Belkin helps students and teachers gear up for the school year with a range of products designed to enhance connectivity and productivity with the latest accessories for laptops and tablets.

Christopher Wallingsford is one of about 50 different vendors in the Exhibit Hall during METC talking to teachers and school administrators about products that could make using technology easier.

“Belkin has been around for 35 years and we lead the industry in cables, but over the past 5 years or so, we started creating an educational portfolio.”

Belkin started an Education Group about 5 years ago and it all started with one of its engineers who went into a school district for a family event.

“He saw a large amount of iPads stacked up and being charged just with a regular old power strip,” Wallingsford said “They needed something to store and charge their iPads and he said I can make a better device for that and he did by making the Store and Charge.”

More schools like Pattonville High School are going 1:1 and the products Belkin makes help support the technology that the laptops and tablets provide.

All of Belkin products are inspired by a goal of PIP which are Person Inspired Products.

“That’s what we do, that’s what we do well,” Wallingsford said. “That’s why Belkin is a leader in the industry.”

One of their many computer cases available is called Air Protect and it’s called that because it suspends the device in the air while being protected on all sides.

“I have video of this being thrown off a rooftop of a 3-story building,” Wallingsford said. “The company got different cases and threw them off the roof and Belkin’s was the only one that didn’t have any damage after being thrown off several times.”

Pattonville High School junior Meekie Trieu worked in the iLearn Center and saw many computers come in that were damaged because they weren’t properly protected.

“This would be good to have because kids come in all the time who have their monitor and keyboards disattached,” she said. “This would protect their computers from being damaged.”

In the middle schools, all students are given an iPad for daily use. Belkin also offers a keyboard that is connected to that device by a lightning connector.

“When you put the keyboard on there it make sense,” he said. “It meets the standards for testing because it’s hard-wired connected.”

This is important because if the device was run by Bluetooth, it could be hacked during statewide testing.

“If your don’t have a hard-wired plug and the state comes in and audits you, those tests could be disallowed because of the risks of cheating.”

To check out more products made by Belkin, visit their website for more information.