‘The learning experience of the future’

Big, huge video screens.

That’s the future of bicoastal business education, according to the folks at Penn’s Wharton School.

This just hit my inbox:

While educational institutions have been on the cutting-edge of technology use for years, the Wharton School and Cisco initiative is taking that to a new level by using life-size, high-definition visual communications—based on Cisco TelePresence® technology — to virtually connect classrooms physically separated by thousands of miles. This single-classroom experience is so immersive that Wharton has given the two rooms a special classification, informing students that beginning this spring, bicoastal classes will be held in the “Cisco Connected Classroom.”

It’s no CNN hologram, but it’s close.

Wharton will use the technology to connect its Philadelphia home base to its San Francisco satellite campus.

Here’s a slideshow via Wharton’s Flickr page: 

We’ll have more on this later. Feel free to leave questions in the comments. I’ll ask them if they’re not too snarky.