Best practices for BYOD in education

Bradford Networks, an organisation that has been at the forefront of network security in the education sector since 2000, recently commissioned a survey of 500 institutions in the education sector to gauge attitudes towards bring your own device (BYOD). It may be great for enabling new ways of learning, teaching and collaborating, but BYOD presents a number of challenges for the IT department, with security remaining the number one concern.

Based on extensive experience developed from helping over 600 educational institutions, Bradford Networks recommends the following best practices when developing a BYOD solution:

Has your school joined the BYOD movement?

Laptops, tablets and smart phones are now commonplace in our daily lives. There’s a variety available on the market and everyone has a preference. Once upon a time these devices may have been used primarily for personal use, but now we expect to use them anywhere, in everything we do to make our lives easier. It’s this expectation that has driven the trend towards bring your own device (BYOD).

Back to school – are your IT systems ready?

Summer has come to an end, and schools have started a new term, highlighted by the mad rush of activity within the IT department to get things ready and ensure everybody has a consistent, productive IT experience.

The activities that cause IT departments pain at the beginning of term are numerous, often compounded by the fact that staff have had their laptops at home over the summer, meaning that these devices generally haven’t been receiving updates or anti-virus definitions for nearly two months. Cue the complaints about machines being slow and taking hours to upgrade or apply updates.

The car…

“You don’t expect to buy a car with no engine.”

“It’s like buying a car and being told a steering-wheel isn’t included.”

“When I buy a car, I expect to fill it with fuel occasionally.”

The car analogy seems to fit all circumstances. Within IT, it’s used regularly to convey complex issues in simplistic terms, with varying degrees of success.

It’s lazy, often throwaway, but it can occasionally help to get to the heart of an issue by emphasising requirements, expectations or circumstances that are perceived to be illogical, unfair or just plain dumb. Both suppliers and customers use the car, internally and externally, to highlight things that they feel are wrong.

Considerations for BYOD

I’ve been engaging with some clients of late who have all started to use the phrase ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD).

It’s a great concept, and your favourite search engine will produce articles from VMware, Aruba (Dell re-brand its wireless and network access control (NAC) technology), Deloitte, HP and others with a total of about 82.5 million search results returned.

Do you go the extra mile for your customers?

Recently I spent time talking to Brent Maytham, Senior Network Technician at Gumley House Convent School, about the work we’ve done for them, and he was kind enough to give us a wonderful testimonial:

“Foundation IT went above and beyond the call of duty…The relationship we’ve build with Foundation IT is so valuable to our school. Their support has been outstanding and I have enjoyed working with them, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to other organisations.”

It got me thinking, so many companies claim to go ‘above and beyond the call of duty’, but how many actually do?

Podcast: Dell Wyse

Our wonderful Dell partner manager, Dave Durden, flagged up this podcast on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Innovative use of technology in the classroom can bring multiple benefits to both teachers and students in schools that previously had little or no access to ICT. Moliehi Sekese, a teacher from Mamoeketsi Government Primary School in Lesotho, talks about the increased control and flexibility that a Dell Wyse shared PC installation gives her and how it has had a fundamental impact on pupils’ interest in learning.

Listen to the podcast.

How to install an Exchange 2013 server on a single Windows 2012 Standard Edition server

The following step-by-step guide shows you how to install an Exchange 2013 server on a single Windows 2012 Standard Edition server.

To install Windows 2012 (Standard Edition), 4GB ram is sufficient for Demo\Test domain. However, You’ll need at least 8GB for a production server running both client access and mailbox roles.

See here for Exchange 2013 system requirements.

The benefit of end-user computing

What consumes the majority of an IT department’s time on any given day?
Backup issues?
Change requests?
Or maybe end-user support?
If you chose the latter, you would not be alone. End-user support is the one of the most difficult IT costs to quantify; it’s difficult to measure, impossible to predict, and issues that occur are often classed as high severity, meaning resources may be pulled from project work or scheduled tasks to support the problem.