Education

Industry Challenges

Shrinking Budgets: School districts face an uphill battle when it comes to budgeting. Districts in the United States spend an average of $400 per student on IT alone. Many are extremely limited in terms of funding, so costly IT projects can become difficult if not impossible. It is because of these budget constraints that districts must get creative with their spending.

Content Filtering: In order to protect students from harmful online content, school IT departments implement content filtering. This prevents harmful content or harmful websites from being seen by students in school. Internet filtering for a school is conducted by a three-tier system: Blacklists, category filters, and keyword filters. Blacklists are lists of websites that are known to be harmful and users are prevented from accessing these websites at all time. Failure to filter harmful content is not acceptable and can result in PR nightmares seeing that the students and the teachers are the district’s customers. The American Association of School Librarians states that approximately 98% of schools in the US control the content that is filtered through their software.

Insufficient Internet Access: Only 28% of school districts in the US have enough bandwidth for EdTech every day. That’s 2.3 million students who do not have adequate access to the internet. The standard for school districts is to have 1 Mbps per student.

Unreliable IT Infrastructures: The network enables a school system to participate digitally. Students must be able to rely on their district’s network in order to better their education. When connections are unreliable, they hinder student learning and success. It’s important to keep in mind that EdTech is a new principle and that the current IT infrastructures were never built to withstand this demand. IT professionals working at school districts often have to make do with outdated and unreliable IT infrastructure. Updating a network is a huge project and can be incredibly costly.

Class Schedules: Classrooms are much different from offices, making EdTech a unique industry. Students come and go from class to class quickly, and teachers must change lessons and scripts frequently. Teachers have a limited amount of time with students in each class, making the need for fast connections more relevant than ever. Minutes spent logging on into software cannot be taken back, so it is imperative that it works. Teachers plan out their lessons in advance, meaning unpredicted network downtime can cause serious scheduling problems. The school’s bandwidth also must be able to withstand areas of high user volume such as libraries, sporting gyms or assemblies. Finals schedules will call for more bandwidth needed in study locations.