Primary education has come a long way. Classrooms with desks, notebooks, textbooks, and content-centric curriculums have evolved to a more student-centered learning experience. Several technology trends are further driving the need for mobile computing within the classroom.

 

 

4 Trends Driving Adoption of Mobile Technology in the Classroom

 

E-learning has grown into a multibillion-dollar market in the primary education (K-12) arena.¹ Educational publishers are seeing their revenues from digital materials (electronic textbooks and other tools) eclipse revenues from printed textbooks.² The upside for publishers, as well as research into best practices for e-learning, have led to four important trends driving adoption in the classroom:

 

• Licensing models — Publishing companies offer cost-effective e-licensing models for schools to present students with the most current information.
• Supplementary tools — Other materials beyond traditional textbooks are now available to supplement the curriculums to help students have access to as much information as possible.
• Gamification — This enhances learning, as students enjoy the challenges and competitive aspects that stimulate learning.³
• Personalized learning — Students learn at different rates, and they more effectively acquire the collaboration and innovation skills required for college and beyond when learning environments are augmented with technology.

 

While all this is good news for students, one of the biggest challenges for 1:1 learning initiatives is the need for teachers to embrace the technology. If the technology or software is perceived to be too cumbersome, teachers will not willingly support it. Therefore, for any district-wide or school-wide implementation of mobile technology, teachers need to feel comfortable and find value in it.

 

 

So, What Makes a Good Mobile Solution for K-12 Education?

 

Built for Students

 

Modern learning is often project-based, which requires reading and creation of content, collaboration, and presentation. More schools recognize that preparing students for technology-based fields — such as engineering, computer science, and vocations that require either coding or math calculation — requires the use of mobile technology that supports this sort of functionality.

 

However, students are tough on most things, including their own smartphones and textbooks. Therefore, devices need to be rugged and able to withstand drops, spills, and shocks. Devices should also be thin enough to fit easily in a backpack.

 

Built for Teachers

 

We’ve highlighted the important aspects of personal devices, such as laptops, from a student’s perspective. However, to be successful, teachers need solutions that accomplish the following:

 

• Enable teachers to differentiate instruction so students at different levels can learn successfully at their own rate.
• Facilitate instruction through software and collaborative tools. Solutions should help teachers orchestrate their classrooms, and save time with easier lesson planning, administrative and assessment workflows.
• Monitor student progress. Software that links the students’ devices with those of teachers can help teachers discern areas where students are individually or collectively having trouble.

 

 

1:1 Solutions Designed Specifically for Schools

 

HP has invested time and money in understanding the education market and gathering feedback from thousands of teachers, students, and school administrators to created impactful education technology. HP Education solutions, such as the HP ProBook x360 11 G1 Education Edition, are designed and built for dynamic learning environments to enable anytime, anywhere creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking while meeting lean budget requirements. Their goal is to create richer educational experiences, improve learning outcomes, and save teachers time.

 

If you are interested in implementing a 1:1 learning initiative in your school district, consider how convertible laptops from HP can cost-effectively enrich your curriculum and better prepare your students for the next part of their journey, whether it’s college or a job, as well as save your teachers time and help them engage their students more effectively.

 

 

 

 

3-way excellence amplifies advantage for the mobile world.

It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a team to win a championship. And it takes teamwork between three of the most advanced technology innovators to provide superior solutions to today’s workforce that make both the super cool and stylish mobile worker and the IT department happy.

Allow me to explain:

Today’s workforce is more mobile than ever before. In fact, 62% of today’s workers work from more than one location. Another fun stat? Today’s workers carry an average of 3.1 devices everywhere they go. What does this mean? Well, a lot of things. For one, apparently both genders need to start carrying purses to help us keep track of all of our devices. For another, employees have the flexibility to work from home, from the road, even from a plane. Not only are they working from anywhere, they’re also working anytime. Gone are the days of 9 to 5. Today’s workers have the access and ability to work wherever and whenever.

Mobility has become the new norm, and users expect their mobile working experience to be just as good – in some cases, (gasp!) even better – than the in-office experience. Naturally, those of you in IT are well aware that mobility presents a multitude of challenges; but for now we’re going to focus on one: security. How does IT guarantee that all 3.1 devices per user are secure from intrusion or other security threats regardless of where those devices are used and what network they are connected to?

And the winner is (drum roll, please) teamwork!

• HP (Who likes to keep reinventing.)
• Intel (Who wants us all to experience what’s inside.)
• And Microsoft (Who likes to empower us all. Although, apparently there’s no consensus on their current tagline, so we’re going with an oldie but a goodie.)

These 3 companies have pooled their resources and expertise to build a series of laptops, tablets, and desktops that raise the bar for commercial PC’s. They call this the Elite series from HP, which seems like an appropriate title.

What’s truly incredible about this series is that it makes both sides happy: the super cool and stylish mobile workers we talked about earlier as well as the IT department (that we also talked about earlier).

These PC’s not only look marvelously sleek, but they also include the smallest and lightest commercial-grade laptops on the market. (Phew! At least this means that we can all have smaller purses to hold our device collections.) But I did say “commercial-grade,” so IT is happy too. This series is heavily secured and comes with built-in enterprise-class capabilities. Best of both worlds.