Over the past few years, we have seen a fundamental shift in our classrooms. No longer can phones, tablets, and other technology send a student to the principal’s office or detention. Modern schools are embracing this never-ending technological battle and creating one-to-one computing programs, BYOD policies, or a combination of the two.
Are these new policies and programs a way of giving in to societal pressures? Some may think so, but educators see it as a significant benefit to students. Successful one-to-one initiatives increase student achievement, create more engaged learners, enhance the digital literacy skills of students, and prepare them for college and their future careers.
Technological Benefits for Students Have Drawbacks for Schools
While BYOD educational environments and one-to-one computing can be advantageous for students, many schools are finding it difficult to maintain them with the current IT infrastructure they have in place. Poor IT infrastructure will render these programs completely ineffective.
What one of the problems schools have with this new teaching method is a suddenly overloaded network. BYOD environments require all students and teachers to have their own wireless device. If the network was not designed to accommodate such a large capacity, it will overload quickly. According to the 2015 State of Education Technology survey, 38.2% of more than 150 educators named inadequate network infrastructure as one of the greatest challenges they face in providing access to education technology. Networks need to be reliable and efficient, so data can travel to the broadband network, and students can have an uninterrupted educational experience.
Education has become increasingly reliant on technology to teach future generations, but the majority of wireless networks in schools are woefully unprepared to support these technology initiatives and IT challenges. Deploying them without the necessary IT infrastructure in place will cause disruptions in everyday learning. BYOD and one-to-one initiatives require a large amount of bandwidth and upgraded infrastructure to be successful.
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When students are permitted to bring their personal devices to school, security also becomes a big challenge. If you allowed someone onto your network in the past, there was no way to restrict what they could do on your network, which is a problem for the curious little minds being taught. To mitigate this problem, your school’s network needs to be intelligent enough to know who is doing what through directory accounts. With this role based access control, IT administrators can view all the happenings in the network and limit access based on created roles within the school (i.e. teacher or student). Although digital tools benefit students, a balance is needed to conform to legal necessities and keep students—and their devices—safe from breaches, viruses, and hackers.
Related: Establish a Full Security Fabric to Replace Ineffective Security Measures
BYOD and one-to-one computing programs are not just trends that will soon be forgotten; they have now become the norm that many schools are trying to adopt. When they fail, heads turn to the IT department and the school’s online infrastructure, or lack thereof. Overloaded networks and ongoing security challenges are major issues plaguing modern schools.
