As schools and districts examine options for online file storage and collaboration tools for their students, one key concern when deciding which product to select is how frequently it will adjust to changes in classes and enrollment.
School Web Lockers, K-12 cloud-based file storage and sharing platform, has partnered with Pearson's student information system, PowerSchool, to communicate these population and schedule changes regularly. The process is created through PowerSchool's existing autosend feature.
School Web Lockers will set up an FTP site where the school or district can automatically submit data extracts from PowerSchool that are imported on a regular basis. Changes made in PowerSchool such as adds and drops will then be reflected in School Web Lockers as early as that evening.
With the School Web Lockers-PowerSchool partnership, educators gain a way to coordinate both major and minor adjustments. IT departments are no longer required to provide School Web Lockers with updated data extracts when students change classes at a new semester or during the district's drop period. Teachers also save time without having to manually maintain their classes by adding or deleting a student in between updated imports. Both platforms work together to communicate this information promptly and consistently.
"Now PowerSchool customers spend 10 minutes upfront setting up the autosend facility and never have to worry about the import process again," says Kelly Smith, manager of sales and marketing for School Web Lockers."School Web Lockers schedules the imports to run a few times a week or more depending on the size of the district, and when changes are made in PowerSchool, they are reflected in School Web Lockers without any administration on the customer's end."
School Web Lockers is a paperless homework system offering password-protected access to files from any Internet-connected device, including the iPad(TM) at any time.
Each student, teacher and administrator is provided with their own personal folder, or Web Locker, with unlimited storage space to keep their school-related documents. Users also have access to homework drop boxes, E-Portfolios, message boards, blogs, calendars and folders separated by class to facilitate grading. The recently-introduced DirectSave feature also allows users to save files directly to their locker by means of WebDAV technology.
