Education and Technology

I recently had the pleasure of attending the 2022 Colorado Association of Leaders in Education Technology (CALET) “Winter Leadership Conference” as a sponsor (on behalf of Aruba Networks and Zunesis.) This annual event brings together Information Technology leaders from primary education institutions all over the state of Colorado. They discuss new innovations, challenges, best practices, and ideas for the future.

Technology has helped aid education for decades. Its significance has increased substantially over the last few years, especially so after the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic. While manning the Aruba/Zunesis booth, I had great conversations with IT Directors, Network Admins, CTO’s and others, about technological challenges they face in today’s K-12 education landscape. I shared with attendees about the many ways that we are trying to help K-12 education customers navigate these challenge. I wanted to share with the rest of you some ways that we can help. Particularly with Aruba Networks.

 

High-Performance Wireless Networks for  K-12 Student Success

1. Aruba’s Wi-Fi 6 (802.11.ax) infrastructure is designed to support schools of any size with always-on secure connectivity. Seamless roaming allows network access on the move. While high-density capabilities support large classrooms, auditoriums, and outdoor facilities. Learning management and unified communications systems can be prioritized to deliver latency-sensitive data, voice, and video without delay, loss, or jitter.
2. Unified infrastructure: Aruba offers a unified infrastructure from edge to core with wired and wireless networks that work together to deliver a consistent and secure network experience. Aruba designs its own semiconductors so its switches can provide blazing fast and highly granular visibility into the performance of the switching fabric. SmartRate power-over-Ethernet (PoE) allows Wi-Fi 6 access points to operate at >1Gbps over existing cabling, eliminating the need to rip and replace cable plants to obtain multi-gigabit wireless performance.
3. The Network Analytics Engine (NAE), included with AOS-CX, provides a built-in framework for monitoring and troubleshooting networks. NAE detects problems in real-time and analyzes trends using the time-series database so IT can predict future performance and security issues.
4. With ClearPass Policy Manager, devices are profiled, authenticated, authorized, and tightly managed network access using granular, policy-based access controls once they are identified on the network. Users and devices have restricted access to only those network, IT, and application resources for which they have been approved. ClearPass also ensures that users and devices are compliant with regulations governing student privacy and personally identifiable information
5. Aruba Wi-Fi 6 access points include radios for wayfinding, geofencing, location tracking, sensor monitoring, door locking, and actuator control. These capabilities transform Aruba access points into secure, multi-purpose communication systems that are both network access on-ramps and full-fledged IoT platforms.
6. AI-based Maching Learning: Aruba delivers customized recommendations through AI-based machine learning to improve network and application performance based on anonymized comparison with peer environments. If a change could increase performance by 10%, it is recommended to the Network Admin who can then authorize the settings to change. Aruba User Experience Insight provides IT a real-time view of the end-user experience and clear action steps to resolve any issues before a service ticket is opened. These powerful tools bring much-needed help to enable already overwhelmed IT staff to take necessary action and stay ahead of issues.

E-rate

I covered some key technological solutions that Aruba Networks is offering but I didn’t even get to the best part: E-rate. School districts across the country depend on E-rate funding to make infrastructure systems and telecommunication more affordable. Aruba not only has an entire catalog of E-rate eligible networking solutions but even provides an entire team of E-rate professionals to guide customers through the process and maximize their IT spend.

 

Contact Zunesis to find out how we can assist K-12 schools.

Additional Resources: 

Aruba Solutions for Primary Education  

Aruba Solutions Primary Education E-rate