As schools get back into session, they find themselves adjusting to a set of circumstances they’ve never faced before. The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled K-12 institutions—plus colleges and universities—around the world to adopt distance learning models on a scale that most had never envisioned.
To smooth the rapid transition to remote learning, many of those educational institutions have turned to digital workspace solutions.
Here at Cameyo, we’ve witnessed that shift firsthand. In the month of September alone, 34 separate school districts rolled out our Digital Workspace platform. Each district was different in terms of its IT environment, its student body and the finer points of its approach to remote learning. But there were three common criteria that led them to choose Cameyo:
- Platform agnosticism. With Cameyo, it doesn’t matter if students are using school-issued Chromebooks or their own personal computers for distance learning. Our virtual application delivery-based approach to Digital Workspaces offers them and their instructors easy, secure access to all the software they need.
- Rapid deployment. One of the biggest challenges of the pandemic has been its unpredictability. Many districts were still unsure if they would be returning to in-person teaching until just before the start of the school year. Cameyo gave entire school districts the ability to migrate successfully to a remote learning model in a matter of hours, not weeks.
- Cost effectiveness. Compared to full-blown virtual desktop solutions, Cameyo is far more streamlined and scalable while still delivering a desktop-class software experience. That translates to serious cost savings when you account for licensing, support and administration.
Those benefits enabled California’s San Diego Unified School District to provide its students with crucial access to their industry-standard course software. The district’s College, Career and Technical Education Department cited Cameyo’s “ease of use and cost-effectiveness” as being key in its ability to adopt a 1:1 device strategy prior to the start of school.
For Staunton City Schools in Virginia, Cameyo quickly became the centerpiece of their plan to deliver Windows applications to students who were using Chromebooks at home. The ultra-fast setup and deployment of our solution meant that the students could concentrate on schoolwork from day one instead of losing valuable time getting to grips with new technology.
Baldwinsville Central School District in New York State already had a 1:1 Chromebook program in place prior to the pandemic. However, some courses still required desktop access to Adobe Creative Suite to Microsoft Office, and unfortunately, their previous Desktop as a Service (DaaS) product was overkill for both the students and IT.
Cameyo didn’t only give Baldwinsville’s students seamless, straightforward access to their desktop-level software. It also eliminated the expensive and cumbersome infrastructure that was needed to support the previous DaaS solution. For details on implementation and cost savings, have a look at our full Baldwinsville CSD case study.
Looking to the post-COVID future
These examples show how Cameyo enabled these very different school districts to respond swiftly and agilely to the ever-changing situation of the pandemic.
What they also make clear is how Cameyo’s Digital Workspace solution creates a flexible platform for the future. Far from being a near-term stopgap for distance learning, our practical approach to virtual application delivery allows educational institutions to modernize their classrooms while preserving their existing software suites.
Back in 2018, the Homer Central School District in upstate New York saw Cameyo as a cost-effective way of doing just that. The K-12 district had already migrated several years earlier to a 1:1 program of iPads and Chromebooks.
But at the same time as it was making these impressive leaps forward, the school district was forced to support around 700 aging PCs in its computer labs. Students, faculty and staff relied on four legacy apps that simply couldn’t be transitioned to the newer mobile hardware.
With Cameyo, the Homer IT team was able to bridge the gap between legacy and modern technology. Our case study with the Homer Central School District has more detail on their experience—including the immediate time and cost savings they saw from Cameyo.
And the Homer Central School District isn’t the only example. Community High School District 99 (CSD99) in Illinois implemented Cameyo for similar reasons in the early days of the pandemic. In bypassing the need for physical PC labs, the CSD99 IT staff realized that Cameyo could likely serve as the foundation for their long-term educational strategy. Read more about their use case and goals in our CSD99 case study.
A path to remote learning and beyond
Whether you’re looking to facilitate distance learning right away or create a versatile platform for the educational models of tomorrow, Cameyo’s Digital Workspace solution provides you with a smooth, cost-effective path. Sign up for a free trial of Cameyo today and have your first published app running in a matter of minutes. Our team is ready to tailor a solution that meets the needs of your students, faculty and IT staff now and for years to come.