Those services span the device management lifecycle and include white-glove deployment for Chromebooks, asset tagging, case installation, green delivery services, device management, Windows imaging, asset disposition and more.
Knowing where specific vendor offerings fit in that lifecycle is one of the challenges CDW says it can help districts overcome, and the company representatives at the webinar explained how their tools can be implemented to create a well-rounded device management plan.
Broken Devices Throw a Wrench in an Otherwise Healthy Lifecycle
A well-managed device lifecycle operates like a well-oiled machine. Devices are regularly retired, others are newly imaged and deployed, software upgrades are on schedule, and there is enough visibility into all devices that IT teams can rest comfortably knowing their work is complete.
Also, that never happens.
In reality, all of the great plans the procurement, deployment and management teams have made start to feel a little shaky as soon as juice gets spilled on a keyboard, or a laptop gets knocked off a table, or a whole cart tips over as it’s pushed down the hallway.
Without a plan for what happens to those devices now in need of repair, that smooth-sailing lifecycle faces rough waters, said Jenny Taylor, vice president of channel development at Lexicon Tech Solutions, which specializes in device repairs for K–12 districts.
“Because there’s such diversity in how districts can approach a repair strategy, we really like to start with the end in mind and understand the outcome you’re trying to solve for,” she said. “By investing this time up front, we can engineer a custom solution to meet districts where they are.”
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Once districts acknowledge the need to plan for device repair, those big or small break/fix moments don’t feel so debilitating.
“The goal for many of us is to ensure we keep students learning, minimize classroom disruptions and eliminate the headaches for teachers and techs,” Taylor said.
Emily Stapf, customer success manager for strategic accounts at K–12 asset management software provider Incident IQ, agrees.
“Our goal is to make sure that teachers are teaching and not filling out support tickets,” she said. “We want to make sure that there are devices in the hands of those who need them, so they can continue teaching and learning.”
Incident IQ’s multimodule platforms help device management programs stay on track through deployment, inventory management, remote management and other features intended to help districts keep eyes on their devices, including monitoring when devices stop functioning properly. That level of insight is vital to running an effective device program, Stapf says.
“There is a lot of frustration over operational challenges within districts, and I can talk about it because I am a former district employee,” she said. “One of the things that technology can help with is to provide increased communication and visibility into those technology needs that we have within a district.”
Insight into Student Behavior Promotes Safety and Academic Success
Another former educator, Mike Jolley, joined the webinar in his capacity as vice president of strategic partnership at Securly. As a safety-focused company, Securly has developed tools to track student behavior on district-owned devices, including monitoring students’ browsing and search histories, and this touched on a common theme.
“When it comes to students who are really struggling, I think visibility is one of the hardest things,” Jolley said.
Along with monitoring browsing and search histories — Jolley described a person’s Google searches a “source of truth.” Securly takes that information and compares it with several known risk–analysis tools to flag potentially dangerous behavior, either for the students themselves or for others.
“Districts have been collecting this data forever, but what are they doing with it?” Jolley asked. “What we can do is turn what they’re doing into insight. We can give powerful insight by looking at where students are going and determining, is there a pattern?”
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Just as important, Jolley added, is getting those insights delivered quickly and in a way that’s easy to understand. Intervening with at-risk students as soon as possible is critically important and could offer a life-changing opportunity for those students before something tragic happens.
Those insights can also be used to help students who may be struggling academically. Kajeet has made its mark on K–12 districts primarily as a connectivity solution, but the Kajeet Sentinel platform offers actionable insights into student behavior while using devices on those networks.
“The role that Kajeet plays in this conversation is, how can we take that data and make sure that it’s connected in real time and in all the places that it needs to be connected to get the results that we need?” said Landon Garner, the company’s chief marketing officer.
For Garner, being able to monitor traffic at the network level is something that gives Kajeet a leg up on solutions such as mobile device management platforms and firewalls that enterprising kids can find ways to work around.
