Changing the Education Paradigm Online Learning (S1E27)

When an estimated 56 million students move to learn online, the pressure mounts on the people who manage the technology for this significant transition.  Today, we have an interview with two education technology managers who have met the challenge. They both admit they could not have accomplished the far-reaching goals without technology partners, and we include a subject matter expert from Nutanix to contribute to the discussion.

In a typical school, the technology administrators normally are only called when something breaks. When COVID hit, they had to transition to becoming partners with the community of students, teachers, administrators, and parents to enable this major transition. Post-COVID, the technology team now has a seat at the table for any decisions regarding learning in the future.

The transition can be divided into several aspects, including infrastructure, the software environment, cybersecurity, and deploying resources to manage the challenge.

Rex Manzo, Senior Director of End User Computing at Nutanix, indicates that using something like a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure for thousands of students would be time-consuming, tedious, and expensive.  One way to make the apps more robust is to use a system that is URL-based and can give the flexibility that schools need.

We all know many schools receive support locally and do not have the kind of flexible financing that commercial organizations can have.  As a result, tech administrators were concerned about skyrocketing charges for altering their system to accommodate remote learning.

When designed with a cloud model, a school is only charged when a student consumes resources. When they log off, there is no charge.

Chris Cummings, Director of Information Technology at the Klein Independent School District in Spring, Texas summed it up when he said, “People should have the flexibility to be able to work or teach from any location, like how the students should be able to learn from any location.”

To view this webinar: Changing the Education Paradigm: Online Learning.

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