26 April 2021

When you’re a vendor or original equipment manufacturer (OEM), one of the things you deal with every day is competitive pricing. It seems like there’s always someone willing to undercut your price to land a deal. One way to fight becoming a commodity is to offer something of value that your competitors don’t.

OEMs and vendors serving the education industry can differentiate their product offerings by providing a complete solution for managing digital devices and the classroom teaching experience by bundling device management and distance learning solutions.

Solutions have been designed specifically for the education industry and adapted to the changing environment. As educators quickly tried to move to a remote or hybrid learning environment, they found tech hurdles at every step of the way. BYOD (bring your own device), shadow IT (Unapproved software use), and tech problems when juggling multiple platforms, being just a few. Now that some time has passed, these ad hoc solutions are no longer acceptable. Educators need to move to a proven system that takes care of the most challenging part of the job for teachers – so they can concentrate their energy on teaching. It’s taken a toll. Morale levels among teachers are now at the lowest point since the pandemic began. More teachers are talking about retirement or switching careers than ever before.

A powerful device management layer

A device management layer is essential when conducting an efficient and safe digital learning experience. It lets you manage, monitor, and control all of your school’s devices from a centralised, cloud-based platform.

Designed for education, from nursery to secondary school and up to higher education, a device management layer can provide flexible and remote support for all devices on a single platform. IT Administrators, principals, teachers, and VR coordinators can easily monitor, manage, and control every device in the fleet This allows you to manage settings, apply and enforce school policies and regulations, and remotely install apps and update, using batch tasks or simultaneous workflows.
Advanced device management solutions also let you create geo-fences and device location perimeters. If a device goes outside an authorised area, you’ll get an alert. Users will be able to remotely track, lock, or wipe any lost or stolen devices. There’s also an added security layer. It provides a connection to secure back-end repositories, such as SharePoint with restrictions and audit logging to track file access. Also, it comes with tools for all stakeholders with robust reporting. IT teams can centrally manage the entire fleet. Teachers can manage the remote environment. Principals and administrators can analyse adoption and optimise device usage across the organisation. Manufacturers and vendors can have their own device management layer to provide ad-hoc support and manage updates as well.

An all-in-one classroom solution

A classroom management application provides an all-in-one solution to manage classrooms, and lets teachers focus on educating students and not managing technology. Rather than having to juggle multiple platforms for classroom management, video conferencing, and learning management, solutions can incorporate the tools teachers, and administrators need into one platform to create a better learning experience.

Designed exclusively for schools, colleges, and universities, these platforms have built-in tools that are lacking in the software people are using for remote learning today. For example, Teams, Meet, and Zoom provide video conferencing capabilities, but they don’t allow teachers to view students and their desktops at the same time. An all-in-one classroom system does that. It lets teachers see students and what they’re working on in a thumbnail at the same time. Teachers can switch between screens, show a student’s screen to everyone, or switch to a one-on-one mode to give guidance.

Teachers can launch apps or videos and synchronise delivery to every connected device. This helps maximise learning using quizzes, surveys, whiteboards, or viewing websites.

Handling changes efficiently through distance learning and device management solutions

While some schools have started reopening, this past year taught us that having a plan in place in case of an emergency is crucial to minimise disruptions in our students’ education. Schools, just like any other business, should have contingency plans ready to go in the case of any shutdowns or pivots to hybrid or remote learning.

Even after a year of juggling, many academic institutions are still figuring out how to handle the various needs of educators and students. As such, changes in policies, workflows, and other processes are inevitable.

An all-in-one solution is essential to handle these changes as it enables in-classroom, remote, or hybrid learning with all the tools teachers need. When conditions change, such as moving from in-classroom to all remote, it’s as simple as pushing a button to make the switch. You can provide low-cost solutions that other vendors and OEMs subsidise as a value-added incentive or pass on pricing to customers. It can be used to lock in deals, upsell, cross-sell, or additional revenue sources when it’s time for renewal.

For manufacturers, these platforms offer factory-level integration and white-label options. They can also be customised to handle unique operations. Both products can be used on any connected device regardless of where administrators, teachers, or students are working.

By Nadav Avni, marketing director at Radix Technologies