The "Unified Education Network" (UEN) is the  name for a new education network that offers unique services to small rural school districts.  The goal of this new education network is to “unify” the technology services that every school relies upon in order to provide computing services within their facilities. At the same time, this new “Unified Education Network” seeks to standardize and bring some commonality to the technologies deployed by schools. With standardization and commonality comes mass purchasing of licensing for everything from Internet content filtering to anti-virus software, to document processing software. Additionally, this commonality provides for a starting point to facilitate more interaction and collaboration between small schools especially when administrators and staff can share typical information such as calendar information and school data.

The CheqWAY UEN infrastructure pulls together under one roof all of the support services that small schools need in order to manage and operate increasingly sophisticate technologies. The CheqWAY infrastructure is designed around the needs of small schools that struggle to keep up with technology. Our infrastructure offers hosted services such as email, on-line curriculum content, web site hosting as well as a number of support services such as the “Summer Assistance Program.”

It is our belief that it is time for schools, small schools in particular to outsource their IT management rather than to rely upon teachers who are so drastically needed in the classrooms. We have years of experience working with schools and know of their needs and requirements. That is why we offer so many services such as “Contract Technicians” that go on-site on a regular basis, and “Remote Network Management” that removes the need for the teachers doing the technical support from having to know server operating systems and other highly technical aspects of networks. Our infrastructure offers “Self-healing” solutions that drastically reduce on-site maintenance requirements allowing the technicians at CheqWAY to fully manage the solutions from remote. As a result of this 99.999% uptime solution and remote management, we offer three UEN Support Agreements that provide a fixed, known cost each year for maintenance and management of the schools network and workstations.

Any school that looks at the UEN concept and deploys this strategy will go far to reduce their annual technology maintenance costs.
 

We invite your school to join this innovative, one-of-a-kind education technology network, which offers web services, educational services and technical support services all in one, freeing your staff and teachers to teach.

For years since the start of the “Information Age” school districts have been actively implementing technology within their buildings. Each and every school has engaged in their technology aspirations and mostly on an individual basis. Almost every school has treated technology with a go-it-alone approach, and each school has had to “re-invent” technology implementations, purchase the same equipment, same software, and same services. In many cases the technology implementation is only partially successful. Many instances exist in which a technology is purchased and only partially implemented mostly due to a lack of understanding or knowledge for the technology.
Many rural school districts do not even have full time technology support, in fact most of their technology support is provided by a teacher or volunteer on a very limited basis. This is not to suggest that the teachers or volunteers are incapable, but to suggest that it is difficult to be a full time teacher and provide adequate technical support to the entire school when it is needed. Let’s face it; technology support is needed at the time when the technology is being used not after school when it usually becomes available in these small schools.

The Need For Full Time Technology Support

For years, those who provide professional technical support have argued for the need to have full time “technologist” provided in every school, however the fiscal challenges faced by small schools has won out over any increased staffing. Therefore small schools still face an up-hill struggle to provide adequate technical support to meet the challenges of maintaining their network infrastructures. These small schools must seek alternatives to full time technical support.

The Case for "Outsourcing" School Technical Support