Technology is constantly evolving and advancing in line with global market trends. Schools are a primary driver of adopting technology, ensuring they remain competitive in their bid to increase student enrolments.
It is important for schools to have a strategy in place to transition and maintain new technologies. Acer Computer Australia can work with your schools stakeholders to ensure you remain at the cutting edge of technology when delivering your schools learning methodology and leave the “behind the scenes” requirements to us.
Changing technology in terms of class room devices for staff or students is one component of the IT landscape in a school. The other is a term we may be familiar with called, “life cycle management”, which when planned effectively can offer cost savings, reduce resource burdens and eliminate waste costs, helping to ensure schools contribute to sustainability and recycling initiatives as good community citizens. Technology advances at a fast pace, and any changes should be made in line with ensuring digital technologies are used to enhance the quality of education and learning outcomes, not just for the sake of change.
Many technologists believe the average lifespan of a staff or student device is between two and three years. Yet many educational institutions still don’t plan around device lifecycles in a structured way, resulting in longer refresh cycles due to budget limitations. But a well-structured plan can help maximise the usable life of a digital tool, while reducing the amount of overhead required to do so.
Refreshing devices in a school is not without its challenges, which is why we are methodical in our approach, and all service deliverables can be customised to your school’s unique requirements.
Lifecycle management can typically be categorised in four key stages; procurement, deployment, management and end of life. Procurement involves pre-planning, including buy-back programs to repurpose existing capital, while deployment includes an organisation’s installation, integration and configuration of products.
The final two stages involve ongoing managed services and end of life solutions, which range from recycling and disposal to data destruction. With this in mind, Acer Computer Australia has developed a strategy to help schools develop a plan for the transition of their hardware.
Technology upgrades are important for any school, and at Acer we plan to accommodate for such an event, as well as units that come out of warranty and lease. Our Lifecycle management services allow for seamless transitions and can be used to forecast requirements and hardware supply.
There is no cookie cutter approach, and at Acer our staff recognise that each schools has its own unique requirements and that we need to be able to cater for exibility in our processes.
We also recognise the need to plan for contingencies. It is these specific elements of service which are critical and set Acer Computer Australia apart in its approach. We believe close and effective communication with the schools’ designated Technology Team and Financial stakeholders’ needs to be relatively flexible to support changes without compromising the project milestones or costings.
Refreshing devices in a school is not without its challenges, which is why we are methodical in our approach, and all service deliverables can be customised to your school’s unique requirements. From specific installation services to data migration, the list goes on. We can cater for after-school hours for installations, or weekends and school holidays. Our services cover everything from devices to servers, networking infrastructure and even point of sale equipment for your canteen.
Our Configuration Centre is capable of processing over 500 units concurrently, this can deliver huge efficiencies, reduce double handling, additional logistics and eliminate time consuming steps when products are delivered to the school. We can structure a pre-deployment plan which ensures devices are delivered with image loads completed, pre-configuration to your schools domains and asset tagging completed before even reaching the school.
Acer can also assist schools in reducing the carbon footprint by providing an e-waste and asset re-use service across a range of commodity types, including mobility style devices such as laptops and desktop monitors, to name a few. We can co-ordinate the separation of assets into e-waste and re-use the units for re-sale. We then arrange the logistics to ensure old units removed from the school promptly and with minimal fuss. We can arrange for assets to go through an e-waste processes and provide data destruction certificates upon processing which confirm the recycling conducted.
Alternatively, if the units still hold market value, we can data sanitise them and resell the units, providing the profits back to schools. These funds can be used to offset the costs of your technology refresh. Acer respects Privacy Laws and understands schools have a duty of care toward its student community, which is why we can erase all data onsite before it leaves the schools premises.
Our recycling initiatives typically see 90 per cent of the weight re-entering the commodity markets in the form or steel, plastics, semi-precious metals and precious metals. We typically recycle over a million kilograms of e-waste per year.
Should you have questions around the content in this editorial or would like to explore a discussion in greater detail please reach out to our Education Team at: education.aca@acer.com
