VANCOUVER, British Columbia – June 30, 2020 – As school districts across the United States plan for the upcoming 2020 – 2021 school year, Absolute® (TSX: ABT), the leader in Endpoint Resilience™, today highlighted educational institutions – Anaheim Union High School District, Duarte Unified School District and Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School – serving as leading examples of schools and districts who have successfully implemented distance learning initiatives after the global COVID-19 outbreak forced them to shut their classroom doors in March. All three organizations have selected Absolute for the unbreakable visibility and control needed to ensure their distance learning programs are persistent, resilient and intelligent.
Given the current challenges associated with safely re-opening the new school year, many schools will continue to focus on remote learning to some extent for the foreseeable future. A recent initiative of the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition, the State E-rate Coordinators Alliance (SECA), and Funds for Learning (FFL) proposes for US Congress to provide additional technology and other funding for schools that are facing the daunting task in front of them. In the meantime, schools are looking to their peers for guideposts on how to ensure devices and learning resources are accessible to every student and protected with reliable security controls.
To help educational institutions monitor and manage distance learning programs, Absolute provides administrators and educators with an undeletable tether to school-owned devices. Absolute also recently announced general availability of Web Usage for K-12 organizations, enabling school leadership and curriculum designers to measure how engaged students are with online curriculum and ensure their safety while online.
PA Cyber Charter School, one of the largest, most experienced online K-12 public schools in the nation, selected the Absolute Control® solution for unbreakable visibility and control over their fleet of 15,000 devices. They also use Absolute’s Application Persistence™ service to ensure an always-on, two-way connection to their IT management solution, Kaseya®, which they use to remotely push out security patches, new applications and scripts.
“Our equipment goes into households that range from folks who are not technologically savvy, all the way to folks who are literally rocket scientists,” said Dean Phillips, Director of Technology at PA Cyber Charter School. “They all love our technology, right down to the pre-loaded software. Thankfully, with the right technology resources in place, including Absolute, we can ensure an exceptional, seamless remote learning experience.”
When COVID-19 forced Anaheim Union High School District to send devices home with students to support remote learning, the school board wanted details on the location and health of every device. With Absolute’s unbreakable digital tether and an always-on, two-way connection to each device being checked out, the district is able to track how many students they are serving with technology and remotely manage their entire fleet of more than 30,000 devices, even after those devices have left the school network.
Duarte Unified School District (USD) needed to ensure their students had access to devices and online curriculum, and that their teachers had visibility into student engagement and where gaps in connectivity may exist. They are leveraging Absolute Web Usage, which allows administrators to measure how engaged their students are with online curriculum and gain detailed insights into which learning resources are underused. The tool also highlights risky websites with potential Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) compliance violations, ensuring Duarte USD administrators can protect the safety of their students online.
“These K-12 institutions all serve as leading examples of how to stand up and measure distance learning programs,” said Christy Wyatt, President and CEO at Absolute. “As a result of making Web Usage generally available, we’ve seen a dramatic uptick in the number of education customers using these analytics to optimize their online learning experiences as well as protect student devices and data. We are honored to be providing education IT and security teams with the Endpoint Resilience and security required for effective remote learning programs as they plan for the fall.”
Absolute will host a virtual roundtable discussion with education leaders on July 14, 2020 at 10AM PT / 1PM ET, where they will share key learnings and best practices from their experiences with the rapid transition to distance learning, to be followed by a live Q&A. If interested in attending the live webinar, you are invited to register here.
For more information about Absolute and Endpoint Resilience for distance learning, visit here.