During the global pandemic, Emerging Technologies — the area of IT that I focus on — has seen an exciting influx of new technologies and offerings in a short amount of time that help keep people safe and connected.

Some of these technologies, especially robotics and drones, are causing disruption in the channel in a couple of ways: by providing new avenues for people to communicate in a socially distant world and sanitizing entire rooms autonomously. These emerging technologies are providing peace of mind to coworkers, students and teachers as businesses and schools create plans to reopen.

Esports continues to grow at an astounding pace. And I continue to see more districts reach out to me to talk about setting up a league at their schools. One of the first questions that comes up is: How do we arrange competition? Do we join an already-established third-party league; do we join a nonprofit third-party league like North American Scholastic Esports Federation (NASEF); or do we create our own?

While each option has its strengths and weaknesses, I’d like to focus on building your own league as there’s more of a journey to it. Setting up your own esports league has some challenges along the way, but I think the benefits are well worth it.

As the current cycle of E-rate funding comes to a close, it’s time for school districts to turn an eye toward what’s coming next.

Fortunately, we now have some clarity on what the next few years will look like. Until December 2019, districts were a bit in the dark, left to wonder what rules the federal government would adopt to govern discounts and budgets going forward. But now that the regulations are clear, school districts can use them to guide their next five years of networking investments.

Here are three steps that school districts should take now to get ready for the next round of E-rate funding.

Winston Churchill once said, “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.”

I always keep this quote in mind when working with school districts on modern learning environments that bring together devices, audiovisual tools and flexible furniture to foster collaboration and student-centered learning. Through our Blueprint to Design™ program, CDW helps schools with each step of a modern technology implementation, and I’m on many consultation calls with educators. They bring great passion and ideas to these conversations, but it occurred to me that the process would be even more effective if educators asked themselves a few key questions first.

While security might not present itself as an immediate emergency, school leaders should consult regularly with their IT teams about this significant technology risk. One of the major barriers to these conversations is the lack of a common vocabulary. The world of cybersecurity is full of technical terms that may be bewildering to school leaders who find themselves more familiar with the world of education. Let’s take a look at six questions that you can use to start an informed conversation at your school.

Through a mix of devices, flexible furniture and audiovisual solutions, today’s classroom environment puts students at the center of their own learning. But if a school’s back-end infrastructure, culture and budget can’t support the addition of new technologies, these improvements will have limited impact.

In this blog post, we explore five common obstacles to deploying modern learning environments, and discuss how your school can move past them.