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Article · Jan 30, 2019

No more old school mistakes

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The old “dog ate my homework” excuse is no longer even remotely relevant in schools where homework is digital. “The file got lost”, “My computer crashed” or “I accidentally deleted it” are more plausible apologies for late (or non-existent) book reports. 

Data loss issues are not the only tech worries that school IT departments face. But they’re a common one. (So common, in fact, that they were the inspiration for the founding of Carbonite. David Friend’s daughter lost one of her school papers when her computer crashed. So he set out to design a personal computer backup application. And our company was born.)

Files don’t just disappear for despairing students – they disappear for teachers too. And when they do, entire classes can suffer. 

“We just had a group of teachers lose a shared curriculum map that they spent a lot of time working on” says Jeffrey Ryan, the head of the IT department at The Danville Area School District in rural Pennsylvania. Luckily, Ryan was able to restore the teachers’ data from a recent Carbonite backup, so the teachers didn’t have to lose classroom time or start designing curriculum maps all over again. 

Along with regularly recovering lost data, school IT departments tackle tight budgets and support large numbers of endpoints, desktops and computer labs that students and teachers rely on. 

Unfortunately, as the recent high profile story about the San Diego Unified School District demonstrates, schools can also be prime targets for phishing and ransomware attacks. Such attacks test students and staff alike and prompt schools to re-double cybersecurity awareness trainings.

In response to the many IT challenges in education, school IT administrators like Jeff Ran are often wary of embracing new technologies too quickly. “We’re very cautious about how we spend money on technology and make sure it matches our curriculum goals.” 

Ryan decided to use Carbonite Server to backup school data, so that everyday mishaps don’t disrupt classroom time. “We need to make sure technology issues don’t disrupt classroom time. Because for us, student education is our top priority.” And data loss – or hungry dogs – should never get in the way of that.

To learn more about how the Danville Area School District uses Carbonite, read our case study.

Author

Cherone Duggan

Cherone Duggan is a Product Marketing Manager at Carbonite, focused on customer advocacy. She blogs about IT security and Carbonite customer stories.

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