th grade students.  We are small enough that it would not cost Verizon a lot of money to test.  So Verizon if you are reading this, Please contact me at Principal@HoltLutheran.org about how we can be Verizon’s test school.