Harnessing the power of technology amid the age of distance learning

THE global lockdown amid the ongoing pandemic has greatly affected the education sector and has triggered disruptions in the way classes are held this school year.

In the Philippines, education officials said that educational institutions will embrace the distance learning approach to ensure that learning among students in all levels remains unhampered. It will also ensure the safety of the students as the country struggles with the health crisis.

In a distance learning set up, the interactions happen between the educators and students who are geographically remote from each other during the actual instruction. While distance learning is not a new concept, some recent definitions focus more on it as a new development that requires not just massive technical adjustments but also changes in the way learning institutions will need to operate in general.

For Vertiv, a global provider of critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, distance learning underlines the importance for educational institutions to leverage technology in order to thrive even in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Educational institutions need to ensure the availability of the schools’ IT network for educators to access student information, such as enrollment, class records, among others, even when they are not physically present in the campus. They also need to ensure the accessibility of its IT systems to make modules and other learning materials available for the teachers.

In public schools, for instance, learning references can be accessed by educators, parents, and students using Deped Commons, a project of the Department of Education (Deped) aimed at supporting the continuous delivery of basic education to Filipino learners through open education resources (OER).

Apart from the platforms, learning institutions must also ensure that they can support mobile learning. This refers to learning across multiple contexts, through social and content interactions using personal electronic devices.

Empowering the education sector Vertiv has been innovating solutions that can help empower the education sector. With its range of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) solutions, Vertiv helps ensure the availability of the school’s critical data center, so access of vital records online remain unhampered. In addition, its range of data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solutions allow IT managers to monitor the school’s IT infrastructure even when they are not there, physically.

Vertiv support schools in improving uptime with its full-range of Liebert UPS, which are future-proof, eco-friendly, and highly efficient. With the school year set to start in October, coinciding with the typhoon season, there is a higher risk for downtimes due to potential power interruption. Vertiv UPS technologies will help cover the backup power needs of the IT infrastructure.

For schools that are supporting volumes of critical data, the Vertiv Smartcabinet, a fully integrated, micro data center solution, helps provide an intelligent and integrated infrastructure that allows them to quickly deploy a data center even in tight locations. The Smartcabinet is a solution that combines power, thermal management, and IT management in a simple, rapidly deployable design, making it ideal for schools that need to deploy IT infrastructure quickly across different locations.

This solution allows IT managers to standardize processes and centrally manage applications and infrastructure remotely, while still providing low latency computing which is crucial for distance learning. With remote IT management, combined with Vertiv’s efficient and effective deployment services and remote IT management capabilities, expensive trucks rolls are also reduced, allowing the Smartcabinet solution to significantly lower the total cost of ownership compared to traditional approaches.

As IT becomes an integral part of the education sector, Vertiv aims to bring together cutting-edge solutions to ensure uninterrupted operations, optimal performance, and scalability of data centers, communication networks, and other critical IT facilities.

To learn more about how Vertiv supports the continuity of today’s vital business applications, visit Vertiv.com