Securely connecting students to the cloud and their future

For the education system, summer is usually a time to assess and plan – along with de-stressing from the responsibilities of preparing students for an unpredictable future. With the pandemic receding – yet still shadowing everything – summer 2021 planning is even more important. The last year and a half provided the education sector with a real-time experiment in digital tools for education. The planning cycle for 2021 and beyond offers an opportunity to build on what worked and fast-track efforts to address inefficiencies and inequities exposed by the shift to at-home virtualized education.

Quality learning experiences for students and easy access to technology are all parts of the environments we construct and help manage for schools. Fortunately, Lumen can help build the smart campus kids need.

Building foundations for secure and connected schools

Lumen is working with state and local governments as well as individual districts on the digital infrastructure necessary to mainstream this online experience for students and educators. The Lumen platform of adaptive networking, edge cloud, connected security and collaboration services offers a variety of tools to deliver that experience safely and cost-effectively.

These environments need to be robust, but they also need to be secure. Student privacy must be protected and access to school resources has to be controlled to prevent breaches. Lumen can layer additional security measures into the environment. Through our edge cloud capability, we can put authentication and other access controls close to the points of access so we can help to ensure that the right people gain entry to the education environment.

Like many things in the economy and society, the pandemic accelerated trends already in place. Schools had previously made strides in using digital resources, incorporating video and interactivity into classes and finding other ways to extend the classroom. Those advances were quite different from having to move the entire education experience online. As we move to reopening school doors this fall, as a society we need to draw on what we learned to move the educational experience forward, rather than assuming what we did before the pandemic was good enough.

A strong history helps build a future in the cloud and beyond

Compelling, digital experiences that enrich the learning process and extend the classroom – whether that room is in a school or a home – is an opportunity for all. No student or school would want to be left behind.

Lumen stands ready to help implement a complete solution. The increasing complexity of educating students means schools must consider the future of cloud, security and direct connect in K-12 education. For example, creating hybrid learning environments for students and educators goes beyond connectivity, as these new environments will also place a greater demand on school networks and IT staff for increased scalability as well as improved security.

The solutions, much like the challenges schools face, are multi-faceted.

In the current planning cycle, it’s important to remember that connectivity is the on-ramp to students’ education experience, yet there still need to be some destinations. It will take a complete platform approach to prepare the next generations for a world of constant change.  Quality learning experiences for students and easy access to technology are all parts of the environments we construct and help manage for schools.

At Lumen, we’ve been helping students a long time. As we look to the future, we remain ready to deliver cost-effective solutions to equip and protect the students, staff and schools on their educational journey, wherever it may lead.

Get your students started on a great future.

This blog is provided for informational purposes only and may require additional research and substantiation by the end user. In addition, the information is provided “as is” without any warranty or condition of any kind, either express or implied. Use of this information is at the end user’s own risk. Lumen does not warrant that the information will meet the end user’s requirements or that the implementation or usage of this information will result in the desired outcome of the end user. ©2021 Lumen Technologies. All Rights Reserved.