Chromebooks for Education: A Student’s View

As a high school senior and an intern at Newmind Group I see the need for technology in education and the struggles that many people face with it. In school these days, not having a computer can put a student at a severe disadvantage. Teachers expect you to type papers, create slide shows, and accomplish other tasks that require a computer in your free time. This can be a struggle for students without a computer of their own.

2 major struggles that I’ve had include:

• Finding a device to work on
  While using computers at school or at a library is an option, it is inconvenient and the environment is not always conducive to accomplishing school work. Not to mention availability is always an issue when dealing with publicly accessible devices.
• Saving & Transporting Files
  You also have to worry about how you save & transport files. Every teacher that I know stresses the importance of saving every document three times to guard against data loss. Without a personal device I’ve had to email myself, save to a USB drive, or to my Google Apps account at my school. (That last one isn’t so bad as I can get to it anywhere I have internet access, which is what I’ll touch on in a little bit.)

IT at the Small and Growing company

This post was originally published to Daniel Jefferies' Medium blog feed.

“A company this size can’t afford mistakes.”

For the last 13 years or so I’ve been working on IT with great folks in small, mid-sized and large organizations all over the country. In that time I’ve noticed that just as businesses change as they grow so do the IT departments that serve them. As the business changes, the IT challenges change. Sometimes the IT department keeps up with these challenges and sometimes they get stuck in the ways of the past. I want to start today by looking at the IT needs of Small and Growing businesses which many times have no IT department of their own. In future posts I also plan to cover lessons learned in working with IT in Mid-Sized and Scaling businesses as well as Large and Transforming organizations.

Impact Athletic builds quality work surfaces and storage equipment for Athletic Trainers.

BYOD to COPE: The Mobility Spectrum

This is part 2 of our look at mobile policy strategy and the great mobility debate. Be sure to read the first post, "BYOD vs Standardization - Understanding Your Mobile Strategy," to explore device standardization.

Environment & History

Look around the office of 10 years ago, and you’d probably find basically the same place as today. Sure, we have better computers now, but those are basically the same boxes as before.  So, in terms of tech, what’s changed?  For that answer we need to look in our pockets.

10 years ago, if you needed your work email on the go, you got a Blackberry.  Spreadsheets Presentations?  ThinkPad.  Fast forward to now, and you probably have a device in your pocket that an do all of that, and faster.  Wireless devices - whether phone, tablet, laptop, or any of the hybrids in between - have become indispensable at work.