| State: California | Number of Students: 811 |
| School Type: Independent School | Free and Reduced Lunch: N/A |
| Grade Level: PK-12 | English Language Learners: N/A |
School Context
This private school has been around for 50 years. They serve around 800 students from Northern California. They just recently launched their high school and they are seeing a lot of growth. They believe in educating the whole student and not measuring student success with traditional measures. They want their support structure to help their student in life and in their academic progress.
State of Technology
The school faculty share student successes through discussion and periodic evaluation. They believe that when students move from grade to grade that their academic histories should move with them. Since there are no traditional grades for preK-9th grade students, it is very important to capture student performance. They would like to replace their current system with technology developed for this particular purpose.
Currently, they use Google Drive to store student artifacts. They share these with stakeholders during a culmination night where students show physical and digital artifacts of what they have produced, demonstrating what they have learned. If they digitize and store all student work on the drive, it will become a storing issue and it is not user friendly.
Tech Needs & Requirements
The school would like to have a digital portfolio tool for students to collect, document and showcase their work they collect over the years. They would like the tool to provide several features. In the lower years, teachers will help students collect artifacts on behalf of the students to track progress. Teachers and students should be able to upload and create content. Students should be able to upload a variety of content (documents, images, video, etc.) into the portfolio. Students should be able to create and write content with in the tool. Writing captions and abstracts should be an aspect of this tool. Students should be able to share their portfolios with a variety of audiences, such as parents, employers, college admissions etc. All faculty should be able to see all student portfolios. There should be a collaboration feature or feedback loop so that teachers and students can communicate about the work. Student, teachers, andschool faculty are the primary audiences, but students should be able have access to their portfolios post graduation. Likewise, if there is a public facing aspect to the tool, it should be in controlled, protecting student privacy. Extras that would be really nice, is to have ability to document process as well as product.
Students should have a lot of control within the tool. They should be able to create and upload their own work with help and guidance from teachers and comment on their own work.
Teachers will use the portfolios as guides to plan instruction for the following years. Additionally teachers will guide students in the collecting and curating their academic artifacts.
The too must integrate with their SIS, open API. The tool must be able to keep accounts indefinitely or able to downloadable. Students should be able to share and publish their portfolios with a variety of audience, such as parents, employers, college admissions etc. The tool must report on usage data. The school provides Apple MacBooks, however the tool should be device agnostic. The school would like to be able to export information to share portfolios with alumni. They would like reports and data on usage. The tool should integrate with Homegrown SIS.