Five ways K-12 districts and schools can benefit from managed network services

Digital technologies have rapidly transformed the way individuals and organizations alike work, learn, and collaborate. However, as these advances swept through many industries like wildfire, the education sector seemed to trail behind. Millions of students found themselves unable to access the tools necessary to succeed in and outside of the classroom, creating an uneven playing field that became known as the homework gap.

This gap was only exacerbated as the COVID-19 pandemic forced a sudden shift to remote learning, with 16.9 million children finding themselves “logged out” from instruction because their families did not have home internet access.

The silver lining is that this shift to remote learning persuaded educational institutions to speed their digital transformation efforts and adopt the technology required to keep students and educators connected. As educators began to expand the use of digital content, tools, and resources in an online classroom environment, they could create engaging, impactful, and more equitable learning experiences.

Even as schools return back to in-person learning , these remote capabilities remain a crucial component of educational success. While these technological advances are essential to create more equitable learning experiences, they do simultaneously create some substantial hurdles institutions will need to overcome. Everything from computer crashes to targeted hacking can compromise a network and disrupt learning. The reality is that a tech-savvy school system needs technology specialists to support them.

That’s where managed IT services come in. Let’s explore 5 ways it can help:

1. Manage your cloud operations

As educational institutions return to the classroom, they continue to see value in using various cloud applications, video conferencing platforms, and other cloud services. These web-based technologies provide flexibility and accessibility to students, teachers, and families for efficient collaboration, easy communication, and engaging content, as well as seamless file sharing and storage. While the cloud enables greater flexibility,accessibility and can lower costs, it can be a herculean task to manage as cloud environments usually span multiple locations, with disparate data and applications. Managed IT services can support understaffed IT departments by evaluating the current infrastructure and applications to design a network topology most appropriate for each institution. This can include private Ethernet connections, Ethernet-based Cloud Connect for direct, private access to key cloud providers, hybrid networks and even segregated WiFi to protect your private traffic with service set identifiers (SSIDs) and personal area networks (PANs).

2. Safeguard your student and faculty data

It’s important to recognize that web-based solutions often store personal student and faculty data such as grades, health records, and addresses, which are a critical component of daily operations for most institutions. However, with an increase in online solutions comes an increase in data privacy concerns. Educational institutions need to ensure they’re positioning themselves to protect student data as best as they can. With managed IT services, schools can get the level of protection they need with a single digital security experience that extends from their core network to their cloud solutions to ensure their student and faculty data is protected.

3. Support your internal IT department

Many K-12 school districts remain understaffed, with small internal IT departments that can only do so much. As such, a forgotten password or a slow Wi-Fi connection can put a serious crimp on instruction and learning. More serious issues, like malware, DDOS attacks or application crashes, can put an entire school day on hold, if not longer. A managed IT provider offers 24/7 tech support, keeping teachers, students, and administrators up and running and while relieving your IT department from being the only call.

4. Ensure your network promotes learning

The reality of integrating technology into the classroom is, while it enables students to participate in more engaging learning, it also creates an environment where students can browse social media, play games, or watch videos during class. Here’s where a domain name search (DNS) filter can help. Managed IT services can setup DNS filters to block students from connecting to specific websites. This is not only helpful to promote more focus on learning and less on distractions, but also to add another layer of protection by blocking websites that are suspected to be malicious or fraudulent.

5. Keep learning secure

While technologies such as widespread internet access, mobile devices, and smart classroom tools help students reach their education goals and create more equitable learning experiences, they also generate a huge surface for cyberattacks. The speed at which many of these technologies were installed to accommodate for the shift to remote learning, often left security gaps. And attackers have taken notice. K-12 schools have experienced an 18% increase in security incidents in 2020 alone. The profile of threats is concerning, but with the help of a managed IT provider, educational institutions can protect their district from attacks that come from a wide range of attack vectors. The managed IT provider can deliver a comprehensive security experience for a more optimized approach to protect your network. They’ll also maintain a backup and recovery system in case of data loss.

Create learning experiences with a secure network

While technological advances sweep through the classroom and create more equitable learning experiences, institutions are responsible for ensuring their student and faculty remain protected and secure.

See why Spectrum Enterprise is the right partner for managed IT services to help institutions achieve their educational goals.