VANCOUVER, British Columbia – May 20, 2020 – Absolute® (ABT.TO), the leader in Endpoint Resilience™, today announced the general availability of Web Usage for K-12 educational institutions to help stand up, monitor, manage and measure distance learning programs. Absolute provides administrators and educators with an undeletable tether to school-owned devices and a single source of truth into student device, application, and online usage. Absolute also announced Duarte Unified School District selected Absolute’s Web Usage to optimize their Learn-from-home program across 15,000 devices.
Widespread school closures amid the COVID-19 outbreak have brought significant challenges to education – from equipping students with necessary devices and connectivity to access remote learning, to also needing to know where these devices are and if they’re being used for their intended purpose. According to Absolute’s Distance Learning Insights Center, heavy device usage in education has skyrocketed more than 60 percent since before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Absolute’s education customers leverage Web Usage to help school leadership and curriculum designers measure how engaged students are with online curriculum. Duarte Unified School District relies on Absolute Web Usage to drive better learning outcomes by understanding how often the tools are actually being used on student devices. Absolute Web Usage also highlights risky websites for potential Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) compliance violations, ensuring Duarte school administrators can protect the safety of their students online – providing capabilities far beyond what traditional web filters can do, especially with savvy students who know how to navigate around them.
“The weekly snapshots allow me to dive deeper and investigate websites that have high traffic as well as those websites that seem to have bypassed our web filter,” said Eric Ramos, Chief Technology Officer, Duarte USD. “With the addition of multiple fields pulled from the G Suite Admin, we can really drill down to the highest priorities at any given time, saving my team valuable time when investigating.”
For educational organizations using the G Suite Admin Console (GAC) to manage Chromebooks™, Absolute also introduced the ability to synchronize data across platforms – delivering a single pane of glass to manage devices and consistently execute common workflows.
“Never before has there been a more critical time for distance learning initiatives to be anchored in visibility and control,” said Christy Wyatt, President and CEO, Absolute Software. “By providing valuable insights to school districts like Duarte - what applications are being used, how often, and for how long, our Web Usage analytics are enabling schools to measure ROI and optimize technology investment spend.”
Absolute Web Usage is a part of the Absolute Resilience® platform, which allows schools to track, lock and wipe devices whether they are on or off the network, and remotely remediate applications through a self-healing, two-way connection in order to protect data and ensure compliance. Absolute Web Usage is now available for both Microsoft Windows® and Google Chrome OS™ devices.
For more information about Absolute Web Usage, please click here.