The COVID-19 pandemic spotlighted the challenge school districts, colleges, universities, and other educational institutions face in delivering continuity of learning for each student, regardless of their environment.

Colleges and universities have a historical significance in this country. Institutions such as Harvard, Georgetown, and the College of William and Mary date back to our American Colonial Era. Fast forward to 2021, these schools, along with so many others, continue to flourish with their own unique traditions and instructional underpinnings.

"Hello, this is the technology office; how can I help you?”

“Well, my school ordered this new software, and we can’t seem to make it work on our computers. Can you help?”

Sound familiar? If you’ve worked in technology in a school system within the last 15 years, you have probably experienced this exact situation.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many K-12 educational institutions are using remote or hybrid learning models. This growing digital footprint has created a prime opportunity for malicious actors to take advantage of districts’ increased reliance on digital tools. 

Seemingly overnight, the entire face of K-12 education completely shifted. Due to COVID-19, schools were forced to rethink how to deliver education in a new digital format. The majority of districts did not have a 1:1 program in place, meaning new devices had to be made available and issued to individual students without funding, training, or time for planning.

Sometimes complex problems require complex solutions. And sometimes those complex solutions cause even more complex problems. However, this cycle can be eliminated altogether by adhering to the one cardinal rule that we all learned in grade school: show your work!

2020 for K-12 districts was anything but standard— so how do we define the education model that occurred in this uncharted territory? 

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Jim Harold as Chief Executive Officer effective August 10, 2020. Jim has over twenty years of experience successfully building and growing businesses at organizations in the enterprise software and SaaS spaces, such as Accenture, PeopleSoft, Neustar, and Acxiom.

*Disclaimer: This article originally appeared on Forbes.

In recent years, mergers and acquisitions have seen a record number of transactions and continue to draw staggering figures. According to a recent IMAA report, 2018 saw about 49,000 global M&As with a combined enterprise value of $3.8 trillion. This year is projected to have similar or greater numbers.

According to a recent Gallup report regarding educational technology use in K-12, 65% of teachers say they use digital learning tools to teach every day. To provide their services, digital learning vendors require timely and up-to-date access to student, teacher, and class roster data. Unfortunately, schools haven’t changed their rostering processes to meet digital demands, i.e. they’re still manually compiling and uploading these rosters to third-party applications.