As our society moves deeper into the 21st century, it’s more important than ever for districts to incorporate the best electronics for schools in their classroom environments. You’ve done the research, and you know that there are a multitude of benefits of implementing the best electronics to your student population. From elementary school to middle school and high school, there are many gadgets that aid in students’ abilities to develop high-order reasoning skills, increase creativity, enhance collaboration skills, advance communication skills, and improve writing abilities.
Here at iResQ, we know that there are many factors in choosing the right devices for you and your school district, from durability to practicality to app availability. The good news is that you’re starting to prepare for the back-to-school season early! You have ample opportunity to ensure that your school year is filled with the best electronics to improve student learning by bringing excitement, engagement, and exploration into the student population’s learning experience. But that’s not the only good news! iResQ recognizes and values the time and effort that goes into preparing for going back to school, and we want to make choosing the best devices and device repairs as easy as possible. Our experts have compiled the list of the gadgets below that the best schools across the nation utilize, both for their in-person and remote students.
Laptops or Chromebooks
One of the major objectives of education at all levels is to provide the training and tools necessary to prepare the student population for their futures. Whether a student is attending a community college, technical college, enrolling in a degree program at a public college, or entering straight into the workforce, teachers are preparing their students for a bright and successful future. Nowadays, that future includes technology in many different capacities.
By integrating Chromebooks or laptops, including brands like Dell and Lenovo, in their classrooms, teachers are aiding in the development of their students’ abilities to stay organized, collaborate effectively with their peers, and improve their communication skills. Additionally, these devices allow teachers to provide feedback on student assignments and papers digitally. This often results in more detailed feedback and more precise direction than when it is handwritten. This ultimately leads to enhancing the student’s overall educational experience.
Both laptops and Chromebooks can be utilized as a resource to offer individualized instruction and attention that some students may need. By acting as a scaffold for students that need more step-by-step instruction and providing a more challenging series of tasks or content for each student, these devices are able to serve as a great supplement to regular classroom instruction.
Tablets or iPads
Mobile technology, such as iPads and other tablets empower students to take control of their own learning, promoting a sense of ownership and accomplishment that, in turn, leads to a faster learning rate and higher retention of material. Intentional use of relevant apps and other online resources has shown to have a great impact on collaborative learning with other students and their instructor. With an iPad or tablet, students are provided with the resource to efficiently work together on projects, share their ideas, and present their thoughts and findings with their peers. This process then opens the students up to be able to build off of one another’s ideas and understanding of a topic.
Beyond the benefits of peer-to-peer interactions, iPads and tablets provide the teacher with an effective tool to personalize and tailor each student’s learning experience. Teachers are already aware that the one-size-fits-all methodology does not apply to their students and their varying learning styles. Teachers are actively searching for a way to provide lessons and activities that will best meet the needs of their students. iPads and tablets can be utilized to scaffold instruction from providing more difficult material to their advanced students and extra help to the students that may need a boost in that subject matter.
The utilization of iPads and tablets in the classroom also reduces the amount of waste produced by schools and individual classrooms. If benefiting the environment and the school’s budget wasn’t enough, the lack of paper material also means that the teachers can spend less time making copies and printing assignments and more time creating engaging and powerful lessons for their students.
External Hard Drives
When higher education students go back to school, whether it’s to obtain an associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate degree, the back-to-school season is met with a little less fanfare than the younger student population gets. Nonetheless, preparing for the school year is no less important. One of the most underutilized tools for college students is an external hard drive.
An external hard drive is a portable box around the same size as a standard smartphone and allows you to back up all your data from your computer. We can hardly imagine anything worse than opening our laptop or computer one day to have all our information gone either due to an error or a hard drive failing and no back up drive. All that hard work and vital information poof! Gone. Having an external hard drive provides a secure way to store your pictures, documents, and other data.
By storing your less frequently used, but still important, information on your external hard drive you are also clearing up vital space on your computer’s internal hard drive which, in turn, keeps your computer running at peak efficiency. Many people are not aware, but when an internal hard drive has more than 50% of its maximum capacity being used, it slows down your whole system. As you add more and more data to the internal hard drive, it slows down your computer significantly. If you are able to only keep your most needed data on your internal hard drive and store your less-frequently-used data on an external hard drive, you’ll notice a vast difference in the speed of your device.
Chargers and Adapters
Largely due to the pandemic of 2020, classrooms across the nation now implement 1:1 technology with some form of laptop or tablet. Although having these devices present many benefits to the school district and the student population, the implementation of technology in the classroom has also presented the opportunity to overcome some challenges. One of the challenges that 1:1 technology presents is making sure each student’s device is completely charged and ready for a day full of learning.
Giving each student their own charger and adapter for use at home is a phenomenal way to teach responsibility and accountability. If your school district chooses to have their students take their devices home each night, make sure that the charger and adapter brand provided matches the device’s manufacturer. You may be tempted to provide students with a 3rd party charger, but there is little to no way to determine the quality of a 3rd party charger before use. Using a poor-quality 3rd party charger can decrease the battery health of your device, risks damaging the battery, provides slower charging, and can damage the charging port(s) of the device itself. It may be a bit pricier in the beginning, but in the long run the original manufacturer charger and adapter is your safest bet.
Many school districts have found that providing a charging station and/or cart in each classroom can a dependable resource. Each classroom has a range of 7-25 students, all with their own device, and it simply isn’t practical to expect enough wall outlets in the room for everyone. The charging station provides students with a centralized location to plug in their devices, thus keeps classrooms clutter free, aids in keeping track of devices, and provides a predictable routine for students that will encourage their independency. Furthermore, most charging carts have a secure lock that can (and should) be utilized by the teacher when they are not in the room. Laptops and tablets are not cheap, and your school district has likely invested thousands of dollars in devices and utilizing the security that a charging cart provides is one way to protect that investment.
Presentation Gadgets
From the teacher in a 2nd grade classroom to the college student enrolled in a bachelor’s program to the CEO of a company, presenting information effectively plays a major role in our day to day lives. The gadgets and resources that a presenter utilizes should always enhance, not hinder, the presentation. As technology has become a larger part of our lives, many tools and resources have been developed to do just that.
Promethean boards, Airtame, SMART Boards, projectors, and AmScope Microscope cameras are all tools that have been meticulously tested and developed with the objective to enhance the audience’s experience. Many of these tools contain integrated libraries and helpful features to empower the presenter to impart their knowledge and information as effectively as possible.
There are many apps that teachers and students can utilize from any laptop or tablet that offer pre-designed, customizable templates to increase the students’ learning experience even further. Some of our favorite apps for presentations are: Google Slides, Haiku Deck, Visme, Piktochart, Canva, and Nearpod.
Secure Added Support Today
Whether your school district utilizes laptops, Chromebooks, iPads or other tablets, iResQ is a dedicated support system for all your repair needs. We offer the experience of veteran technicians and a streamlined repair process to get your devices repaired before you go back to school, so that you can enjoy your summer break without worry. Reach out to our customer service team today to learn more about our pilot program and how we can best meet your school’s repair needs.