Page 13 - THE Journal, March/April 2018

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As educational strategies evolve, so too must technology to support the new teaching styles.
PREPARE FOR THE NEXT-GEN
CLASSROOM
As K-12 educators and classrooms continue their transformation
to support the shift to mobile learning, education technologies must support these changes taking place inside and outside the classroom. “We’re really starting to see a huge shift in education,” says Dan Rivera, product marketing manager for K12 at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enter- prise company. “It’s all about building a collaborative learning environment.”
He sees today’s educational trans- formation as an essential move from traditional classrooms with rows of desks
students, says Rivera, by allowing new learning styles that focus on collabora- tion and group learning. These are the learning styles that will help students prepare for today’s collaborative, open, technology-based workplace.
Open workspaces and true mobility within the classroom and on campus calls for always-on connections to facilitate collaboration between students, teachers, and devices. To help school districts prepare for connected, mobile classrooms, Rivera points out two unique features in the solutions from Aruba,
it encounters. As the device moves, it connects to a new access point when
the original signal grows too weak. Instead of waiting for a failing signal, ClientMatch® proactively decides which access point the device should connect to next. It bases this access point map- ping not only on signal strength, but also considers throughput, other users, and response speed.
Security: Security is particularly important as schools move more content onto the network and as networks grow ever more open. More than sixty percent of schools in the U.S. either completely or partially deliver services through the public cloud, says Rivera. This opens the network and raises risk; as do guest access and BYOD policies. Aruba ClearPass addresses those issues by offering secure network access control that can deter attacks, shut down illicit activity much more quickly when it happens, and provide insights into
what occurred.
“Unfortunately,” says Rivera, “it’s going to take some high-profile security breaches at the K-12 level before school districts and school boards start to man- date some higher-level security within the school’s network.”
“We’re gradually shifting from standard classrooms to a more collaborative learning environment.”
—Dan Rivera, marketing manager for K-12, Aruba
and a teacher at the front. That style was intended to prepare workers for the sort of assembly line and structured office work of 50 years ago. Now there is a move un- derway to educating students in a way that prepares them for today’s and tomorrow’s workforce he says. “We’re gradually shift- ing from standard classrooms to a more collaborative learning environment—an environment similar to the digital work- place that awaits students,” he says.
Today’s K-12 network must support the evolving roles of both teachers and
an experienced vendor in the wired and wireless network space:
Smart networks: The K-12 networking environment is challenging, as students with many devices move from classroom to classroom all day and need high-qual- ity, uninterrupted coverage throughout the day no matter where they’re working and studying. As network traffic builds, Aruba’s ClientMatch® software steps up, says Rivera. In traditional wireless environments, when a device is detected, it’s connected to the first access point
For more information, please visit arubanetworks.com/solutions/primary-education/