A Guide to Effectively Tracking Digital Equipment
The number of tablets used in schools is increasing, but how can you prevent them from getting “lost”?
According to research by BESA (British Educational Suppliers Association), the number of schools using tablets is significantly rising, and they predict that by the end of the year, 258,000 tablets will be used in schools.
While using tablets clearly benefits students, this revolution can lead to a problem, for it is clear that the number of tablets that are temporarily going missing is growing at an alarming rate.
This is not to say that the “lost” machines are removed with criminal intent. In fact, it is only a tiny minority of machines that are actually stolen.
What happens is that a person in the school legitimately takes a tablet to use, but then subsequently, this specific tablet is hard to locate.
To help with this, most schools mark all their portable IT equipment.
There is a problem, though. Tablets are invariably made of either aluminium or hard plastic with a cured paint to make them hard and scratchproof. This makes putting identification marks on the equipment difficult because you simply can’t 'etch' anything into aluminium or hard plastics as they do not have a porous surface.
One way out of this dilemma is to use (Dantech's) aluminium trakaplates which, because of the thickness and strong adhesive that they use, are nearly impossible to remove. In fact, the only way you could get such an identification label off a machine would be to lever it off with a screwdriver – which is extremely hard to do. There are more details on these on our website.
An alternative approach is ID Silver Mark labels. These labels are precision-cut stencils which can include your school name. The labels are then painted with UV ink to show up should the label be removed. There’s more information on these on our website.
If you have tablets or similar objects of value in the school and you would like a way to identify them as school property, please do see our website for our complete range of solutions.
Alternatively, please call us on 01354 688 488 or email us sales@dantech.co.uk for free and unbiased help and advice.
Published on Tuesday 28th November 2023