Centralized Secure Charging Stations

The ability to transport mobile devices anywhere has huge advantages for the modern workplace, including increased productivity and efficiency. Portability is quite possibly the strongest feature of a mobile device; however, it can also be its weakest. Schools and businesses have to prepare for the worst as lost, stolen or broken devices can be a bigger problem than people think – yet 73% of organisations are failing to leverage secure device charging stations.¹ With so many expensive company-owned or school-owned tablets, laptops and phones floating around, this investment needs to be protected, digitally and physically. And in order for companies to meet the goals of a mobile device deployment, devices also need to be ready to use at all times.

Protect Data

If you lost your device, how much would it cost to replace it? The cost of the hardware, or more? It’s not just your hardware you are losing. Compromising or losing valuable intellectual property and confidential data can cause a severe business disruption resulting in penalties, reputation damage and wasted employee time. Would you be surprised to hear that the average cost of a data breach to a company in 2016 was over £3million?² 

According to research from EE, employees lose more than 10 million devices with data on them every year.³ Some of the most common places to forget devices include the toilet, taxis and public transport, meaning it is very hard to know who might have found your sensitive data and what they might do with it. Companies are therefore realising the critical need to protect company and consumer data.

Think of all of the valuable data you store on your laptop, tablet and phone – and then think of how many stories you hear in the news about security threats and data breaches. The fact is, 41% of data breaches are caused by lost or stolen devices⁴, and therefore it is important to have the resources in place to protect yourself by securing your devices with both digital security and also physical security when not in use. Sadly, for businesses and schools, it is often a case of ‘what happens to them won’t happen to us’ until it is too late. Laws now hold individuals personally and fiscally liable in the event of information disclosure, and lost devices can cost your business thousands of dollars in crippling fines. The implications of information falling into the wrong hands can be potentially devastating.

Decrease Costs

According to a recent article in Education Executive Magazine, more than £5,000 worth of iPad minis have been stolen from Edinburgh city high schools in the past two years.⁵ Companies and schools spend a huge amount on mobile devices each year. As careful as individuals are with their hardware, 10% of mobile devices will inevitably go missing or get broken during each year of a mobile device deployment⁶. If we look at this conservatively – let’s say a deployment of 100 devices at £250 per device – with 10% breakage and loss, a school or company would lose £2,500 per year just on replacing devices alone. According to Panasonic, the most common cause of tablet failures is battery problems (27%), touchscreen issues (16%) and screen breakages or button failure (10%)⁷. A centralised point of secure charging helps companies and schools provide a repository for devices, in turn, helping to reduce device breakage, theft, loss, and things like screen breakages. The critical oversight of not protecting your mobile devices when not in use can create painful hassles for employees and administrators alike. By using a secure device charging station, you can minimise per-employee device costs.

Converting More Sales

Businesses often deploy mobile devices with the goal of converting more sales, but this can only happen when the device is charged, accessible and ready to use at all times. Your business could be missing opportunities if waste time employees (often unintentionally) while looking for devices when because are stored haphazardly throughout an organization. Once they successfully locate a device, it could very well be that the device isn’t charged and ready to use. Using a secure, centralized charging station with a streamlined approach to workflow is key here – otherwise you are relying on individuals to successfully manage shared-use devices.

Improve Communication

Many mobile device initiatives begin with the goal of improving communication. This can be across a business or between staff and their customers. Many businesses are focused on developing a solution that gives employees access to a single platform for communication–but in order to be successful, communication needs to be timely, and needs to keep everyone up to date with processes, news and important information. Devices that are not updated with current or accurate information can stop communication dead in its tracks. And, uncharged or missing devices can lead to slower employee adoption of these processes or missed information.

Increase Efficiency

If portable devices increase productivity, then it’s clear that misplaced or uncharged devices lead to lost productivity. Panasonic report that the tablet is most commonly used for work-related tasks when employees are travelling (73%). However, 64% use it when they work outside of their regular hours and 49% use it to work when on holiday. 53% of respondents said that they use the tablet to work outdoors, with 45% using it inside or at their desk and similarly, 45% when on client or customer premises.⁷

Think of it this way–powered devices empower employees to process business transactions more efficiently and reduce cumbersome manual or paper processes. Mobile devices can shave hours off regular tasks, through apps for online programs, easy access to data on the go and cloud solutions replacing traditional filing. With shared, company-owned devices switching hands several times throughout a day, a centralised point of charging is not only more efficient, it is necessary.

Increase Customer Satisfaction

Businesses can never stop improving their customer service. Organizations undertake mobile device deployments to impress customers by faster or more convenient transaction processing, by more accurately inputting data into their system and by more thoroughly collecting helpful customer insights. In today’s fast-paced world, customers now expect instant replies to their customer service questions or issues. Providing devices that make it easy for staff to contact customers is one thing, but you also need to ensure customers have easy access to communicate with your staff as well. Mobile devices and on-demand charging can offer customers an improved experience, but this is only possible if the device is charged and ready to go.

Ultimately, LocknCharge products help businesses create a secure, efficient and streamlined workflow through centralized, secure charging all via a device charging station. We help simplify device management because you always know where to find a fully-charged, fully-updated device. And if anything goes wrong, we provide customer support that goes above and beyond.

 

Sources:

1. www.lockncharge.com/research
2. https://www-03.ibm.com/security/data-breach/
3. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/ready-and-enabled/mobile-business-what-to-do-if-device-goes-missing/
4. Forbes article 12.8.17
5. http://www.edexec.co.uk/ict-matters/articles/5000-worth-of-ipads-stolen-from-edinburgh-high-schools
6. jamf.com
7. https://business.panasonic.co.uk/computer-product/sites/default/nfsfiles/technical_downloads/21415_Tablet%20trouble%20whitepaper_v4.pdf

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Storing Portable Electronic Devices

Keeping property safe is at the forefront of many people’s’ minds. We have home security systems, security guards, locks, passcodes, complicated passwords, and so many other ways to keep our valuables secure.

With many organizations using portable electronic devices like laptops, iPads, and mobile phones for conducting everyday activities, it’s imperative to keep these items safe. Many of these devices have hundreds of gigabytes of private data on them, including credit card numbers, healthcare information, and social security numbers, to name a few. Imagine if you had a break-in happen in your organization. Now, imagine if the thieves got ahold of your customers’ critical information.

Data loss costs more than you think. According to an article from Druva, “every lost laptop costs an organization approximately $49,000. These costs are based purely on the value of the data on the device – the loss of intellectual property and the impact of potentially compromised proprietary data. Once you add in the cost of employee downtime, the economic impact that data loss has on an organization rises even further.”

For example, the University of Utah eye center found out in June of 2018 that a computer and its associated external storage device was stolen from its facility. The University had to warn 607 patients that their protected health information might be at risk, and they needed to proactively establish a dedicated call center. This could have damaged their reputation to a point of no return as patients would have lost trust in their care.

In July of 2018, burglars broke into a school in San Diego and stole 172 iPads, two iMacs and one MacBook Air… an estimated loss of about $90,000. Washington D.C. reported that at least 300 computers or tablets have been stolen from D.C. Public Schools in the past 3 years. Could all of this have been avoided? Quite possibly, with the use of a muli device charging station.

There are many ways to keep portable electronic devices safe, and the one that is the most effective is a system that charges these devices and locks them up at the same time. LocknCharge offers secure storage solutions for schools, hospitals, STEM labs, and more. Request a consultation today.

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A record 18,000+ educators and school administrators were in Chicago for the 2018 International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference last month, the nation’s largest edtech event. Here are three of the biggest edtech trends that we noticed during the conference.

Mobile devices power student-centered learning.

In showcasing their latest products during this year’s ISTE conference, several mobile device manufacturers focused not just on the devices themselves but on how these tools could transform learning to make it more personalized and student-centered, empowering students in new and creative ways.

For instance, Dell EMC set up a model learning environment (in conjunction with Meteor Education and Paragon Furniture) to show how technology and the design of flexible learning spaces come together to support student-centered learning. In the course of these demonstrations, Dell EMC highlighted two new education-focused mobile devices that will be available in August: the Latitude 3190 11-inch laptop and the Latitude 3190 2-in-1 convertible device.

Apple announced a free app called Schoolwork that can help teachers create more personalized, student-centered learning environments. It’s a mobile learning ecosystem that makes it easy to teach with iPads, Apple says: Teachers can create and send assignments with almost any type of content, and they can direct students to specific apps from third-party app designers that can help fill gaps in learning. Meanwhile, Google announced the Acer Chromebook Tab 10, the first Chrome OS tablet designed for schools. It features the same speed, ease of use, manageability, and affordability that educators have come to expect from Chromebooks—but in a lightweight, durable tablet. With a built-in stylus and cameras on both sides of the device, Google says, students can create multimedia projects from wherever they are.

Of course, schools need an easy way to store, secure, and charge these devices so they’re ready to power student-centered learning in the classroom. At ISTE, we demonstrated our LocknCharge mobile device carts and mobile charging stations built for a wide variety of uses and device types—including BYOD, Chromebook, iPad, tablet, and laptop programs. With our revolutionary basket design, handing out fully charged devices to students each day is super easy and takes less time—which saves valuable class time for instruction.

STEAM education heats up.

At ISTE, many edtech companies highlighted solutions for engaging students in science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) education in creative, hands-on ways, using technologies such as virtual reality headsets, robotics kits, maker spaces, and 3D printers to bring STEAM concepts to life in the classroom.

For example, a company called POWERUP Toys demonstrated classroom kits with instructions, templates, and motors for turning ordinary paper airplanes into motorized ones that can be controlled with a simple app. LEGO Education highlighted several curriculum sets with programmable, motorized LEGO models for creating standards-based projects, such as investigating the factors that make a car go faster. Root Robotics offers a robot that teaches kids as young as 5 how to code, and Sphero—the company that makes popular Star Wars droids—showed its SPRK+ robots that students can program using almost any device.

Outfitting multiple classrooms with hands-on robotics kits and other STEAM technologies can be costly, which is why we showcased an innovative and budget-friendly solution during this year’s ISTE: We showed educators how they could easily transform our LocknCharge charging carts into mobile STEAM learning labs, thanks to the open design of these carts.

During ISTE, we demonstrated how schools could use our carts to create mobile robotics, virtual reality, end engineering labs—but really, educators are only limited by their imagination!

Eco-friendly solutions save schools money.

Eco-friendly technologies were also on full display during this year’s ISTE conference. Projector manufacturers touted new products that use energy-efficient lasers instead of traditional lamps, such as the ViewSonic LS830 that delivers 4,500 lumens of brightness and up to 20,000 hours of maintenance-free usage with a laser phosphor light source. Other projector makers demonstrating lampless projectors included Casio and Epson.

Eco-friendliness extends to charging mobile devices as well. The ECO Safe Charge Power Management System from LocknCharge is an intelligent system that can reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions, extend battery life, and cut down on energy bills while charging multiple devices simultaneously.

Using this remote controlled system, schools can stage the charging of devices with several modes to make sure all devices are charged when they’re needed, without drawing unnecessary power.

What trends and new developments caught your eye at ISTE 2018? Leave a reply or engage with us on Twitter (@LocknCharge)—we’d love to hear your thoughts!

Want to learn more about our products? To set up a live demo with one of our expert problem solvers, click here.

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As technology changes and evolves, it can be difficult for K-20 school districts to know whether or not they’re evaluating the best tech solutions on the market. With so many options to choose from, so many unique classroom needs to address, and so many opinions to consider, it can be tough to know when you’ve gotten it right – especially when it comes to school-issued mobile devices. Decision makers find themselves asking: What types of mobile devices and apps should we implement? What is the best workflow for managing and deploying our mobile devices? How do I know this is the right investment for my school today and in the future? The list goes on…

The University of Oklahoma Research Campus helps educators in Oklahoma navigate these uncharted waters through their K20 Center. The Center operates through grant-funded programs focused on increasing student success through integration of education technology and collaboration with teachers. In addition to providing training and grant money for tech resources, the Center also helps schools find the right hardware and software solutions by fostering conversation within a district.

Twenty days throughout the year, the K20 Center opens the doors to their fully-stocked demo room, home to the latest and greatest in Ed Tech. The experts at the K20 Center research and vet every product in the room. This saves schools valuable time by narrowing down only the products that are proven to be successful in the classroom. The Center encourages a school or district to bring leadership members, IT staff, and teachers spanning different grade levels to the demo room as a way to empower decision making within the group. This encourages ideas from all angles to be considered in a constructive manner.

After demoing a variety of products, school districts often realize there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to a mobile technology plan – what works for elementary school, might not work for middle school, might not work for high school. From their findings, they’re able to formulate an individual plan that works for their unique school district. Because of this collaboration, the collective group can be confident that they’re making Ed Tech decisions that will benefit everyone, which takes the guesswork out of mobile technology planning and ensures that technology becomes an asset for learning rather than a hindrance.

Visit the K20 Center website to learn more about grant programs and the full list of services they provide.

If you’re planning to visit the K20 Center’s demo room, we encourage you to check out the following LocknCharge Charging Carts and Charging Stations – Carrier 30 Cart, CarryOn Mobile Charging Station, Putnam 16 Charging Station, and Baskets by LocknCharge.

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Hear from Kym Fanelli, a teacher at Koondoola Primary School in Western Australia, about how the Sphero Charging Case is easy to use, flexible and makes it easier to run robotics sessions within the classroom.

The Sphero Charging Case by LocknCharge stores, charges, secures and carries six Sphero SPRK+ Robots.

 

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