SKOKIE, IL (April 22, 2019) Like an increasing amount of school districts nationwide, Niles Township High Schools is a 1:1 district, with every one of the district’s 4,200 students in possession of a district-provided laptop. What makes Niles unique is its fully integrated Student Technology Leader initiative. Student Technology Leaders at Niles are responsible for every phase of support and maintenance for student learning devices—from initial intake, to warranty services, even physical repairs.
The program is in its 9th year, established simultaneously with the first 1:1 device rollout at Niles. “We started this program with the idea that we wanted to involve the students, and build a leadership capacity for them in this program,”said Phil Lacey, Director of Instructional Technology at Niles Township. “What we found out is we ended up initially with a bunch of students who weren’t involved in any other programs outside of school other than this program. And as they’ve gone on, they’ve developed leadership, customer service skills, and technical services that they’ve been able to translate into jobs, either post-secondary, doing tech support in colleges, or even opening up their own companies.”
Incident IQ is the platform that Niles Township chose to support their educational technology. Incident IQ was built specifically for the K-12 environment, combining help ticketing and asset management into a single platform that allows students and staff to easily submit help requests.
“Incident IQ has made it a lot easier for our students to keep track of where different devices are in the queue. We’ve also been able to document our turnaround time, which has been a fantastic feather in our tech leader hats, as we’ve been able to say that we close out the vast majority of our tickets in one day.” said Phil Lacey.
Incident IQ also made the Student Technology Leader program affordable for Niles through their enrollment-based pricing. As opposed to ticketing systems that price by agent “seat”, the built for K-12 pricing meant Niles could involve as many students in the program as were interested without paying one penny more per year.
For districts looking to increase student participation in their district technology program, having the right tools can go a long way in making these initiatives a success. And with IT teams frequently tasked with supporting an increasing number of devices in the classroom, more helping hands behind the scenes can never be a bad thing.
About Incident IQ
More than a help desk, Incident IQ is a technology support platform that empowers school districts to manage all the hardware, software and systems that teaching and learning depend on. Incident IQ is built from the ground up for today’s K-12 with simple ticket submission for teachers and students, efficient workflows for support teams, and powerful analytics for leaders. Learn more at incidentiq.com.
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