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They’re out there…lurking in the shadows. Those unsightly IT rooms and closets with servers, routers, and switches sitting on desks, makeshift air handlers held together by duct tape, or the dreaded nest of cables that make troubleshooting a battle.
When Schneider Electric flagship’s brand APC created its K-12 Makeover Contest in the U.S. five years ago, our objective was to help schools clean up their IT gear and deliver on their promise of giving kids a high-quality, interactive learning experience.
We asked you to send pictures or video of problem IT areas that keep you from efficiently delivering on that promise. Boy, have we seen some bad IT rooms! So much so that it was sometimes tough to choose just one recipient to win $10,000 to add or refresh technology that would improve the educational experience.
K-12 Makeover Contest winners
Check out our deserving winners from the past few years below. In the meantime, we hope to see your school or district on this list soon!
Forest Hills School District – This Cincinnati, Ohio school district nominated its Turpin High School and their outdated server room after their IT budget was cut. The high school used its $10,000 prize to upgrade IT equipment to improve Internet connectivity and reliability. Now, they can better support students’ usage of tablets, laptops, and Chromebooks to communicate, collaborate and create.
St. Matthew School – This budget-constrained K-8 school in rural Wisconsin used its prize to replace 10-year-old computers, acquire several LCD monitors and a projector, purchase a cloud-enabled APC Smart-UPS with SmartConnect Battery Backup, and renew their security and threat protection service. The school now spends less time nursing computers and more time nurturing students, freeing them up to raise funds for new textbooks, STEM gear, or new programs.
New Haven Public Schools – Serving New Haven, Connecticut, this school district with more than 30,000 pre-K through 12 students, staff, and teachers struggled to fund the management and maintenance of its IT infrastructure distributed across 50+ buildings. With its prize, the district replaced two UPS units from 2003 with eight APC Smart-UPS systems with Network Cards, fulfilling their Network Services Supervisor’s 10-year-old wish list!
Extra credit: APC doubles down
In addition to donating prize money, we see so much potential in schools and districts like yours that we’ve felt compelled to throw in a bonus or two. For example, one school received a new wall-mount server rack to replace a home-built wooden rack, while a district received EcoStruxure IT software with Monitoring & Dispatch Services to remotely manage their UPS systems and minimize class downtime.
Now it’s time to raise the stakes and help you tackle those remote and hybrid learning challenges with even more IT help!
New year, bigger prize…enter now!
Thankfully, 2020 has come to a close. But challenges with remote and hybrid learning—such as better home connectivity and devices for students and new remote learning technologies—remain.
That’s why we’re excited to announce that the award for this year’s K-12 IT Makeover Contest has been raised to $25,000!
If your school can benefit from some IT modernization, take a moment to enter the contest. Any U.S. K-12 school—big or small, public or private—with any space that houses IT equipment may enter. All entries submitted between January 1 and October 31, 2021, will be eligible for consideration.
