Over the past year, K-12 schools and higher education institutions have had to transform and modernize in order to stay open during the COVID-19 pandemic. Innovative technology has changed K-12 and higher education for the years to come. Schools, colleges, and universities have been able to successfully deliver education to their students both online and in-person.
Hybrid Learning and the Future of Education
NetApp’s Matt Lawson and Tom Ryan, Senior Fellow for the Center for Digital Education, came together to discuss the future of education for the next several years. They commented how hybrid learning for students may become the standard K-12 schools and higher education. “One of the interesting outcomes of this are the new expectations about capabilities that we’ve kind of proven we have now. And students, parents, IT workers, and educators all have much higher expectations on the flexibility that we can offer,” said Lawson.
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Digital Payment Platforms Increasingly Critical for Schools
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how education institutions can adopt technology in various ways. One area of technology that is growing is investment into digital payment platforms, which help facilitate billing for meal costs, course fees, and more. “Educational institutions want to offer the same modern payment experience to their parents and students that they encounter with other frictionless transaction processes, like Uber and Amazon,” said Jeff Coppolo, Global Head of Partnerships at BlueSnap. “People have moved away from paper checks and cash to electronic payments, bank transfers, and digital e-wallets.”
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How Pinecrest Academy Safely Opened for In-Person Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Pinecrest Academy, a PreK through 12th-grade school in Northern Georgia, was able to have their student remain in the classrooms for in-person learning last August. The school was able to achieve this by strengthening its data system by partnering with IPC Global and Qlik to implement the Campus Health Tracker. This way Pinecrest could use a single platform to view and enter data related to infections, quarantines, recoveries, contact tracing, general student health, and even community-based factors. By implementing this technology, no COVID-19 cases have spread between students.
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