Tablets sales are skyrocketing year-to-year, with an expected 175% growth in the market by by 2017 taking it from 11% market share (with desktop, laptop, smartphone) to 16%. IDC estimates that tablet shipments will surpass both PCs and laptops by 2014. At the college and university level, this shift in technology will increase the demand for digital textbooks and we can expect to see an even higher presence of tablets and smart devices on campus for a shift in the learning methodology.
While tablets and smart devices offer many opportunities for education, schools at all education levels face additional challenges with the integration of digital textbooks as well as monitoring of school-owned devices and the protection of students and devices, whether school-owned or not.
Tablets, iPads and smartphones are making students a target for theft; though campus crime figures are hard to come by, we know from news reports that device theft of all sort (laptop, tablet, smartphone) continue to dominate campus crimes. For universities and colleges, we suggest creating awareness campaigns on the protecting of smart devices, particularly smaller devices such as smartphones and tablets, which can be stolen and concealed so easily.
As part of your awareness campaign, we suggest making the following suggestions to students through websites, flyers, posters or emails:
If your device is stolen, never try to retrieve it yourself. Report the theft to the police or campus security.
For higher education organizations wanting to offer additional protection to campus-owned devices or to sponsor a discount for students on student-owned devices, Absolute Software offers solutions for endpoint security including the option to lock and delete data on missing devices and tracking and recovery solutions on others. Contact us to learn more.