Second Life: Do schools and universities always need to go after expensive new tech? – Education Technology

Earlier this month, Astrid Wynne, our Sustainability Manager joined four other IT experts for a roundtable discussion about IT in schools and universities. Techbuyer featured among Jisc, Stone Group, Circular Computing and Evangelist and answered a series of questions about how schools on a budget can make use of the IT equipment they already have. Education Technology, a leading publication of edtech news and information, published the feature in their digital magazine.

Article summary:

  • Martin Hamilton from Jisc states that ‘edtech’ is largely “just the same tech you would use at home. We really don’t even begin to scratch the surface of the educational potential of this everyday tech”.

  • “IT managers can look to third-party solutions on commodity items such as memory, storage and networking switches,” explains Astrid Wynne, Techbuyer. “Many of these are identical to the branded alternatives in every way, apart from the sticker on the product.”

  • Steve Haskew, Circular Computing suggests that “99% of tasks in the education space can be managed by hardware that is not latest-generation CPUs.”

  • Mark Anderson, ICT Evangelist says that training and support is crucial to ensure that university and school staff enhance learning as much as possible.

  • Finally, Ant Mellor from Stone Group comments that if new technology “costs considerably more, but the institution wouldn’t benefit from many of the new features, then why upgrade?”

You can view the article in full here, from page 37 to page 42.

 

Techbuyer is a global leader in the buying and selling of new and refurbished data centre equipment. Starting with just two people in Harrogate in 2005, Techbuyer now has 150 employees across key sites in the UK, USA, Europe and Asia Pacific. We provide a three year warranty with every product and offer cost-effective, sustainable alternatives to new with our refurbished IT hardware. For press enquiries, please get in touch with Marketing@techbuyer.com.