IT for schools continues to evolve, and remote capabilities are still extremely crucial. Education institutions still benefit from technology integrations but can also face some challenges with it. A school that’s more tech-forward should have technology specialists to assist them. With that being said, here are some ways education institutions can benefit from managed IT providers.
How Education Institutions Can Benefit From Managed IT Services
Helps Protect Your Privacy
There is a lot of personal data on students and faculty, collected at the school. You have the student records that consist of home addresses, information about learning disabilities, health records, grades and disciplinary history. The collected data on the staff is much more private. Their records can consist of home addresses, phone numbers, banking and tax information.
All this information can easily be stored digitally, but this would require more attention for data privacy. There are privacy laws that protect students’ personal information. There are also certain standards to follow to store the health records of faculty and students. You need a well-managed IT infrastructure so that there are no data vulnerabilities that present legal challenges.
The wrong person could get a hold of the private information of students and teachers. If an attack happens on your IT network, then you just might be held legally responsible. With managed IT services, all of the private information, as the law requires, is safeguarded.
Managed IT providers can monitor students’ online activity. They can even block access to non-educational sites. This stops malicious actors from obtaining their personal data. It helps protect the privacy of students online.
Experienced in Working With Schools
Managed IT providers are experienced in helping other schools, whether they’re public schools, private schools or higher education institutions. You may be in a situation, like standardized testing for example, where you need IT hardware and support. Managed IT providers are experienced in that as well. They have back-tested knowledge of the overall needs for testing and the required software to administer these tests. Whether your school uses Apple, Google or Microsoft solutions, this goes to all schools.
Cloud-Based Collaboration Improvement and Digital Services and Operations Enhancement
There are some schools that progressively turn to cloud-based solutions. There are also collaboration platforms such as Zoom or Slack. They want to continue connectivity and increase collaboration between people whether it’s remote, hybrid, etc.
As schools use cloud-based collaboration tools, platforms and workflows, you’ll need streamlining for productivity and performance. Also, some universities and colleges move digital operations and a ton of data to the cloud. So, they’ll need help ensuring everything makes it and runs smoothly throughout the migration and implementation phases.
A managed IT provider can help make the most of your current tools, platforms and solutions. They know which cloud-based solutions can be integrated, combined or, depending on the case, thrown out during migration.
Higher educations have also been using more remote learning solutions and digital services like accessing resources, searching databases and submitting paperwork. Institutions will need more adaptable, stronger IT or cloud infrastructure as students, teachers or staff log on to learn, perform or teach administrative tasks.
Managed IT providers can shoulder the more complex and weighty tasks that correlate with enhanced digital operations such as cloud migration, web hosting, disaster recovery and data mobilization.
Helps Maintain An Educational Network
When there are students using devices in the classroom with distance unsupervised learning, it can cause many distractions. The internet is usually used by students so that they can access non-educational sites. They may be watching videos, browsing social media or playing games during class time.
A domain name search (DNS) filter may be of great help in this situation. These content filters can limit the students from being able to access any non-educational or inappropriate sites. When managing a DNS in this progressively digital society, you must come about it with a thoughtful approach.
Most schools used to use a blanket blocking approach, but learning technology is evolving, so over-blocking may only create more issues. Teachers may want to assign an educational game for their students to play or use a streaming service to present a video of some sort. In this case, they might have to access a blocked domain, and the content blocker domain needs to update every now and again.
This is because there are new inappropriate sites that are now emerging every day. You can get assistance in picking the right DNS that offers the needed functionality and flexibility, with the help of a managed IT provider.
Your IT provider will manage the service when you achieve the right solution. A managed IT provider can ensure that it’s updated as needed, and if a teacher so happens to want access to a blocked site, they will be able to unblock it upon request.
Conclusion
When you hire IT Services Group’s (ITSG) skilled network professionals, we review your network and IT systems to make certain they’re configured and secured in a way that will most effectively meet your IT goals. Contact us for all your IT needs.
