It support for the school is changing very quickly. Tech devices used to be banned in the classroom, but now they are allowed because they help students learn. Even though schools are moving back to learning in person, the ability to learn remotely is still very important. Hybrid classrooms will continue to be used in some schools. Others will learn from home when it snows or when bad weather happens. Overall, using technology in the classroom continues to help to learn. Review games and educational videos can help teachers keep their students’ attention. As technology changes, being able to use it well is an important real-world skill.
Despite all the good things technology can do, it can also be hard in some ways. Learning can be stopped by anything from a computer crash to intentional hacking. A school that uses technology well needs people who know how to help them. So, managed IT services can help. Find out everything a managed services provider can do for you.
1. Keep Your IT and Remote Learning Infrastructure Secure
Even before it was common for people to learn remotely, 63 percent of high school students and 45 percent of elementary school students used digital learning tools every day at school. The need for learning from a distance has only made these numbers grow. Now, remote learning is an important part of the way many schools teach, you just need a good reliable internet such as Cox internet and you are good to go. Safety is very important in both real and online classrooms.
Your IT network has many access points when every student and teacher has a laptop or other device. If just one user clicks on a phishing link or downloads malware by accident, the whole system is at risk. When you let students bring their own devices to school, the risks go up. Any virus that gets on a student’s personal device could eventually make its way into the network at your school. Cyberattacks like these can damage important data, like grades and student files.
Security is improved by managed IT support. It helps schools build safe networks and sends out important security updates. Managed IT service providers can also set up a hierarchy of access levels. With this measure, students won’t be able to get to private information like their grades. Also, a managed IT provider can teach your company how to keep its data safe. They will also keep a system for backing up and restoring data in case any of it gets lost.
2. Help Safeguard Student and Faculty Privacy
Schools gather a lot of important information about their students and teachers. In a student’s file, you can find information about his or her grades, behavior, home address, health records, and learning disabilities. Tax and banking information, as well as phone numbers and home addresses, maybe in staff records. The best way to store this information is digital. However, it also requires extra regard for data privacy.
Student’s personal information is protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and other privacy laws. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act also has rules about how you should store health records for students and teachers (HIPAA). Data vulnerabilities can cause legal problems if the IT infrastructure is not well managed. Students and teachers’ private information could end up in the wrong hands if they are hit by ransomware. If the attack happens on your IT network, you could be sued.
Managed IT services can protect all private data, which is what the law says must be done. They can also help students keep their online privacy safe. A managed IT provider can stop bad people from getting personal information from students by watching what they do on the internet and blocking access to sites that aren’t educational.
3. Request Support and Receive Regular Maintenance
A slow Wi-Fi connection or a forgotten password can cause problems in the classroom. Malware or application crashes that are more serious can stop the school day for the whole day. A managed IT provider offers tech support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so teachers, students, and administrators can always use their computers.
In addition to responding to requests for service, they also do important maintenance to prevent problems. Keeping your servers up-to-date keeps them from crashing or getting errors. Keeping copies of your data also makes it easier to recover from a disaster.
4. Save on Internal Operating Costs
A managed IT provider can do everything that an IT team on-site can do. They save you money by working from home. To run your network, you don’t need a lot of IT resources or full-time staff. You don’t have to hire and manage an IT staff because you have professionals you can count on whenever you need them. Your IT services become easy to expand without having to spend a lot of money. If you decide to buy devices for all of the students, you don’t have to hire a bunch of new IT workers.
For a set fee each month, you can call on a team of experts whenever you need to. They will help you set up your infrastructure and do any necessary maintenance. A help desk on-site might only be open during school hours, but our remote support team is always available. Teachers can get in touch with us late at night while they are grading papers or setting up technology for the next day’s lesson. You can get more flexible help for less than what it would cost to hire full-time staff on-site.
