Smart Lockers Put Technical Devices into the Hands of Every Student

Education is increasingly digital and online. To support equity and access, many school districts and colleges are making technology available for students to check out. How do you protect those expensive assets and reduce management headaches? A smart locker system from iLockerz lets students check out laptops and tablets on demand using an ID card or smartphone credential.

Smart Lockers for Education... and Beyond 

iLockerz makes smart lockers systems with integrated charging ports to support secure checkout of expensive electronics such as laptops and tablets. The lockers protect valuable equipment from theft or misuse while ensuring that it remains available and fully charged for authorized users. In education, that means students can check out laptops and tablets anytime to complete assignments, conduct research and connect with online resources. When they are done, they simply place the device back in the locker, where it remains charged and ready for the next user.

With the iLockerz system, users can access the assets they need 24/7 without requiring help from an equipment manager. At the same time, organizations have a complete record of who accessed which piece of equipment and when. iLockerz have been used across industries to manage many different kinds of assets, such as scanners in the retail and logistics sector; medications, medical devices and tablets for healthcare; and radios and body cameras for Emergency Service teams.

To move into the education market, iLockerz needed a user authentication solution that would meet the needs of students, equipment managers and IT departments. It needed to be easy to use, easy to manage and update, and highly reliable and secure. At the same time, it had to be affordable to help them keep costs down for their sophisticated locker systems.

ELATEC TWN4 Slim: Security Meets Convenience

The ELATEC TWN4 Slim provided the perfect answer for iLockerz. The cost-effective and powerful readers support 60+ RFID technologies plus smartphone authentication using Bluetooth® Low Energy (BLE) or Near-Field Communication (NFC), so the locker systems will work with whatever technologies are already in place for the school or campus. That means students and faculty can use the ID card or smartphone app they already use for access to buildings, printers and other amenities to check out the technology they need. The TWN4 is highly reliable, ensuring fast and dependable access to essential technology. The system is easy to manage, too. The readers support fast configuration or reconfiguration over a network, so they can be easily updated if security or technology requirements change.

Smart lockers powered by the ELATEC TWN4 increase convenience, equity and access for students. iLockerz is now bringing the same system to end users in other industries. ELATEC TWN4 readers are now present in more than 50% of iLockerz installations, facilitating more than two million transactions each year with a bad read/failure rate of less than 0.1%. Now that’s smart!