CDW Webinar Will Help Districts Get the Most Out of Classroom Tech

Keep Devices Connected, Secure and Primed for Student Success

Technology is everywhere in today’s modern classrooms, but that doesn’t stop districts from being inundated with new sales pitches promising the latest and greatest tools to add to the mix.

The Sept. 24 webinar will help schools sort through the noise and pinpoint the right tools to nurture a cohesive, easy-to-use technology environment that keeps everyone connected, guarantees safe and secure use, and ensures everyone’s devices are working as they should. Strategies for streamlining technical support, maximizing device lifespans and performance, optimizing device monitoring, and maintaining reliable and secure connectivity are all on the agenda, covering the full spectrum of a device management program.

Emily Stapf, customer success manager at Incident IQ and a longtime K–12 district IT employee, says that when it comes to device distribution — an early step in the device’s lifecycle once it’s been imaged — producing a thorough, well-considered plan is essential to navigate what can be a hectic time of year.

“To me, it’s all about planning,” she says. “If we have a good plan put in place and we have a good place where we can house that data, then we can make better decisions. It’s not necessarily all about the distribution; it’s about all the little touchpoints along the way.”

Once the devices have been distributed to students, they must be monitored closely, both for the students’ safety and the safety of the district’s network. On that front, Ivan Casanova, chief marketing officer at Securly, says it starts with a question.

“How much time and resources do K–12 schools currently spend collecting and analyzing data to make important decisions that are going to impact student safety and school improvement?” he asks.

With the aid of technology, districts can access and analyze that information digitally, then apply it in real time to stage immediate academic, health or safety-related interventions and test the efficacy of certain modalities.

“Securly has made its name in this business as a web filter company,” Casanova says. “But we also realized that every single K–12 school district is sitting on a treasure trove of data. The online activities of students is the most accurate and best representation of what students are thinking and feeling.”

Of course, tracking and analyzing student behavior on the network requires that the network is always online, and that traffic on district-supplied devices can be monitored, no matter where students are connected. Landon Garner, chief marketing officer at Kajeet, says the recent past has challenged districts to do just that.

“Truly, the way that children learn has been totally transformed in the past five years,” he says. “I wouldn’t give a child a laptop and say, ‘Go to your room, shut your door and go do your homework.’ There’s a lot of danger that comes with that.”

While unmonitored student access on laptops can be dangerous, what they do to the laptops can be dangerous as well. Children can be clumsy and reckless and, just like adults, can break the devices they need to further their education. When devices do break, having a plan and a partner you can trust to repair and replace those devices quickly could provide long-term cost savings and prevent major headaches for the IT department.

DIVE DEEPER: Students get a career head start with help desk opportunities.

“Devices like Chromebooks or tablets or laptops very quickly went from being a luxury that’s nice to have to being indispensable,” says Josh King, CEO at Lexicon Tech Solutions. “We see that schools regularly have break rates between 15%-30%, so if you don’t have an effective solution in place, you will very quickly run your fleet into the ground.”

That and more is on the docket for the Sept. 24 webinar, one in a series of panel discussions that CDW Education is hosting to bring district administrators and industry leaders together to maximize their technology investments. Registration is open now. Click here to reserve a spot.