Testing, Standards And Wi-Fi: IT Opportunities Abound In Education

The walls separating public education and private-sector investment have come tumbling down, vendors, distributors and solution providers agree.

Even as its look slowly became more modern, the classroom remained virtually the same, with teachers lecturing in front of a blackboard and students taking notes at their desks.

"Nothing has changed in education," said Jason Katcher, Google's head of North American education. "We have an antiquated industry that is ready for change."

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But with 60 percent of today's schoolchildren expected to work in a career that doesn't even exist today, Katcher said it's critical to provide students with skillsets that allow them to flourish in new fields. Almost all of those new jobs will be aided by technology, said Sarah Schwartz, a fourth-grade teacher at Monaview Elementary School in Greenville, S.C.

"Our kids are going to technology," Schwartz said. "Our classrooms need to go there as well."

That's at last starting to happen, thanks to a convergence of everything from Common Core state standards and teacher accountability metrics in the K-12 vertical, to wireless network expansion and cloud email in higher education. And solution providers couldn't be happier.

Through the first nine months of 2014, IT spending reached $10.9 billion in the higher-education vertical and $9.9 billion in the K-12 vertical, according to Randy Finley, Synnex's manager of public sector business development.

Nowhere is that more evident than with Google, whose devices or content now can be found in 10,000 schools nationwide, said Renee Niemi, Google's global director of devices for work and education.

Google's Chromebooks have gone from comprising just 1 percent or 2 percent market share in 2012 to flying off the shelves today, with 1 million sold in the second quarter alone, according to Richard Achee, who works with strategic partners in Google for education.

Though Chromebooks retail for just $270, solution providers can capture $300 to $500 in directly related revenue off each device sold, Achee said. Google relies on the channel to sell education-related content since those proceeds are needed to subsidize the vendor's other classroom initiatives, Katcher said.

The Google Play for Education store offers a wide selection of books, apps and video, Katcher said, as students can digest video much faster than text. Schwartz said she often uses images or video to bring history to life by providing 360-degree, panoramic views of famous locales or historical sites.

Synnex is dedicated to helping MSPs and VARs capture revenue through Google, Finley told attendees of the company's national conference in Greenville, S.C., earlier this month.

The Fremont, Calif.-based distributor began working with Google in early 2013 to help scale and sell Chrome solutions in the K-12 vertical, said Eddie Franklin, vice president of sales, public sector and vertical markets. The distributor packages white-glove services with the Chromebook on behalf of solution providers, such as professional development or teacher training, he said.

Synnex also has a five-person education team comprised of a former administrator, substitute teacher, sports coach and school technology consultant to ensure they understand what end users need, Finley said.

Richard Quinones, a consulting CIO and instructional technology adviser, said it's critically important that channel partners understand a school district's challenges and pain points so that they can develop a comprehensive SWAT analysis to help the district move into the 21st century.

"School districts are looking for total solutions, not one-offs," Quinones said.

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At the same time, districts typically allocate the $500 billion they receive each year from the U.S. government toward their considerable day-to-day operational expenses, of which Quinones said IT is never considered a part.

"People don't have unlimited resources at all," said Marty Battaglia, Ingram Micro's senior sales director. "Funding has been cut at the K-12 and higher-ed levels."

But Franklin said school districts now have more money to spend on IT than a few years back. He expects to see a strong adoption of new technology by school districts over the next three to five years.

The source of the biggest changes has been the Chromebook, which Katcher said Google started selling in mid-2012 and brought on CDW as its first solution provider partner in mid-2013. Chromebooks typically cost 50 percent to 67 percent less than devices running Apple or Windows, Achee said.

Grades 3-12 typically go for the Chromebook since it meets standardized testing requirements, while grades K-2 typically prefer Android tablets. Both have reassignable licenses so the devices can easily be reallocated from graduating high school seniors to incoming freshman, Katcher said.

Google, though, has remained device-agnostic, and, instead, has made 15 models of Chromebook available through 8-10 OEMs, Katcher said. Likewise, Google's Chrome OS works on any type of Mac or PC.

Chromebooks have become one of the biggest lines of business for Twotrees Technologies LLC of Wichita, Kan., since the solution provider began selling them 18 months ago, according to General Manager Susie Smith.

Twotrees has sold 20,000 Chromebooks to the K-12 vertical, Smith said, and hopes to get into the Google Play for Education store so it can wrap services, support and content all together.

Google exited the hardware arena shortly after buying Motorola in May 2012 on the idea that device prices are always going down and becoming commoditized, Katcher said.

The vendor believes it can more effectively generate revenue by wrapping services around hardware, he said.

Other vendors haven't shied away from selling hardware to the education vertical, though.

For example, Xerox expects its managed print device revenue to grow by 50 percent over the next five years, said Greg Leonard, a partner manager. Leonard said Xerox's ConnectKey technology allows educators to print directly from Apple or Android devices without having to get on the school network.

"People are still outputting color images, especially in the education sector," Leonard said.

In addition, Lenovo's best-selling computer to school districts is the ThinkPad 11E, which can come either in clamshell or yoga models and operate either Windows or Chrome, said Stephen Miller, a Lenovo brand ambassador.

Although the ThinkPad typically costs $30 to $40 more than similar devices, Miller said it's much more rugged and durable.

"K-6 has four times the failure rate of a normal human being," he said.

The AME Group in Vincennes, Ind., mainly sells Lenovo hardware into the health-care and SMB markets, according to Kyle Street, the solution provider's director of proposal management and marketing.

Street said he's long been trying to convince educators to go with Lenovo because the devices do not need to be repaired or replaced as frequently as their counterparts, saving school districts money in the long run.

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The devices and content facilitate both project-based learning, and the taking and grading of tests and quizzes online, said Michelle Kirby, a counselor at Fisher Middle School in Greenville, S.C.

Schwartz, the fourth-grade teacher at Monaview Elementary School in Greenville, said the technology makes it much easier to differentiate learning, with apps allowing her to pull down more difficult math problems for advanced students or give students struggling with spelling or vocabulary a hand.

But space comes at a premium in a wired classroom, she said. Her classroom tables aren't big enough to fit both tablets and other learning materials, so she'll often have the class circle up and have discussions or work on the floor.

One of the biggest drivers of districts to new technology is Common Core, a new set of math and English standards agreed to by 48 states. The rigorous framework will force school districts to focus on doing big things well, Quinones said, since funding will be cut if they don't perform up to par.

"Common Core standards are going to change the way you live and breathe," the consulting CIO and instructional technology adviser told solution providers during Ingram Micro's ONE event in Las Vegas.

To be eligible for use in Common Core online assessment, devices must have at least a 10.1-inch screen, a physically attached keyboard and the ability to lock down web browsing, Franklin said. Many existing classroom devices are old and unable to meet the needs of standardized assessments, he said.

Although Franklin believes one-to-one computing (where each student is issued a device by the institution) will eventually become the standard in all classrooms, he thinks school districts are less than halfway there.

Kirby said her middle school started one-to-one computing in August, while Street said rural Indiana is just now starting to see one-to-one computing given the high cost per student of such a program.

Another quandary raised by Common Core is broadband access, which Quinones said is absolutely vital to moving the ball. But many schools are still working with desktop computer labs with outdated equipment, he said.

"Internet connectively in the classroom is the No. 1 thing educators in the K-12 space are focused on," Quinones said.

Internet issues extend beyond K-12, though. Franklin said Wi-Fi access -- particularly in dormitories -- has become an increasingly large selling point for colleges and universities.

Internet connectivity can be a lucrative opportunity for solution providers, said Quincy Minor, president of Information Transport Solutions (ITS), No. 326 on the CRN SP 500.

The Wetumpka, Ala.-based solution provider has been able to average margins of 40 percent on wide area network or Internet access projects once support and management revenue is tacked on, Minor said. Money from these projects comes in on a recurring basis, Minor said, and accounts for 24 percent of ITS' overall revenue.

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Schools also are starting to move into cloud computing despite the protestations of district IT directors, Quinones said. Districts going into the cloud usually begin with email, he said, moving it from internal hosting across multiple databases to Microsoft Office 365 or a cloud offering from Google.

In the higher-education vertical, Franklin said he expects community colleges to lead the way by relying on the cloud to facilitate all-digital curriculums that allow them to better compete against four-year universities with larger endowments.

Synnex also is working with vendor Red Hat to offer courses to students about OpenStack's open-source cloud computing platform, which Franklin said can enable students to perform computing activities from anywhere on campus.

Although higher education has led the way in adopting a bring your own device (BYOD) model, some experts expect K-12 to follow in its footsteps.

"It's foolish to hand a student a tablet in today's operating environment," said Joseph Cornwall, a technology evangelist at C2G. "Why? They probably already have one."

Google's Niemi said allowing people to take the tools they know and love from home and bring them into school can improve outcomes.

"You shouldn't have to make this transition," she said.

But the finest technology in the world does no good if teachers or students don't know how to use it, experts cautioned.

Too often, Cornwall said school districts use technology that's a decade or more old since it's what administrators or teachers used at the start of their careers.

Battaglia of Ingram Micro recalled how, around 2010, school districts across the country put $3,000 to $4,000 Smart Boards in all their classrooms. However, many of those districts only gave teachers a two-hour training course on the devices, resulting in the Smart Boards too often sitting unused.

Battaglia urged end users to allocate 25 percent of the device's overall value -- or about $1,000 in the case of the Smart Boards -- to training.

Quinones encouraged districts to build a team of both IT and curriculum development employees dedicated to implementing technology. He said new technology adoption often fails since the district's acceptable use policy hasn't been modified to account for all possible applications of the device.

Intel offers a full curriculum available to school districts to help train teachers to use their technology either before, during or after a deployment, said Robert Shults, Intel's public sector program manager. The vendor also has an online forum where teachers can share best practices for using new technology.

Training, though, isn't at the core of what MSPs do, Street said. He said The AME Group typically relies on vendors such as Intel, outside groups or the school districts themselves to conduct training.

The AME Group's Street, however, doesn't underestimate the importance of training. He has seen teachers who don't understand features in newer versions of Microsoft Office, and are, therefore, unable to leverage it for the betterment of the students.

Without training, new equipment too often sits stagnant while the teacher continues to lecture in front of a blackboard, Street said.

"It's like having a shiny, new car," he said, "and not being able to put it into drive."

PUBLISHED OCT. 21, 2014