The Power of Mobility & Learning

The mobility trend holds great promise for improved productivity and new engagement models. These are most powerful in a learning effort—imagine learning anywhere and anytime. I just wish I had the Internet and the mobility that students have today when I went to school. Yet, mobility is an IT tsunami that will not recede. One of the most damaging aspects of this storm is the possibility of numerous personal devices that are entering organizations, accessing the network and eventually critical assets, and stealing sensitive data or mistakenly bringing malware. Many people know this policy as BYOD or bring your own device. This is not a new phrase but it is still quite prevalent. Inventory and provisioning of personal mobile devices is just the tip of this wave. Organizations want to control mobile devices to ensure acceptable usage and minimize security incidents.

Educational institutions (the training grounds for our next workforce) are seeing this each day. Mobile devices create a great opportunity to expand the learning environment. Students can access lessons and information anytime and anywhere. Imagine the power of accessing a tutorial session on your tablet with the satisfaction of completing a tough assignment. Or a professor accessing recent research and sharing it with an international colleague in the early morning over collaborative video exchange. The power of mobility and the Internet of Everything offer a whole new learning platform for all.

How does a school provide a student access from their personal mobile device to learning services while ensuring the student does not have access to sensitive data—like grades for other students—or that the student does not visit a malware-infected website? Hear from some schools—a public school in Texas and a private higher education institution—on how they control mobile devices. You can also learn how educational organizations are managing the challenge of BYOD in the BYOD Security Challenges in Education: Protect the Network, Information, and Students whitepaper. Does your school have a BYOD policy? If so what is it?