Connected Devices, Streamlined Learning: Smart Charging Lockers Help Students Avoid Device Downtime
A look at how device downtime hurts student learning – and what to do about it.
US News | Smart Brief Update | WINTER 2022
The widespread adoption of technology in K-12 learning during the pandemic has enabled distance learning, personalized instruction and many other classroom benefits, but this new reality comes with challenges.
In the US alone, Education Week found that 84% of elementary schools and 90% of middle and high schools have adopted one-to-one device access for students. Furthermore, during a November 2022 survey of 171 US-based teachers, LocknCharge discovered that 59% of teachers require the use of a device during class three to five times per week on average — and 55% of teachers require the use of a device at home at least one time per week on average. These findings demonstrate the dependence on device usage for student learning.
59% of teachers require the use of a device during class 3-5 times per week on average.
55% of teachers require the use of a device at home at least once per week on average.
As more schools see the benefits of equipping students with devices, these costs are becoming a permanent part of the school budget. However, putting the right systems in place can go a long way toward helping schools operate technology efficiently and effectively.
As a result, schools are now undergoing a regular “computing device return-and-repair ritual,” EdSurge reports. In Atlanta, lost or damaged devices cost the public school system $3.5 million in one year, with about 11% of devices issued to students never returned.
The benefits of keeping devices charged, safe and operational can’t be understated: Technology is helping to prepare today’s students for tomorrow’s workforce, and it is ushering in a new era of personalized instruction that helps improve outcomes for all students.
All over the country, school districts are going to great lengths to keep devices working at peak performance — knowing full well that if they do not, teachers may ditch them altogether, reverting to pen and paper, EdTech Magazine reports.
Given these risks, schools should take the effects of lost and broken devices seriously.
The Challenge of Device Downtime
Learning outcomes are greatly affected when a student or teacher doesn’t have a working device in hand for instruction, class participation or homework. When an electronic device used for learning breaks or has any other downtime issues, the student is quite literally locked out of their learning resources — plus, there are other classroom implications when devices aren’t available.
In fact, the same November 2022 LocknCharge survey revealed that 57% of educators are helping to replace student devices at least one time per week on average, taking time away from teaching.
57% of teachers are assisting students with replacement or loaner devices at least one time per week on average.
In addition, of the educators surveyed, 63% stated that students who do not have a working device at school experience lost learning time.
63% of teachers site lost learning time for students who don't have access to a working device for class.
There is also the issue of device and data security, which is more difficult to manage when students are using their own devices, or those of parents. A school-issued device maintained with security and data protection in mind is a safer one, both for the student and the district. Data and other security falter when a student has to fall back on a home-sourced device.
And what happens when that device is lost? Just take the massive security breach of Illuminate Education in January 2020, for example. It has raised questions about the safety and security of student data in this new era, and that makes it more important than ever for schools to adopt security measures for devices. All of this is more easily managed through school-issued devices, and having backups readily available.
Real-World Examples of Keeping Students Online, Protected
In the past, minimizing the effect of student device downtime has been a challenge, but thankfully, tech-savvy districts are finding ways to greatly reduce the problem.
Oklahoma’s Moore Public Schools
Instruction at Moore Public Schools in Oklahoma is spread across 36 sites and about 136 square miles. The costs of managing a 1:1 device system can quickly add up when it can take a 30 minute drive to deliver a device to a teacher or student. And when parents are asked to drive that distance to pick up devices for their children, equity concerns emerge that could leave some families without access to the technology needed for students to excel in school.
Earlier this year, the school system began piloting LocknCharge’s FUYL Tower Smart Lockers and the Incident IQ Help Desk ticketing system integration to better manage their device infrastructure and offer students a way to easily access devices when they need them.
The towers are placed in high school and college media centers, for example, where staffers and students can check them out as needed.
Now, rather than trade emails back and forth with a student to schedule a broken device exchange, the technology team can remotely issue a device to that student via one of its FUYL Towers. Students can quickly and easily swap out the broken device for a new one at their convenience.
"The goal is to be close to zero downtime for any event that takes students and teachers away from engaging and effective learning."
– Jun Kim, Director of Technology, Moore Public Schools
“This level of technology operations is a must-have in today’s learning environments,” says Jun Kim, Director of Technology at Moore Public Schools. “The goal is to be close to zero downtime for any event that takes students and teachers away from engaging and effective learning,” Kim says. “It’s essential to utilize technology as a tool to help increase our student achievement and to help prepare those students to thrive in that digital college or digital career environment.
Smart Lockers Help Schools Manage Devices Efficiently
Automation technology is making it possible to reduce the time technology departments must spend addressing issues such as damaged and lost devices.
When it comes to designing products for educational settings, LocknCharge has more than 20 years working directly with school districts to meet their needs. The company is the leading global manufacturer and supplier of mobile deployment solutions with headquarters in Australia, the USA, Europe and Japan.
Los Angeles Unified School District
Recently, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest system in the US, turned to LocknCharge for autonomous checkout smart lockers, so students and educators can access charged and ready-to-use devices more conveniently.
LAUSD’s decision to add 1,800 LocknCharge FUYL Towers was originally prompted during the COVID-19 shutdown. The district needed a way to distribute devices safely to students and parents in a manageable way.
“After vetting different vendors and companies, we felt that LocknCharge was the best fit and product option for the district,” said Phillip Lucero, Senior IT Business Efficiency Analyst at LAUSD.
What started as a solution to a device management crisis has morphed into an in-person assist, too. LAUSD students and teachers rely on the LocknCharge lockers to reduce in-person downtime from lost, forgotten or broken devices.
“Reducing device down time for students and teachers means more classroom interaction for students. Device down time means less classroom instruction, and the students lose valuable class learning experience,” Lucero said.
— Phillip Lucero, Senior IT Business Efficiency Analyst, LAUSD
School districts of all sizes can benefit from what LocknCharge offers, from a single tower to hundreds, with features such as overseeing bay reservations remotely, tower usage reports, external user directory integration and external ticketing system integrations. At Moore Public Schools, Kim says working with LocknCharge has offered “amazing” results.
“They look at how they can incorporate a technology or tool to make it more efficient with the school and classroom in mind,” Kim says. “The biggest challenge when it comes to devices is that accidents happen,” Kim notes.
Kim’s team has established a process to address that, from steps teachers can take to troubleshoot devices to ways they can easily swap out devices when they require repair.
Without an automated process, the district would “definitely increase time and energy,” Kim says, and take away from time that could be spent resolving other issues.
Oregon’s Beaverton School District
The Beaverton School District in Oregon serves over 60,000 students. The schools rely heavily on an online learning management system for its curriculum, meaning students must have access to technology at school and at home, explains Mac McMillian, the district’s Administrator for Information & Technology.
“In most cases, without the technology, they cannot complete their work,” McMillian points out.
The biggest challenge is in classrooms, which were not built with the idea that every student needs access to a charging port.
“We have to rely on the students to arrive at school with a charged device or have a stockpile of loaner devices for them to complete their work,” McMillian says.
At the onset of the pandemic, Beaverton School District invested in 10 LocknCharge FUYL Tower Smart Lockers to provide students a contactless way to exchange devices during remote learning. Now, those towers are serving as charging stations and lockers for safe storage overnight when students don’t need to take devices home. They also house backup devices that are checked out when students experience breakage or other issues that slow down their connected learning.
McMillian says the district hasn’t yet quantified the savings from their deployment of smart lockers, but the qualitative benefits are evident.
"The towers at the central office are saving a significant amount of time."
— Mac McMillian, Administrator for Information and Technology, Beaverton School District
“The towers at the central office are saving a significant amount of time for both our staff assigned to the central office and to those needing to retrieve or drop off equipment or materials. They no longer have to wait for someone to come meet them, they can securely drop it for them, and our central staff can pick it up at their convenience knowing exactly where it is located,” McMillian adds.
Conclusion: Minimizing Learning Disruptions and Managing Devices More Efficiency
The shift toward technology-driven education is an unstoppable phenomenon that preceded the pandemic and has been expedited as a result of it. Many districts see the potential to improve learning and better equip students for the future by availing the benefits of devices.
Yet the maintenance, oversight and replenishment of these devices is a significant new cost for districts that can serve as an impediment. That’s why it is crucial for technology teams to put the systems in place to minimize learning disruptions and manage devices efficiently.
To download a PDF of this story, click here.
About LocknCharge
LocknCharge is a software and hardware company that is revolutionizing the way organizations manage mobile devices and other physical assets. During their 20+ years of experience, they’ve come to understand many of the challenges organizations face with device management.
LocknCharge exists to help schools and businesses uncover a better way to manage devices with less oversight, secure devices from theft, and minimize device down time. Their portfolio of Cloud-Connected Smart Lockers will not only save time, money and other resources — they will also make your life easier.
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Elizabeth Gregory Home and LocknCharge Team Up to Provide Security to Women Facing Hardship
LocknCharge Saves the Day, Every Day
Written by Ally Baehr - Executive Director, Elizabeth Gregory Home
Ally Baehr - Executive Director
Imagine, if you will, that you are a woman living outside, only able to keep what you can comfortably carry, being very susceptible to having your belongings stolen and your body violated. Sleeping outside is nearly impossible when your safety is consistently being threatened. Your cell phone or other device is your lifeline. It is how you can connect to resources, family and friends, a flashlight, a way to get emergency help, a place to keep important information, how potential employers can reach you, etc. Yet, when you’re experiencing homelessness, your options for charging your device are slim, and you certainly can’t plug it in and fall asleep, because your device will be gone when you wake up, even in shelter.
Elizabeth Gregory Home is a Day Center in north Seattle that provides a welcoming and respectful refuge where women who are experiencing homelessness, hardship and trauma have access to compassionate care. In our Day Center, we provide a variety of services to help make things a little bit easier. We have safe spaces to sleep, take showers, do laundry, get a hot breakfast and lunch, food to take, bus passes, hygiene supplies, clothing, use lockers, and get case management.
But even providing this safe space to do all these things, trust is still hard to gain. After all these women have been through, they are not going to leave their devices plugged into the wall while they sleep or shower. Unfortunately, we can’t completely prevent theft in our space, and that is where LocknCharge comes in and saves the day.
We did a preliminary search for options to meet this need, but were quickly discouraged by the cost as a small nonprofit organisation. I hesitantly reached out the LocknCharge to see if there was anything they could do to reduce the cost. Not only did they respond quickly and with enthusiasm, they said they had a unit that had recently been returned and that we could have it, free of charge. We were ecstatic and so incredibly grateful!
LocknCharge has given us the best option to meet the needs of the women we serve. Women can safely lock their devices in our secure LocknCharge Charging Locker and finally get some good rest, be able to step away from their device and take a shower – and not worry about it getting stolen. They can pick their own code, the locker resets after each user, and women are able to fully charge their devices before they leave for the night, giving them just a little extra boost of safety and security.
LocknCharge’s solution has allowed us to add another service to our Day Center, and anything we can do to help these women get through the most difficult time of their lives is essential for us to invest in. These women deserve that investment as we do our work with Respect, Inclusion, Community, and Empathy, the values we instill in our team and our work. Thank you to the LocknCharge team for your support and this brilliant solution.
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Smart Charging Lockers Solving Device Management for Mondovi School District
November 2022 | Mondovi, WI, USA
Background: School District of Mondovi
The School District of Mondovi is home to about 950 students in grades K-12, all on one shared campus. Within this small western Wisconsin town, community members and school district staff work together to provide students with individual attention, contemporary technology and limitless opportunity. With forward and pragmatic thinking, and a lean team of professionals, they are able to problem-solve quickly and efficiently to best serve the needs of their students.
Challenge: Managing 1:1 Device Program
Mondovi offers 1:1 devices - namely Chromebooks - for all of their grade levels. These used to be kept in the classrooms, but ever since COVID sent everyone home to learn, they’ve transitioned to a take-home device program for their middle and high school students. With that transition came some growing pains. They lacked a solid communication strategy for tracking the location and status of devices that needed repair. Many Chromebooks were lost, along with hours of learning time.
So, when IT Director Brad Elkins was replacing the district’s entire fleet with brand new Chromebooks this school year, he knew the break/fix process also needed an upgrade.
Solution: Smart Charging Lockers
Elkins first heard about FUYL Tower™ Smart Lockers by LocknCharge through one of his IT contacts working in another school district. They were utilising a FUYL Tower in their school cafeteria as a public charging station. This was intriguing, and after researching the FUYL Towers himself, Elkins saw even greater potential for the smart lockers at Mondovi. As the sole IT staff member at Mondovi, he presented a plan to the district admins for a self-serve automated exchange of broken or forgotten devices. They saw value in the technology enough to move forward.
Results: Streamlined Device Management
It worked out. After a seamless implementation of a FUYL Tower 5 demo unit, Elkins saw all of his ROI calculations materialise. He also saw learning loss eliminated while students with broken or forgotten devices were immediately equipped with a fully charged and ready loaner. The technology built into the cloud platform gave him incredible freedom to customise their workflow - he used a webhook to send an email every time a device was checked out, detailing the time, bay number and user.
Now with immediate notifications, and an automatic and detailed log of device loans and returns, Mondovi’s IT department of one isn’t surprised by a pile of Chromebooks to diagnose at the end of his work day. The ease of the new system has been embraced by everyone. In fact, the only regret is not having purchased the FUYL Tower with 15 bays instead of 5.
What’s Next for Technology?
Elkins has plans to expand their self-serve locker capacity so that some bays might be reserved for other functionalities - right now all five bays are filled with spare Chromebooks. He’s already dabbled with check outs for parents and paraprofessionals to offer a secure and convenient hand-off that doesn’t have to be scheduled face-to-face.
As the district works on its strategic plan for the next five years, they’ll likely be finding more ways to improve and refresh technology.
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Smart Lockers Help Manage Laptop Devices for School Substitute Teachers at Niles Township High School District 219
Background: About Niles Township High School
Niles Township High School District 219 in Skokie, Illinois serves 4,700 students at two high schools. With such large student bodies come large staffs, and large logistical challenges. The district employs roughly 450 full-time teachers and a pool of 100 day-to-day substitute teachers.
It’s always been a priority to set teachers up for success by minimizing any unnecessary roadblocks or cumbersome SOPs. Now in a post-pandemic world with nationwide teacher and sub shortages higher than ever, it’s critical.
Challenge: Managing Mobile Devices for Substitute Teachers
On any given school day, the District 219 sub coordinators would get in at 5am to line up subs and lesson plans for the day. As a district with a take-home 1:1 device program for students and teachers, subs would later show up for their assignments and have to hunt down their own laptop.
It might be that the teacher left it for them, but oftentimes they’d have to borrow one from the department, or if not available there, go check the tech service center. The district recognized that this frazzling start to the day was leaving subs close to their breaking points, and this process needed to change.
They considered the idea of sub coordinators managing the technology check-in/check-out process, but not only were their plates full as-is, their workdays start and end earlier than the regular school day. This means subs wouldn’t be able to return laptops at the end of the school day to the coordinators who were already clocked out.
Solution: Automating Device Management with a Smart Locker
The IT team for District 219 knew smart lockers for schools would be the answer to this muddled process. They quickly began searching for the right ones. After comparing available products, the LocknCharge FUYL Tower™ Smart Lockers were selected. According to the Director of IT Services Management, Phil Lacey, it was the design of the product, ease of management and robustness of the cloud app that ultimately set the FUYLs apart from the competitors.
The FUYL Towers are housed in the main offices of the two high schools. Subs use the same PIN to clock in and out for the day as they do to access their laptop in a FUYL Tower. The IT team worked directly with sub coordinators to implement the new workflow. Both teams have access to PINs and can make new accounts on the fly when needed.
Results: Reduced Stress and Overhead
Lacey explains that the FUYL Tower check-in/check-out process for subs has reduced a lot of stress and overhead for everyone. The user interface is simple to navigate and intuitive for both admins and users. Getting buy-in was easy, rollout was easy, setup was easy – it was the kind of project that has a very satisfying and straightforward solution. Maybe they didn’t know how much they needed FUYL Towers until they made life easier.
What’s Next?
Based on the success of this workflow for substitute teachers, Lacey believes it won’t be difficult to make a case for future Towers - perhaps starting with a break/fix workflow by integrating Incident IQ with LocknCharge to automate the process. The team is constantly working to improve the user experience and sees exciting potential for future integrations with LocknCharge to manage their devices more easily with smart lockers for schools.
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Smart Locker Software Evolves to Meet the Needs of Evolutive Higher Ed Institution
July 8, 2022 | Valence, France
About IUT of Valence
The IUT of Valence offers a range of training courses and professional licenses. Both tertiary and secondary courses provide students with strong professional skills and a solid general culture – an essential foundation for adapting to a constantly changing environment. As a part of Grenoble Alpes University, IUT Valence and its 1,200 students, 60 research teachers and 200 contract teachers collaborate with many partners to “accompany the evolution of society.”
Challenge: Inefficient Manual Device Management
With a focus on the future in everything they do and offer (including 4 BUTs – GEA, TC, Computer Science and Networks and Telecoms), IUT Valence has to have many readily available and fully charged devices available for all of its students and teachers. Managing mobile devices in a very manual way was leading to costly inefficiencies, lost or damaged devices and a time-consuming effort from the IT team.
Solution: Smart Charging Lockers
After comparing lockers from other manufacturers, IUT Valence found FUYL Tower™ smart lockers by LocknCharge were a much better value for the money. They were also easily available on the MatInfo platform* - the leading HigherEd sector marketplace in France. In June of 2021, the university purchased two FUYL Towers to serve two distinct functions:
- Equipment loan mode: IUT Valence had some equipment available for short-term loan for specific needs.
- Self-service mode: Students could securely store and recharge their personal computers or other small devices. Each bay is equipped with a mains socket and USB type A female to make this possible.
Results of the Smart Locker Programme
The FUYL smart lockers quickly and easily lent themselves to additional workflows for the university, as students, teachers and the IT team gave highly positive feedback right from the start. After less than a year with the FUYLs in service, David Chechat, Assistant Ingenieur du Centre de Ressources Informatiques, saw a growing demand for devices.
Mister Chechat also noted that the FUYL smart lockers have helped IUT Valence in so many expected and surprising ways:
- Established a better student experience
- Enabled a new service to students so no student is without a device
- Saved time for IT team
- Tracking users with RFID badge made it easier for IT team to know where devices are and eliminated risk of lost devices and accessories
- Highly evolutive software allowed the set up of new workflows to meet new demand
- Easy to deploy, easy to manage and easy to use
What’s Next for IUT?
IUT Valence has plans to deploy more devices for the next school year, and also plans to use the FUYL’s API feature in the future as the project develops. As a forward-thinking university, having a future-proof and forward-thinking partner in LocknCharge is a perfect fit.
To download a PDF of this story, click here.
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*All Lockncharge products, including FUYL Tower Smart Lockers, are also available with our approved resellers in France.