School Information Systems Support ?

Please help me understand the functionality of your site relative to services like Edline. Our high school is considering signing up with Edline, but there's a concern about the amount of teacher time involved in order to get the site as optimal as possible - with information such as class assignments, class notes, grades (on individual assignments), attendance, calendar information, etc. available online.

There are many services similar to Edline (they all charge $, they all require integration with school information systems and most importantly they put the burden of adoption on already stretched school personnel). Edline is geared towards higher grades and so it makes sense for your school to look into it. Success is almost always directly correlated to teacher adoption.

In our case, we have a site that emphasizes the social aspects of the parent/school community - its a social network for families where we use the school as a connection point (and is free like other consumer sites). We do provide "point" tools that help with collaboration, information dissemination within the school community - adoption of which is more parent driven (things like sign-up sheets). Our current focus is on younger grades. Over time we will look into additional functionality but we will always try and make sure that adoption can be helped & influenced by increased parent involvement. We consider Edline to be an extension of the school information systems - basically they take internal school data and put it on the web. In many cases school districts will directly serve these needs - through their own technology initiatives (internally developed or through a service provider). We expect to co-exist with services like Edline rather than be a direct replacement.