A lesson in light
Cleaning surfaces and equipment can impact on teaching time
The last decade has seen an increasing trend towards the use of shared electronics in schools.
Whether these are headphones in language labs, keyboards and mice in IT rooms, or most recently, tablets and laptops, these devices have added significant educational benefits and enhanced the learning experience.
Even before the pandemic, keeping these shared devices clean has been an issue. Children want to interact with the devices, will touch all the surfaces before they are worn or touched by another pupil.
Anyone who has children at school or teaches, knows that infectious diseases such as colds and noroviruses spread through schools at pace. Preventing the chance of cross-infection reduces absence through illness and of course the discomfort even common diseases can cause.
Enter Covid-19, and reducing the threat of cross-infection becomes essential. A single Covid infection can cause huge disruption, with whole classes sent into quarantine, or worse, serious illness for staff and vulnerable children.
The answer has often been to stop using equipment and in doing so reducing the educational benefits of these devices. The alternative has been to manually clean equipment with chemical sprays or wipes.
Chemical wipes have several disadvantages: they are costly to buy; they are usually not recyclable and add to the waste system; they are not particularly effective in disinfecting (for more information see our own study); contain hazardous chemicals and perhaps most importantly for busy classrooms, they take up considerable time, diverting teaching staff’s efforts away from the pupils and into sometimes hours of weekly cleaning. The same is true of surfaces such as desks and chairs.
UV-C disinfection is a different way to disinfect: safe, much more effective, and very fast.
Using UV-C cabinets to disinfect shared equipment means that multiple tablets, headphones, keyboards, etc. can be made safe in just two minutes with 99.99% destruction of viruses, bacteria, protozoans and spores. Uvisan UV-C cabinets have the additional benefit of in-cabinet charging and secure locking doors.
Schools that have adopted the Uvisan cabinets have found they become an essential and reliable part of their Covid safe protocols.
“Ahead of the return to school in September, Hazelwood School purchased a Uvisan UV-C unit so that the bank of iPads, used by its youngest learners, could be readily charged and effectively sanitised as they passed between class bubbles. The unit has been a godsend; protecting the pupils’ health and well-being whilst allowing the same level of digital learning to remain within their timetable. The school avoided the need to buy more costly tablets. The unit is simple to use and has been deployed for the equally important task of sanitising headsets too. The levels of service and communication we received were impeccable meaning that the unit’s delivery was one thing of surety in these uncertain times.”
Nick Tappin - Bursar - Hazelwood School
Uvisan can protect surfaces too. The Cleanroom whole-room disinfection system can sanitise whole classrooms automatically in just ten minutes with 100% safety and no chance that pupils or staff can be exposed to the UV light.
