Spark

Less Waiting.

More Teaching.

What if you could resolve nearly half of your IT support tickets without lifting a finger?

With SPARK, we combine the power of AI with remote K-12 tech experts to resolve incoming tickets quickly. Together, SPARK can resolve up to 40% of your schools tickets and provide 100% documentation and context for every unsolved ticket to your onsite team, helping them skip the diagnostic stage and jump straight to the solution.

Meet Sparky
Our AI Triage Pup

Sparky is our AI-powered first responder, designed by our own Five Star technicians. Sparky’s here to save you time and help us serve more educators efficiently. If you ever want to talk to a real human, you can easily be connected directly to one of our friendly support staff during school hours.

Our K-12 Tech Experts
Live Virtual Support

Each Virtual Support Technician has one thing in common: they have real-world experience working as onsite technicians in K-12 schools. Our VSTs will help you troubleshoot issues, provide recommendations, or escalate the issue to your onsite technical team for resolution.

And don’t worry—no endless AI loops here!

If you ever want to talk to a real human, just type ‘human’ and you’ll be connected directly to one of our friendly support staff. We encourage you to give Sparky a try, but you’re always in control!

What is SPARK?

SPARK (formally vHD) is Five Star’s Support Platform for Assistance, Resolution & Knowledge. It brings together intelligent AI, guided self-help, and real-time expert support—all in one place. Powered by Five Star’s 20+ years of onsite IT experience, SPARK is the dedicated K-12 support system your educators and budget deserve.

When teachers or staff run into a technical issue, they can immediately begin chatting with Sparky, our virtual triage pup! Sparky loves helping people solve their problems, whether they are using a browser on a laptop or a mobile device. Sparky will help diagnose the issue and “fetch” whatever support is needed to best help the situation. This might be a help desk article, recommendations from similar support requests, or connecting educators with one of Five Star’s Virtual Support Technicians.

Watch Spark In Action

“One of the greatest joys I experience is helping teachers and students during stressful times, such as state testing or assessments. Deploying a missing app or accessibility feature in real-time, without causing classroom disruptions, has a significant positive impact. There's no waiting in line, and we pride ourselves on engaging with the user as quickly as possible to provide immediate assistance and valuable information for every issue.”

Jamie Tennis

Director of Technology, Five Star

Why do K-12 Schools Need SPARK?

To state it plainly, SPARK provides Tier 1 support to all of your educators and staff for roughly half the cost of an onsite technician. Read that again.

Even if they have the budget, schools will never be able to hire enough onsite personnel to cover all buildings, all the time. Combine that with shrinking budgets, an increase in technology in the classroom, a lack of qualified applicants, and staff turnover, SPARK can be the constant to weather any storm.

With a solution that saves your district money and provides immediate support to your educators, your existing onsite Technical Team can spend more time focusing on essential projects and tickets that require an in-person response.

“Our Virtual Support Specialists have worked on site and understand firsthand the challenges educators face daily. Understanding the urgency when technology fails, we work on 100% of the tickets that come through, providing crucial initial support and information that saves significant time for our onsite teams, allowing teachers to focus on teaching instead of troubleshooting techy problems.”

Tammy Surber

Senior Director of Onsite Services, Five Star

"The wait for assistance was less than 20 seconds. The tech was quick to reply and fixed the issue within minutes, which is very important to me when working on testing with 5 and 6 year olds."

Ginay B New Palestine Community Schools

"I’m not very tech savvy and did not want to ask for help, but my issue was quickly resolved. I won't be so intimidated to ask for help if needed again. Thank you!"

Julie YSaint John The Baptist School

"Thank you very much for the quick and effective response. It literally took under 3 minutes to completely resolve this issue."

Julie HNorth Putnam Community Schools

"He was very patient and understanding of my need to step away from my desk to help students with other things while we worked together to fix the problem."

Jackie RLawrenceburg Community School Corp

Stay ahead in the ever-evolving K-12 landscape! Subscribe to K-12 Trends & Insights Newsletter (Powered by insights from SPARK).

Each quarter, our team of K-12 tech experts will deliver actionable insights, highlighting key data, emerging support needs, partner updates, and deep dives into crucial topics like AI, trends in technical support, and more. Equip yourself with the knowledge you need to empower learning and navigate the future of K-12 education by subscribing now!

Want to learn more about SPARK?

Technicians do a phenomenal job, but they can only be in so many places simultaneously. The best tech might ordinarily resolve an issue in two hours. With SPARK, Five Star’s K-12 technology experts are down to a sub-one-minute response time.

Fill out the interest form, and one of our SPARK experts will be in touch.