Syntonic, a sponsored data and connected services provider, today launched nationwide connected education services for K-12 students. The new Syntonic On-Ramp Education Services integrates district and school managed educational content, nationwide AT&T 4G connectivity, and mobile devices to provide students with equal access to online educational resources and learning tools.
The Highline Public Schools in Washington state, which serves nearly 19,000 K-12 students in 39 schools immediately south of Seattle, is the first school district in the country to deploy Syntonic On-Ramp Education Services. Beginning today, Syntonic will provide more than 1,000 Highline Public School students with mobile broadband access to online class assignments, learning tools and other digital educational content using HP Chromebooks with embedded 4G radios.
Highline Public Schools serves a community of more than 140,000 residents and is rolling out the new Syntonic services using sponsored data as a component of a 1:1 program intended to ensure that over 1,000 Highline Public School students have full and equal access to online educational resources. Currently, more than 50 percent of the Highline students participating in this On-Ramp Education Services deployment lack dedicated Internet connectivity at home, preventing them from accessing online educational resources and adaptive learning tools when they’re away from school.
“Off-campus connectivity for Highline students is essential for them to achieve the district's scholastic achievement goals as outlined by our community and in our strategic plan,” said Mark Finstrom, CTO for the Highline School District. “The Syntonic connected education service solves that problem and gives Highline Public Schools an efficient, flexible and reliable technology platform to deliver and manage online education resources.”
Syntonic On-Ramp Education Services Features include integration into existing IT workflows, accelerating integration and minimizing costs. A browser-based administrative portal allows users to manage access policies and student usage analytics. Access policies can include time-of-day, geolocation, and usage, managed by school, grade level, classroom, and individual student. Cloud-based policy enforcement supporting any student device without requiring modification to the computing hardware, application, or network configuration.
