Duarte Unified School District Fosters Student Engagement with Absolute Web Usage

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – May 20, 2020 — Absolute® (ABT.TO), the leader in Endpoint Resilience™, announced Duarte Unified School District selected Absolute’s Web Usage to enable them to stand up, monitor, manage and measure their distance learning programs amidst the COVID-19 outbreak. As a result, the Duarte IT team is delivering detailed insights into overall device and application usage and driving better learning outcomes.

Located in Los Angeles County, California, Duarte Unified School District (USD) serves the educational needs of 3,400 scholars at the elementary, K-8 and high school levels. The district-wide vision is to produce 21st Century Scholars by providing students with the knowledge, skills and inspiration to be successful in college, career and life. As technology is one of those critical skills, and a powerful learning tool, Duarte USD already had in place a robust one-to-one computing program.

Duarte students in grades 6-12 already had Chromebooks™ through the district’s one-to-one program, and IT could track and manage them remotely using the self-healing, two-way connection with Absolute Control. However, to fully stand up their Distance Learning program, they had to quickly get devices into the hands of K-5 students.

For insight on total device usage, what applications are being used, how often, and for how long, they rely on Absolute Web Usage. Absolute Web Usage allows Duarte USD to measure how engaged their scholars are with online curriculum. The reporting also provides detailed insights to enable Duarte to drive better learning outcomes by identifying valuable or underused learning resources – and to help build a budgetary plan for the future. The tool also highlights risky websites with potential Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) compliance violations, ensuring Duarte USD administrators can protect the safety of their students online.

“Absolute Web Usage has provided us with much needed insight into how our district utilizes both paid and free applications within our system,” said Eric Ramos, Chief Technology Officer, Duarte USD. “The weekly snapshots allow me to dive deeper and investigate websites that have high traffic as well as those websites that seem to have bypassed our web filter. With the addition of multiple fields pulled from the G Suite Admin, we can really drill down to the highest priorities at any given time, saving my team valuable time when investigating.”

Duarte USD also relies on a web filter; however, the data is tedious to get through for an IT staff that is already stretched too thin. In addition, websites often make it past the filter when they shouldn’t. Absolute Web Usage reports give IT insight into the details of what’s being viewed, so they can address potential issues from the start and demonstrate proof of compliance.

“Detailed Web Usage analytics shine a light on when and where time online is spent, contrasting learning tools with categories of potential distraction,” said Warren Young, Area Vice President of State, Local and Education at Absolute. “It is very rewarding to be able to support Duarte USD through these challenging times and beyond, and ensure administrators and educators have the data necessary to protect their students and make more informed decisions about improved learning outcomes.”