| State: California | Number of Students: 355 |
| School Type: Independent School | Free and Reduced Lunch: N/A |
| Grade Level: 9-12 | English Language Learners: 0.0% |
School Context
This is a young, Bay Area private school that serves around 350 students in grades 9-12. They are a college-prep school prioritizing student-centered learning, mindfulness, and touts a nexus of traditional and alternative courses (cross-curricular and aimed at developing skills relevant to students' lives and aspirations). They are interested in developing a more seamless blended-learning environment.
State of Technology
Teachers spend too much time on administrative tasks delivering content and curriculum rather than on instruction. Students are reaching frustration points having to track which program each teacher is using.
They are using an older learning management system and find it clunky. Teachers are linking their Google Apps through the current learning management system to distribute content. Methods vary. Some teachers are using DropBox to share files while others use Google Drive, and others use the learning management system.
Tech Needs & Requirements
An ideal solution allows teachers to create their own content and support it with 3rd party tools. They would like a centralized location for materials to share across teams. If the tool has an ability to show scope and sequence, or curriculum map, that would be a nice feature to have. Teachers should be able to create content and release certain parts at different times. Feedback The tool must support students to turn in work and allow teachers to apply a custom rubric to that work in order to provide feedback. Additionally, teachers should be able to assign a grade to work from students. If teachers could provide audio comments, that would be a nice feature as well.
If the tool supports a variety of formative assessment features, that would be nice. They would like to be able to have open/written-response assignments, and students would ideally be able to participate in self-reflection and peer-evaluation on projects.
They prefer the ability to assign grades to assignments and integrate grades from assessments into an SIS. Gradebook must be flexible weighing and scale should be adaptable at the teacher-level and the grade book should be downloadable as well.
Students participate in collaborative assignments and would like if the tool supported online grouping and peer editing. It should allow teachers to assign collaborative work. They would like to explore any options related to a portfolio/public place where students could display work. The student dashboard should also have a customizable calendar that teachers can add information to as well as allowing students to curate their own content within the calendar.
Students should have visibility to path and pace of curriculum. Students should be able to provide feedback to teachers and peers and be able to manipulate their calendars.
Teachers need to have the flexibility to create and use team-curated content. Teachers also need the ability to assign assignments and give students feedback. Teachers should have access to as much student data as possible and should also have control over path of student learning--but they are open to exploring more adaptive tools as well.
The tool must: store content, allowing teachers to curate that content and have access to team/grade level content; enable a feedback loop between teachers and students over assignments; support an API to transfer grading info between the system and SIS; integrate with Google Docs and 3rd party software; support single sign on with google; have a calendar-customizable by students; and manipulative data reports and data exporting is strongly preferred. The school provides 1:1 PC Laptops and an iMac lab. It would be nice to have pre-made reports, but it would be preferred to be able to manipulate the data within the tool. Exporting to CSV is preferred. The tool should link with SIS, integrate with Google and provide Single Sign On with Google.