Over a single weekend, your school decided to upgrade all its technology at once. Bulk discounts and student benefits drove the decision. Now that it’s here, a lot has to happen.
In a K-12 school system, you have hundreds of devices to collect, assess, and recycle or refurbish for resale. It takes careful planning and incredible organization and ERI is here to help.
The Benefit of an All-at-Once Tech Upgrade
Upgrading your entire school’s tech at once offers benefits you might not realize.
Discounted Rates
When you get new tech at the same time, you leverage lower prices through bulk discounts. You can also get software discounts when you install the same vendor license on every device.
Heightened Security
When one class uses tablets that are four years old, and another uses brand-new equipment, it often creates issues when older devices can’t support software upgrades. This can impact security. If two grades have the latest security patch and two can’t update it, the risk of a breach increases.
Immediate Equity
Sometimes, a campus has all new equipment in one building, but the other building has older tech. The campus becomes a mix of old and new, creating gaps in asset value. When everything is new, you close that gap and gain immediate equity to support your school’s value, which can improve enrollment.
Student Engagement
It’s much easier for students to engage with their teachers and lessons when they’re not dealing with frustrating load times or screen glitches. If they’re rebooting laptops every few hours to get the system working again, they’ll tire of school pretty quickly.
Problems Typically Encountered in the First Month
An immediate rollout of new tech will have its glitches that resolve over a month or two. If you plan ahead, you can prevent these from becoming problems.
Logistics Challenges
All of the new equipment is here. Your IT team must unbox everything and confirm the entire order arrived. They must run upgrades, tag assets, assign items to a student or teacher, and set up temporary passwords. Plus, they have to hand them out to each department or classroom.
Collecting older devices adds another layer of logistical complexity. Old devices need to be collected, verified as turned in, and then processed for recycling or refurbishing. Data has to be destroyed to keep student and staff information private. Boxing and shipping to a secure ITAD provider is essential.
Overloaded Infrastructure
When hundreds of new laptops connect to the network at the same time, your firewall can throttle network speed. The Wi-Fi may become overloaded.
Overwhelmed IT Help Desk
With dozens of teachers calling IT for help at the same time, IT has to decide what to address first. They cannot be in every room at the same time. This can overwhelm your IT team and increase overtime costs.
Preventing Teacher and Administration Burnout
As a new school year begins or a vacation break ends, teachers are overwhelmed trying to get students back into the right mindset to work on their lessons and focus on new material. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for a rapid hardware rollout.
Teachers have to quickly learn new software or devices and help set students up. Class periods get lost to resetting passwords, updating drivers and software, and troubleshooting basic issues on hardware they’re still learning. It leaves less time for learning.
If a teacher or administrator is becoming frustrated, they might revert to older, familiar devices. They might start to burn out in a nation where it’s already hard enough to find qualified teachers.
Is a Staged Rollout Better for Your Needs?
A staged rollout where you upgrade technology in one school at a time can seem cheaper overall, which is appealing to the taxpayers in your district. A rapid rollout is often better for students and school security. How do you decide which route to take?
Rapid Rollout | Staged Rollout | |
Change Management | Can cause friction because teachers and administrators must learn new software and devices at once, taking time away from teaching as everyone adjusts. | Easier, as teachers who are familiar can help others who are just getting the upgraded equipment. |
Equity | Everyone in the district gets new electronics at the same time, leaving no one feeling less important or ignored. | Temporary gaps between grades or schools can frustrate students or teachers who also feel they need the upgrades. |
IT Responsibility | High demand for initial rollout, training, and device setup that does taper off. | Demand is continuous with repairs of older equipment and setup and training of new equipment in some classes or schools. |
Logistics | Substantial purchasing discounts, but lots of extra work during the initial deployment and collection of old electronics. | Easier, as there is less to do before a staged rollout, and teachers and students experienced with those devices can help out. |
Upfront Cost | High cost as everything is purchased at the same time. | Spread out over several budgets, which makes it easier to get taxpayer approval. |
While a rapid rollout may look less advantageous, there’s one tremendous benefit. Newer equipment often has a warranty, which protects your school district for several years. It also eases technology spending over the next decade because you have the most current model.
When the rollout happens, you pay once for ITAD. You’re not hiring ITAD providers every year, continually, as another phase hits.
Tips for Stress-Free Transitions to New Tech
When you upgrade technology all at once, you need a few things to ensure a stress-free transition.
- Centralized Assets: Avoid lost classroom time with self-service smart charging lockers where teachers and students can borrow Chromebooks, laptops, or tablets if theirs stops working or they’ve forgotten it at home.
- Run Network Load Tests: Test your network by running load tests at different times of day to simulate what it will be like when all students are in class together.
- Student-Led Tech Support: Train interested students to run device support desks for other students and personnel to use.
- Tiered Professional Development: Instead of holding single-day workshops that waste valuable time for teachers who are more tech-savvy, hold peer-led training sessions scheduled around their specific needs and schedules.
When you make it easy to learn the new tech and get help with issues, it’s less stressful for everyone. It frees up the IT department’s time to focus on the next stage of a new tech rollout.
Don’t Just Throw Out Old Tech
Old devices need to be disposed of, either through refurbishing or recycling. This isn’t a process you can rush. It’s not as simple as boxing everything up and leaving it out for community members to take.
Personally identifiable information (PII) often remains on devices, even after you’ve deleted files or software. Anyone with the right tools and knowledge could retrieve it, which violates the privacy policy.
You have to inventory every device and ensure they’re all accounted for. Then destroy the data, assess each item’s value, and recycle some items while repairing and selling others as refurbished electronics.
ERI specializes in ITAD. Call us to arrange an assessment of your used school electronics, followed by proper management and refurbishment or recycling in compliance with federal and state laws.