Last fall, NJSBA unveiled a statewide technology program designed to help school districts meet the educational challenges of the 21st century learner. Dubbed NJSBA’s TEC (Technology for Education and Career), the program enables districts to purchase technological tools and services at a discount of anywhere between two and 22 percent below the academic pricing.
To further enhance the offerings of NJSBA TEC, NJSBA recently awarded Carahsoft Technology Corporation a contract to also offer VMware cloud-based services. Cloud-based services provide districts an affordable, subscription-based means of managing technology initiatives and disaster recovery plans.
BYOD Whether a school adopts a BYOD policy (Bring Your Own Device) or issues school devices, the process for protecting those devices is the same, and begins with enrolling the device into a MDM (Mobile Device Management) system. AirWatch lets schools activate devices in one simple step, without the need for any software, in their environment. All devices enrolled in the AirWatch system can be configured remotely. Immediately out of the box, administrators can distribute documents between devices. Administrators can configure device settings or user credentials allowing access to certain resources on their network.
Disaster Recovery Many New Jersey K-12 schools do not have a disaster recovery plan in place. New Jersey, evidenced by the destruction of Hurricane Sandy, is not exempt from disaster. It is very likely that NJSBA members have found themselves without power or the means to get employees to their offices.
Even if some New Jersey K-12 institutions have not experienced a natural disaster, there is no guarantee these schools are exempt from cybersecurity attacks, unplanned power outages, or desktop equipment failures. Any of these could result in a loss of staff and instructional time, impacting students.
vCloud Air Disaster Recovery is specifically designed to rescue all critical workloads and data in the event of a disaster, allowing students and employees to access their data safely and securely, from any device, anywhere (including from the safety of their own home) to ensure that the return to normalcy for students and teachers after a disaster is quick and seamless.
Cost and Time Savings NJSBA issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) under the competitive contracting statutes allowing the membership to buy from the contract without going through the competitive bidding process.
For further information about NJSBA’s TEC, contact Jo Ann Dempsey at (609) 278-5249 or [email protected].