Lessons learned

Greg Kovich

August 11, 2020

Educators need security for back-to-class and remote learning to ensure privacy, education continuity, 和课堂控制，同时推动学生的成功.

What lessons did you learn when students switched to remote learning?

The pivot to full remote learning this spring was an experience that few of us would like to undertake again. However, there were several lessons we can learn from the transition to remote learning as we start to explore and plan for the 2020-21 school year.

安全是确保学生成功的必要条件

Educators need secure access for back-to-class and remote learning to ensure privacy, education continuity, 和课堂控制，同时推动学生的成功.

在第一/第二世界, a wide variety of tools were implemented to deliver a classroom-like teaching environment. 在高等教育界, 一个特定的平台似乎占据了主导地位, 也是最常用的主辅平台.

Unfortunately, the move to remote learning stress tested the capabilities of all platforms and revealed some gaps that for educators are must haves, such as:

• Security
• Classroom control
• Privacy
• Continuity

没有课堂控制很难教学

Classroom control is an important skill for all teachers to master – and one that is not taught, but rather comes from teaching and collaborating with experienced teachers.  没有强有力的课堂管理, the learning environment can quickly become chaotic and frustrating for everyone.

Classroom control includes not only being able to identify and isolate offending students, but also ensuring that only the class roster is in the classroom.  在向在线教学转移, most of the strategies and best practice advice was ineffective because the platforms were not designed to mimic a classroom, 而是复制一个会议室.

安全访问确保隐私

The topic of information privacy in education is common among all nations, and is simply the desire to protect the identity and sensitive information of our children.  In the virtual world, there are features and strategies that can be implemented to protect the privacy of the student and teacher communications and information.  Chief among these are encrypting the end-to-end communications in a virtual conversation, 使任何截获的数据变得毫无意义.

另一个方面是保护老师的隐私.  因为建筑物和校园都关闭了, some remote learning platforms forced the teacher to present their personal telephone number, 而不是机构/工作编号.  While currently there is scant evidence of widespread exploitation of this exposure of personally identifiable information (PII), 除非老师换了他们的电话号码, there is some risk.

Physical security and secure remote access is critical to success

Education is an industry that is serious about security – both physical (while on campus and engaged in campus activities) and remote learning in the cyberworld.

In the physical world, 校园可以集成物联网传感器, alarms and alerts with geofencing technology to react and warn impacted communities.  However, 当校园是空的，已经转移到远程学习, it is imperative that both the students and faculty have a secure mechanism to access and submit documents and other resources.

VPN和防火墙技术很重要

For teachers, 使用VPN技术可以很容易地解决这个问题, 哪个通常是防火墙包的一部分, 也可以作为独立设备购买.  For those teachers, that need to access campus telephony as part of their work from home requirements, a VPN enabled Wi-Fi access point can connect their physical IP phone or their IP desktop softphone back to the campus PBX.

Education continuity is essential between classrooms and remote learning

The last aspect is continuity – essentially the resiliency to continue business and academic operations.  From the business point of view, communities need to be and stay informed.  Tools to assist with this critical function include chatbot enabled web pages, 提供快速faq类型的信息.

当聊天机器人还不够时, escalation to a virtual assistant – an employee – who can answer more complex questions in a chat, 音频或视频环境.  Lastly, deploying multi-media call centers allow the district or institution to be able to swiftly address all aspects of inquiries.

Security, classroom control, privacy continuity, 隐私都是我们学到的教训的一部分. Learning from these experiences allows us to be resilient and continue to serve our community’s needs.

At Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, supporting education is a primary interest for us. 我们的阿尔卡特朗讯全接入恒星Wi-Fi, 阿尔卡特朗讯OmniSwitch网络交换机, and Alcatel-Lucent Rainbow helps ensure your students and staff can continue the education process that is so critical to everyone’s success.

Learn more in our Continuity of Learning section.