Virtualization in the K-12 School Environment

We live in such an amazing world, in such an amazing time. My grandparents, rest in peace, never owned a computer. They did not know how to work the television other than changing the channel. They owned one telephone, and it was a rotary phone. They paid for everything in cash. They hung their clothes on the line to dry. My grandpa used a push mower. They knew nothing of Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. During my father's childhood, televisions became color.

He brought home our first computer when I was 8. It was huge and bulky, and I loved it. He taught me how to play Wolfenstein in secret, so my mom would not get upset about all the blood. I self-taught myself how to play the games on the floppy disks. I taught my parents how to use dial-up. I "coded" my MySpace page just the way I liked it. I chatted on AOL messenger, then Yahoo messenger, and now Facebook Messenger.

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Technology and the Internet have come such a long way from when my grandparents were growing up. We went from room-sized computers to computers that will fit in your pocket. The technology that goes along with it is growing exponentially. We had computers when I was in school. They were the big, bulky ones, extremely pixelated, and we played Oregon Trail. By the time I was in 7th grade we were learning keyboarding. By the time I was in high school, we had computer labs that students could use as needed.

My daughter, who is now in 3rd grade, has had a school assigned Chromebook since she was in Kindergarten. They do quite a few assignments on them. They do all their standardized testing on them. It just comes natural to this generation, and it is amazing. I would like my daughter to have every advantage in school. I believe something that will help with that is implementing virtualization in the school or classroom.

Virtualization in K-12

Schools differ vastly from when my grandparents went to school, when my parents went to school, when I went to school, and now when my daughter goes to school. The differences in technology alone are amazing. When my dad went to school there was not one computer in his high school that students could use. They used encyclopedias for research projects. There definitely was not a "cliff notes" or anything of the like. I played Oregon Trail on the school computer in 4th grade. My daughter made a presentation on Google Slides in 2nd grade. It really is just an entirely different world.

Children Are Able To Use It At Earlier Age

When my daughter was 3 years old, she could find her way around an iPhone better than I could. This is how her generation has been trained. Kids these days can open apps and play music and change the background on their phone before they learn how to ride a bike. There are many reasons for this. Technology is simpler and cheaper to get than it was 30 years ago. Kids are given "old phones" when parents get new ones, and these play phones are still "smarter" phones than the ones I used primarily growing up. Thanks to social media, the world is (or at least seems) like a much scarier place than it used to be. Parents do not feel safe sending their children outside to play, even in their own backyard. In the summertime, my parents played all over town from sunup until sundown, with no cell phones, barely checking in at home. Sometimes my grandparents were at work, so the kids were sent off to find something to do until one of them got home for the day. Now our children can not play in their fenced-in yard without the fear that someone will kidnap them. According to Martin Armstrong, a survey was done to find out where children spend more of their free time. It said the children "spent 18.6 hours on screen-based play in a usual week". Therefore, children, these days play inside, in the safety of their home, on iPads, on console gaming systems, on their smartphones. Even if a child does not have any of those electronics at home, schools are becoming more and more tech-friendly. My children's school assigns everyone a Chromebook in kindergarten, and they keep it until 12th grade, or until there are upgrades. This way, the children who do not benefit from already knowing how to use technology, learn quickly in school, and once in the 2nd grade, are able to take said Chromebooks home. (Armstrong, 2017)

Faster, more updated

One thing that would help tremendously in helping our schools reach their full potential is virtualization. Many businesses have already realized the potential in virtualization. Places of higher education are joining them in implementing virtualization into their lessons, making things easier. K-12 seems to be the last one to the party. While most schools allow students access to computers while at school, not every school can afford to equip every child with a computer of their own. Dell is one of the leading providers trying to get into the K-12 school market. They regularly hold virtualization workshops in hopes of winning over potential customers who are wanting to learn more about what virtualization is, what it can do, and if it would be beneficial to their district or school.

Benefits of Virtualization in K-12

There is a vast amount of benefits of virtualization, and very few, if any, cons to it. We are learning more about it all the time, and new updates and ideas are being created and thought of daily. There are so many benefits to virtualization. Technology is an always-changing market.

Better Security

One of the benefits of virtualization is better security. Cyberthreats have become such a major issue in the last 10 years, and there are not enough people working on it to keep up to date. Organizations have begun offering scholarships and high schools have begun teaching about cybersecurity in school, as an effort to minimize these threats by educating people on it and increasing interest. One of the ways virtualization offers better security is by offering Guest Operating Systems. The users do not actually see or use the main system. The main system can do automatic updates, which would make it easier for the Guest Operating Systems to not have to worry about that. Another way it offers better security is disaster recovery. Disaster recovery used to be a long, lengthy, complicated process involving many steps. For companies that implement physical disaster recovery, this is still the way it is. Companies that have switched over to virtualized disaster recovery are realizing how much simpler things can be. Virtualized disaster recovery is as simple as a single mouse click. Considering how quick schools would need information back up, or programs running again, such as the standardized tests the schools take so many of, disaster recovery that is this simple should be something they should consider when thinking about whether virtualization is going to work well at their school. (Konak, 2018)

Cost-effective

Another proven benefit of virtualization is the cost-effectiveness of it. "With virtualization, organizations can eliminate the need of having dedicated machines for dedicated tasks. This can effectively eliminate not only dozens of expensive computers but also the overhead in maintaining and powering them." One of the ways of saving money is on licensing costs. There are still some licenses that only allow one license per server, but there are many more than are recognizing that virtualization is the next big thing and planning their strategies accordingly. While they would make more money making each license usable by only one server, they realize they will keep the market's interest if they grow along with the times. Many companies are now allowing at least 2 servers to be licensed by the same license. Just this alone cuts the licensing cost in half. If you have 1000 students you are trying to license individually, you now only pay for 500. A lot of public schools do not have the extra money to throw around. When presented with something such as this, schools can see how virtualization might possibly be in their best interest. (Dwyer, 2017)

Ways to Implement Virtualization

There are different ways that one can implement virtualization into the K-12 school environment. Some different things schools could do would be data centers and shared classroom computers.

Data Centers

If a school did not want to hand out devices to everyone, another option would be a data center. If a school has multiple computers for students to use, yet every student still has their own login information, they get to feel like they still have something of their own, the security of knowing their information will always be there. Power outages are no issue for virtualization. Data is never lost.

Individual Devices

One way to make security and recovery easier would be virtualization on individual devices. This allows teachers to keep an eye on students. Students who then would not otherwise be able to afford their own computer or tablet at home would now have access to the internet to do homework and projects. This is something that the poorer communities have a real problem with. The technology gap is real and is it completely fixable, with things such as virtualization.

Conclusion

Essentially, schools have so many reasons to implement virtualization in their school's systems and districts, and no good reasons not to.

I think all schools should be looking into virtualization, not just the higher education colleges. Today's world is constantly changing, and we must change along with it. There are programs out there that would help impoverished communities. There are people who want to help. Virtualization for a lot of schools would start saving them money while losing little, if any at all, in start-up costs. I see it as a win-win situation.