Blog - Schoolbox

Keeping a School Community Connected When Everything Around It Is Changing

Monica Gracie — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:44:57 +0000

Written by Chris Barr, former Head of School and current Chief Commercial Officer at Schoolbox.

Having previously led a school community through periods of real disruption and uncertainty, I have a genuine appreciation for what many school leaders across the world are dealing with right now. Keeping a school community safe is one thing. Keeping people connected, informed and confident during difficult periods is just as important to keep an element of normality.

In times like these as teachers and leaders we learn very quickly that learning and teaching itself can continue. Schools are incredibly resilient organisations and teachers will always find a way to keep students moving forward. What becomes much harder to maintain is clarity and connection across the whole community. And when clarity starts to slip, everything else becomes more complicated than it needs to be.

Capability Doesn’t Always Create Clarity

Having led a school through extended disruption, such as political unrest and COVID, this was the part that proved the most difficult to manage. It wasn’t because the school lacked capability. Like most schools, we had strong systems in place and good people working incredibly hard.

What became clear very quickly was that having capability doesn’t necessarily guarantee clarity.

The challenge wasn’t the systems themselves, it was how those systems came together, or more accurately, how they didn’t. From inside the school it felt like everything was under control. We knew what we were doing, we were making decisions quickly and everyone was working hard to keep things moving.

But from the outside, to parents in particular, the experience wasn’t always as clear as we thought it was.

When the School Experience Feels Fragmented

This is something I see in many schools today, particularly across the international sector. There is no shortage of technology. Schools have a learning platform, a student information system and a growing collection of tools that support different parts of the school.

Individually these systems work well, but they are rarely designed to be experienced as one connected environment.

Communication is spread across multiple places, making it difficult to maintain clarity. While learning naturally looks different across subjects and year levels, the way information is shared often lacks consistency. Updates arrive through various channels, and important messages from across the school compete for attention, requiring parents to sift through multiple sources to stay informed.

As a leader, you know nothing is technically broken. But the overall experience no longer holds together in a simple way. It stops feeling like one clear, organised school.

I saw this play out in very familiar ways while leading through disruption. Parents were asking questions about things that had already been communicated. Students became unsure where they should be looking for their work. Staff were wasting time duplicating effort simply to make sure information was visible.

Over time that duplication starts to take a real toll, creating friction across the organisation. More effort is required to achieve the same outcome. Confidence becomes harder to build and sustain. And time that should be focused on teaching, learning and leadership gets redirected into managing the gaps between systems.

What Parents Actually Experience

One of the biggest lessons for me during that time was understanding what aspects parents actually judge when they experience a school.

Families don’t see the complexity behind the scenes. They don’t evaluate the effort being made by staff. They are simply experiencing the school from the outside and asking some very straightforward questions.

Do I understand what is happening?
Can I see what my child needs to do?
Does the school feel organised and in control?

When the answer to those questions is yes, confidence builds very quickly. Trust follows naturally and the school feels stable, even when conditions are changing around it.

When the experience feels fragmented, that confidence starts to erode. Not necessarily because the school is doing a poor job, but because it no longer feels clear.

In international school markets in particular, that perception matters. Families are making active choices about where their children are educated, and they are often comparing that experience in real time.

The Problem Schools Often Try to Solve

What I’ve noticed is that many schools, unintentionally, end up solving the wrong problem during periods of disruption.

The conversation tends to focus on access. Can we get learning online? Can we communicate with families? Do we have the right tools in place?

These are important questions, but they are internal measures of readiness. They describe what the school has available, not necessarily how the school is experienced by the community.

I remember this being one of the harder shifts for us as a leadership team. Internally we felt like we were moving quickly and making strong decisions. But that effort didn’t always translate into clarity for families.

From a parent’s perspective the question is much simpler: does this make sense?

Making the School Easier to Understand

A simple way to test this is to look at how many places, portals or platforms a parent needs to check each day to understand what is happening in the life of the school and their child. If the answer is several, then the school is effectively asking families to do the work of connecting those pieces together.

The schools that seem to navigate change most effectively are not necessarily the ones with the most technology. In many cases they are the ones that have made their school easier to understand from the outside.

When I look at schools doing this well, there is a fairly consistent pattern.

The difference isn’t that they keep adding more tools. In many cases it is the opposite. They focus on reducing the number of places families need to go to understand what matters.

Parents know exactly where to look. Learning, communication and key information come together in one place so families are not forced to piece things together across multiple systems.

Access is simple and consistent. Communication is timely and relevant. Learning is visible without needing explanation.

Just as importantly, these schools build strong habits across their staff. There is a shared approach to how things are communicated and presented so clarity is maintained day to day, rather than being recreated every time something changes.

In most cases this isn’t about replacing existing systems. Schools often already have capable platforms in place. The shift comes from thinking more deliberately about how those systems come together to create a coherent experience for students, staff and families.

A Simple Test for Leadership Teams

There is also a very simple way for leadership teams to sense-check this in their own school.

If parents need to check multiple places every day to understand what matters, the experience is probably fragmented.

If communication relies on repeated reminders rather than becoming routine, the process is not yet embedded.

And if understanding what is happening requires effort from families, confidence will always be more fragile than it needs to be.

I often encourage leadership teams to reflect on one simple question: if a parent engaged with your school today, would they immediately understand what matters, where to go, and what their child needs to do? Or would they need to piece it together themselves?

In periods of disruption that difference becomes highly visible. Clarity, consistency and connection are often what sustain confidence in a school community when everything else around it is uncertain.

Acknowledging the Work of School Communities

Finally, my thoughts are with the many school leaders, staff and families around the world currently navigating significant disruption. Leading a school community through moments like this requires extraordinary care, resilience and calm judgement. The work being done to keep students learning and communities connected should never be underestimated.

The post Keeping a School Community Connected When Everything Around It Is Changing appeared first on Schoolbox.

Meet Schoolbox at IB Global Mumbai 2026

Jack Chen — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 03:15:13 +0000

We’re excited to be attending the IB Global Conference in Mumbai and would love to connect with you there! If you’re exploring ways to better understand and support the whole student, we’d love to show you what’s possible with Schoolbox.

Join our Session at IB Global Mumbai!

Saturday 28 March
11:00am – 12:15pm
Discover how making the whole learner journey visible gives you a clearer, more actionable understanding of every student.

In this session you’ll learn about and share your experience in:

Effectively surfacing data and evidence of learning to empower teachers and support students.
Ways to make learner profiles more visible.
Providing the right information to teachers to enable more informed intervention in a timely manner.
Building strategies for stronger pastoral decision making and informed student development.

Meet your presenters

IB schools know that student success is shaped by more than academics alone.

Schoolbox brings everything together in one place, helping you see the full picture:

Academic progress.
Wellbeing and pastoral insight.
ATL skills and learner profile.
Engagement beyond the classroom.

One platform. Whole-school visibility. Schoolbox combines your LMS and community portal into a single connected experience, linking learning, wellbeing and student development across your school.

We’re looking forward to connecting with you in Mumbai! If you’re attending the conference, come and visit us at Booth S3 to see Schoolbox in action and meet the team.

The post Meet Schoolbox at IB Global Mumbai 2026 appeared first on Schoolbox.

Navigating Change? It Doesn’t Have to Be Stressful

Monica Gracie — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 05:08:01 +0000

For many educators, switching Learning Management Systems (LMS) can seem overwhelming. The concerns are real: potential disruptions to students, training requirements for staff, and the sheer scale of transitioning to a new system. But here’s the good news: changing systems doesn’t have to be a chaotic or stressful process. With the right support, clear guidance, and a phased approach, your school can transition seamlessly and start reaping the benefits of an LMS that truly serves your needs.

At Schoolbox, we’ve developed a tailored implementation process that makes your transition manageable and supportive. With over 20 years of experience, our team combines dedicated support, expert insights, and a collaborative approach to ensure you achieve success every step of the way.

"We know that changing systems can feel daunting, but our phased approach breaks down each step to make the journey easier for everyone involved. Our goal is to make this transition not just seamless, but rewarding for schools,"

Camille Alvarez

Professional Services Manager at Schoolbox

Support Every Step of the Way

The key to a smooth LMS transition is clear communication, reliable guidance, and experienced support. That’s why we assign a dedicated Education Consultant, who is a former educator, to each school—someone who coordinates all aspects of the transition and ensures that no one ever feels overwhelmed.

From technical setup to tailored training, our Education Consultants work alongside specialised Project Managers, who understand both the pace of the school environment and the complexities of your role.

"We don’t just hand over a system—we partner with schools to make the entire transition a success. Our team is here to ensure you’re confident in every aspect of your new LMS, from setup to daily use,"

Gary Lazaro

CST Program and Support Manager at Schoolbox

Building Staff Confidence

Moving to a new LMS involves new workflows and processes. That’s why our training programs are designed to meet your school’s specific needs. Our customised training sessions are engaging, accessible, and crafted to build familiarity and confidence across your team. Whether you’re teaching staff how to set up course materials, manage communications, or track student progress, our goal is to empower everyone to feel comfortable with the system.

But our support doesn’t end after initial training and implementation. We provide ongoing assistance throughout your school’s journey with Schoolbox, helping resolve issues, answer questions, and provide additional resources. This continuous support ensures a ongoing success, allowing schools to stay on track and focus on what matters most: delivering high-quality education.

Bringing the School Community on Board

A successful LMS transition involves school-wide involvement. Our change management approach engages all key stakeholders—from IT and Teaching & Learning teams to the Executive and Marketing teams. By involving everyone in the transition, we foster a unified approach that keeps the entire school community moving forward together.

Through structured engagement sessions, we build excitement and clarity around the capabilities of the LMS, we address concerns, and set clear goals for each department. This collaboration is essential for creating a positive, successful transition that brings the school closer together and aligns everyone with the strategic direction.

Simplifying Each Step of the Transition

Our phased implementation process is designed to be flexible and systematic, with each phase involving the right teams at the right time:

Why a Phased Approach is Worth the Effort

While switching to a new LMS is a significant decision, it’s also a tremendous opportunity. St Andrews Catholic College successfully went through the transition a few years ago, with the support of the Schoolbox team by their side.The phased, structured approach made it possible to manage the change smoothly, avoid disruptions, and build long-term benefits.

"The Schoolbox Professional Services Team are able to help guide schools through every aspect of their transformational change. Get them involved as early as you can and plan for their involvement in big steps of change,they have made all the difference to the success of our projects."

Kate Maccoll

St Andrews Catholic College

Ready to Explore a Seamless LMS Transition? Contact us today to start a conversation about how we can support your school’s journey to a better LMS.

The post Navigating Change? It Doesn’t Have to Be Stressful appeared first on Schoolbox.

Considering WAFs and how they can improve your security

Aaron Wiseman — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 23:40:05 +0000

What is a WAF?

A Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a security appliance for inspecting, logging and blocking unwanted traffic before it reaches a web-server. This is an evolution of the traditional network firewall in that it implements the ability to intercept HTTPS traffic so it can inspect and filter the requests being made to a web application.

What are WAFs used for?

As a firewall, WAFs provide all the same type of protections that a regular firewall provides, plus some additional ability to apply rulesets for specific HTTP request headers and payload contents.

Here are the common purposes that WAFs are used for:

Log requests to the application
Protect from Denial of Service (DOS) attacks by implementing rate limiting
Implement standard organisational security header settings like HSTS, Content-Security-Policy and X-Content-Type-Options
Ensure HTTPS termination implements the latest ciphers and security standards
Scan request for generic and generalised exploit payloads, for example OWASP ModSecurity List
Block traffic from certain geographic locations
Allow IT teams to block 0-day exploits before applications are patched

What about Cloudflare?

Many schools have been adopting Cloudflare as a WAF, but it needs to be recognised that Cloudflare goes well beyond a WAF and provides additional functionality that you wouldn’t find in a traditional firewall or reverse-proxy product.

In addition to the WAF capabilities, Cloudflare also offers:

Content Optimisation (Rocket Loader)
Content Distribution Network (CDN)
Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDOS) protection
Bot Detection
and much more.

These additional features are generally focused around performance for static websites and don’t provide any additional security. DDOS protection can be important in certain situations, but our support team would work with you and your upstream providers in the rare event of a DDOS attack. In terms of content optimisation, Schoolbox already implements best practices around content optimisation. We have found that Rocket Loader can cause JavaScript to break on Schoolbox due to the way it changes the page load order.

Can I use a WAF in front of Schoolbox?

Our standard recommendation is that you do not need a WAF product in front of Schoolbox. This is because Schoolbox is actively monitoring, updating and ensuring the highest possible security practices are being implemented by the product. The best practice with security is to implement it as close to the application itself. This allows the security practices to be application aware and specific to the needs and requirements of the application itself.

We recognise this requires a degree of trust in our ability to deliver a secure application. To help understand how we deliver this security we invite you to review our security measures, monitor traffic and conduct your own penetration tests. Specific to the features of the WAF this table should help identify where the Schoolbox application already provides existing security measures.

	Schoolbox	Standard Firewall	WAF	Notes
Logging requests to the application.				Schoolbox can provide logs to a remote server on request.
Protect from DOS attack by implementing rate limiting.				This requires quite fine control to avoid blocking regular user traffic.
Implement standard organisational security header settings like HSTS, Content-Security-Policy and X-Content-Type-Options.
Ensure HTTPS termination implements the latest ciphers, protocols and security standards.				We have found many WAFs do not implement the latest standards. The HTTPS standards provided by a WAF should be compared against our standards.
Scan request for generic and generalised exploit payloads.				Schoolbox implements in application protections against all standard OWASP attacks. As these rulesets are generic and not specific, they should be set to alert, rather than block to ensure valid requests are not impacted.
Block traffic from certain geographical locations.				Schoolbox utilises many 3rd party providers that integrate via APIs from around the world. Careful consideration should be given to ensure legitimate traffic is not blocked. Please review our subprocessor list for further details.
Allow IT teams to block 0-day exploits before applications are patched.				Schoolbox is committed to fixing and deploying security patches within 48 hours of reports.

But our security consultant, best practice guide or security sales person, says we must have a WAF to be secure

No single device will make an organisation secure. It requires all parties to accept responsibility for security and implement best practices across the board. Good security is implemented when all stakeholders work together and hold each other to account.

A WAF system is an important part of the security toolkit, but they generally do not provide security out of the box. If you must have a WAF in order to meet compliance requirements it is important to carefully consider what value you wish to extract from the device in the context of what Schoolbox already offers. We believe they are best utilised as a passive device that keeps an eye on what is happening but does not actively impact the service unreasonably.

If you must install, we would recommend the following best practices:

Initially setup WAF rulesets in ‘monitor’ mode
Alert rather than block traffic so that you can review for false positives and avoid breaking the application unexpectedly
Turn off automatically forwarding port 80 to 443 (Schoolbox will do this for you, but there are some reasons we still need port 80 traffic)
Do not block traffic from North America and Europe.
Ensure your WAF supports the latest security cyphers (TLS 1.2+), automated certificate rotations and HTTPv3
Ensure your WAF supports WebSocket connections
Disable additional features for content optimisation like ‘Rocket Loader’ and bot detection

We have installed our WAF and now Schoolbox is broken

Unfortunately this is an all too common outcome following the implementation of a WAF in front of Schoolbox. Here are some of the common symptoms that get reported to our support team but are caused by WAF appliances:

Symptom	Cause
Our notifications panel sits waiting to connect.	The WAF does not support WebSockets.
A page isn’t loading with no explanation.	The WAF is blocking certain page requests.
We attempt to save a record, but it just disappears.	The WAF is blocking certain page requests.
The page loads but we are unable to interact with anything.	The WAF is blocking Javascript or there is a content accelerator changing the way Javascript is being loaded.
Our SSL certificate has expired.	Port 80 has been blocked, or port 80 is being forwarded to 443.
We are unable to log into Help with SSO.	The WAF is blocking certain page requests related to oAuth or there is bot detection filtering.
Turnitin reports take a long time to appear.	The WAF is filtering traffic from other countries.
We are trying to use an LTI tool but it just doesn't work as expected.	The WAF is filtering traffic from other countries or is blocking requests related to oAuth.
We had a security audit completed but Schoolbox didn’t meet the minimum requirements.	The WAF does not support the latest HTTPS standards.

The impacts on the Schoolbox service following the implementation of a WAF can be varied and subtle. They are often difficult to detect and very hard to diagnose. Our support team is unable to support issues that are caused due to a WAF as they are not trained in WAF configuration. Once our support team has identified the issue is specific to your network environment, the responsibility for resolving the issue will rest with the school and the WAF vendor.

Conclusion

Schoolbox believes WAFs are an important security tool. In scenarios where applications are not adopting best practices, they are a great way to ensure that the organisation is protected. They also provide an excellent method for gaining oversight of traffic and monitoring for emerging threats.

However when WAFs are actively blocking traffic or degrading the service they can quickly become a huge burden on all involved. Negative impacts include increased service failure, increased support costs, and additional network complexity and surface area.

Our recommendation stands that Schoolbox will always do its best to uphold the highest security standards and not require a WAF to be installed in order to ensure your data is protected and safe. However if you wish to enable a WAF do so with our best practices in mind and the acknowledgement that you will need to support any connectivity issues related to Schoolbox.

Additional Reading:

Securing Schoolbox on-premise

Use of Web Application Firewalls

Giving Web Apps a Fighting Chance

The post Considering WAFs and how they can improve your security appeared first on Schoolbox.

How leaders are successfully navigating + managing change in their schools

Monica Gracie — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 06:44:31 +0000

In today’s world, change is constant and the education industry is not immune. Often we find that change is met with resistance, mainly due to a history of failed change initiatives and change fatigue.

As leaders, it’s important to go on a journey with our staff when implementing change, and managing change becomes an essential and important skill for us to master.

Here are some strategies that we have used in our schools to successfully manage, navigate, and implement change.

Help People Join the Dots

As leaders, it’s our job to help people see the bigger picture and understand how the change we’re proposing meets the schools current and future needs.

In our experience, we’ve found that by showing our staff some of the ways that the proposed change will make their lives better went a long way. Previously, we had a cumbersome way of taking attendance, so once we were able to highlight how implementing this new technology will make taking attendance much simpler, they were able to shift their mindset and get on board with the change.

Be Crystal Clear About Why

When proposing a change, it’s essential to be crystal clear about why you’re doing it, and that your staff know that it is not just change for the sake of change.

We’ve found that communicating what our long-term vision is, and how the change will impact both students and staff in the short term helped to alleviate anxiety, and give people a sense of purpose. This allowed them to see themselves as part of the change, instead of outside the change and being left behind.

Build Trust

The cultural element of change is often overlooked, and it is critical to successfully implementing change.

As leaders, if we say we are going to deliver ABC, and then deliver XYZ instead, we will erode away at the trust we have built with our team. If this is something that continues to happen, you will develop a culture, but it will be a culture of distrust. It is important to deliver on promises, and do what we say we’re going to do.

It is also important to recognise and honour work that has previously been done. If someone had previously done a bunch of work for a project that never got off the ground, instead of making them do it again for a slightly different version of the project, think about how you can leverage the existing work and assets.

Listen to the Edleaders podcast to hear more about the correlation between culture and leadership.

Break it Down

Big changes can be overwhelming, so it’s essential to break them down into a manageable road map. We have had success using and celebrating milestones.

By creating a plan that outlines what will happen in each term or semester, people can easily see the journey ahead. We have found this approach has helped people understand that change is a process and that they can take baby steps towards the bigger picture, it won’t all happen overnight. Early wins are important here and help create momentum for successful change.

Allocate Resources and Create Time

Correctly resourcing a project with appropriate human capital and time for staff to upskill will result in better outcomes.

What does not work is trying to squeeze a big change management project into someone’s existing role without adding additional resources.

We have found that allocating a project manager with specialised skills who can own the project, and ensuring that the project manager has the resources that they need to be able to do their job (including project sponsors, and the support of the schools executive team and Board) is critical to the overall success of the project.

Create Dedicated Design Teams

It is useful to have design teams that represent the diversity and differing perspectives of the key stakeholders within your school.

In a recent experience of introducing new technology into our school, we found that setting up a small design team of 6-8 people with 3 different types of people within the school worked really well to help minimise the disconnection.

The ‘haters’ – the ones that will be strongly opposed to the change will challenge your way of thinking, and will make you work harder in finding the best way forward
The champions of the change – the people who are already using the tech and love it
The neutrals – those that could be swayed either way and need to be convinced that this is a good (or bad) idea

Show Your Support

Change can be scary, so it’s crucial to show people that you’re there to support them. Strategies that have worked for us have been setting up help desks, creating resources with additional information (such as videos and slide decks), and just letting people know that we’re always here to help and support them through the transition.

May your next change project be one of success and great impact. If you want to listen to the full podcast access it here.

Luke Callier

Director of Discovery
St Hilda's Anglican School for Girls

Mat Irving

Deputy Head (Academics & Strategy)
Wesley College WA

The post How leaders are successfully navigating + managing change in their schools appeared first on Schoolbox.

Cloud Hosting a More Secure, Reliable Solution for Schools in an Increasingly Volatile Digital World

Aaron Wiseman — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 03:15:03 +0000

Recent high-profile data security breaches that resulted in the leaking of personal information online has served as a blunt reminder of the importance of data security.

While it’s true that data security has never been more critical than it is now, the reality is that it’s always been incredibly important. It has certainly always been central to everything we do here at Schoolbox.

That’s why more and more schools are increasingly turning to cloud hosting, both as a way to secure their data and as a more reliable and cost-effective solution.

With many years of experience offering schools cloud hosting for their LMS and community portals, Schoolbox is well placed to help your school realise the benefits of cloud.

With a more reliable experience and consistent access to the latest Schoolbox features, our cloud-hosted schools continue to enjoy the peace of mind when it comes to data security while also saving money on servers and maintenance.

So let’s unpack the benefits of switching your Schoolbox instance from on-premise to cloud hosting, and why more schools are moving to the cloud than ever before.

Schoolbox Cloud is fundamentally more secure

Schoolbox has always taken data security seriously, and we fully appreciate how important this is to schools.

With Schoolbox Cloud, we actively manage the patching and upgrading of servers to ensure you are always protected. Schoolbox also performs regular penetration testing to identify and fix any potential vulnerabilities.

With our dedicated team managing Schoolbox Cloud hosting, we are able to respond to any incident at a speed which simply cannot be achieved with on-premise instances.

In addition to our team actively monitoring and responding to any incidents should they occur, we also utilise industry-leading hosting platforms including Amazon Web Services (AWS). By using reputable and well-known service providers with operations in Australia, we’re able to further ensure your data remains secure and doesn’t leave the country.

Schoolbox Co-Founder and Chief Product Owner James Leckie outlines our commitment to data security in more detail below.

“Beyond being physically more secure, all cloud traffic is strictly restricted using enhanced network topology and firewalls to prevent unauthorised interception and movement of information beyond our infrastructure. We also closely monitor and act proactively against any detected threats to improve uptime and as an additional layer of security.”

Respecting schools’ data sovereignty

One thing that’s always been central to us at Schoolbox and have noticed is particularly important to schools during the move to cloud is that data sovereignty is incredibly important.

Too many cloud-based ed-tech products necessitate your data being locked away where you cannot control it. At Schoolbox, we believe that schools should retain ownership and controllability of data in their schools.

Watch James Leckie outline Schoolbox’s approach to data sovereignty and cloud hosting in the video below.

Budget and forecast more reliably

Enhanced security isn’t the only benefit of Schoolbox Cloud. By migrating to the cloud, schools also benefit by moving associated costs from capital to operational expenditure.

This frees up your IT team from having to forecast how much physical infrastructure (such as CPUs, storage space, etc.) they need, as Schoolbox Cloud provisions this automatically for optimal performance. It also means you no longer need to worry about the lifecycle of hardware.

The per student pricing model of cloud means schools can more easily budget for the future as well.

Watch Lyndon Calway and Trevor Ciminelli from the IT team at Chairo Christian School talk about the impact this has had in their school.

Learn more about Chairo’s move to Schoolbox Cloud in the full success story here.

Focus more on what’s important with Schoolbox running in the cloud

In addition to the benefits of increased reliability and security, cloud also frees up precious IT resources within your school.

By no longer having to actively manage on-premise servers, both budget and IT staff time can be reallocated to other projects within your school – such as better supporting staff, students and even parents to get the most out of learning technology to improve the teaching and learning experience.

“I believe our purpose here at Chairo in the IT team is to help our staff and parents and students and to get alongside them. We’re not here to maintain infrastructure, we’re here to serve and that’s our role here.” —Lyndon Calway, Head of ICT, Chairo Christian School.

Moving to the cloud is made simple with Schoolbox

Schoolbox has actively helped many schools transition from on-premise installations to cloud hosted. This has allowed us to streamline the process to minimise any disruption to your Schoolbox instance.

We work closely with your IT team and are able to assist them with transitioning to managing a new cloud-based instance. The good news is that your IT team requires no additional skills or training to manage Schoolbox in the cloud. If they’re currently managing an on-premise instance, they can manage it in the cloud.

To explore more about moving to Schoolbox Cloud, speak with your School Engagement Manager or contact us here.

As we regularly review our process and documentation to continue effectively supporting customer needs, we’ve created a Security Measures statement. This details our security framework, physical security, systems, data access and transmission and incident management.

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How top tier International Schools are transitioning to their ‘next phase’ of digitalisation

Leah Coghlan — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 06:41:34 +0000

With a sudden shift to remote learning, many schools across the world were caught off guard without adequate and integrated technology solutions to support the changing needs of their community.

Out of necessity schools became reactive, with many turning to solutions like Google Classroom as an ‘emergency remote learning response’.

International Education Solutions (IES), with the support of Schoolbox, iSams, and Digistorm, reached out to school leaders in International Schools to see how they were tracking.

From our research we identified:

38.2% of schools use multiple routes to communicate with parents, with 4.5% of schools admitting they still solely rely on email for communication.
31.8% of schools indicated using multiple solutions, having anywhere up to 4 LMS tools in use across the school.

With some of the key challenges being:

The number of different systems used across a school causes confusion for staff, students, and parents.
A lack of integration between systems meaning that data flow and user experience is disjointed and unintuitive.
The focus for technology is not on learning and teaching, making it challenging to implement changes in approach to learning.
Difficulty ensuring professional development and upskilling for teaching staff using the technology.

Access the full report

What are innovative groups doing to combat these challenges?

We sat down with Schoolbox CEO Grant van der Kruk to talk about how innovative International Schools are responding to the challenges.

“We are seeing two clear approaches to educational technology emerging across International Schools — those taking a strategic approach to technology solutions, and those assessing the multitude of tools individually.”

A Strategic Pathway

Many top tier International Schools are maturing rapidly in this space, with a common approach emerging; technology is now becoming a major focus in the strategic planning with a wider holistic aproach.

Many Schools and School Groups are making a conscious decision to employ a Director of Technology who has a seat on their School Executive Team. The Director of Technology has a mandate to review, investigate, and redesign the school’s digital learning environment. Technology is becoming a rapidly growing area of their strategies, better positioning schools to facilitate its overall strategic plan. This is executed in partnership with the other executive members, to help make longer term, structural decisions on which platforms and tools they should and should not adopt, and why.

Two Approaches to Technology Decision Making

Single Tool Evaluation

Not all schools have stopped to re-evaluate their needs after being forced to react during Covid, and instead of assessing technology holistically, these schools are replacing and evaluating individual tools in isolation.

The schools that are replacing tools with similar tools, or adopting tools to ‘plug gaps’ in their ecosystem, do not seem to have a strategic technology voice on their Executive Team. In this approach, decisions on adoption of technology platforms and tools are often the responsibility of educational leaders within each campus or section of a school.

Technology choices are mostly based on what they have used previously, with a reduced understanding of the impact to the wider ecosystem of technology. Unfortunately, this creates more change for Teachers, Students, and Parents.

Can you paint a picture of a consolidated system?

This is an interesting question, with the number of different tools available to schools it can be really difficult to evaluate the requirements. Educational leaders are trained in education, not in strategic building of technology ecosystems, data models, system integrations or user experience, so it is a big ask to put the responsibility of technology on a Principal’s shoulders.

When I discuss this with Principals and Ed Leaders they are often surprised at the opportunities that can be opened up with a consolidated system like Schoolbox. The simplest way to look at an Ed-Tech Stack is to think about the different functionality.

A platform like Schoolbox can support learning and teaching needs within a school, from traditional LMS functions like lesson planning, markbooks and assessment, to collaborative spaces, community engagement and even data analytics and wellbeing information. This allows the school to look at the whole student, tracking progression from their first year all the way through their schooling, in one platform.

Think about how many systems you have across all parts of the school that sit within the learning and teaching area — have you got a consistent approach leveraging the same systems from K–12? How many different tools do your teachers use each day?

Find out more about consolidating your ed-tech stack here.

The post How top tier International Schools are transitioning to their ‘next phase’ of digitalisation appeared first on Schoolbox.

Technology that supports parental engagement a ‘top priority’ for schools

James Leckie — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 04:03:42 +0000

Throughout extended periods of remote learning, many schools embraced real-time collaboration tools – such as Microsoft Teams or Google Classroom – as a way of communicating with students and conducting live online learning.

As schools make a return to the physical classroom, these systems have continued to play a role in facilitating learning collaboration with student groups. However, as parents return to the workplace, the connection between parents and students that necessitated parental engagement during remote learning has changed. Schools who rely on parents accessing their child’s Google classroom or Microsoft Teams account to engage in student learning directly, are finding parent engagement is not as effective.

Schools wanting to educate in partnership with parents are seeking ways to leverage momentum in technology adoption, looking for purpose built tools to engage parents in student learning.

Make it easier for parents to engage in their child’s learning

Parental engagement in student learning is key, with research showing a positive correlation between parent involvement and students’ learning outcomes. So, how can schools make it easier for parents to engage – without increasing administrative burden?

Sometimes the simplest solutions are right in front of us; for instance, imagine having one platform that parents could login to, that provides all of the relevant information in one location? It sounds so obvious, but what many schools are realising is that the multitude of tools being used across the school community are not making it easy for parents to access relevant information.

Schoolbox solves this by providing parents with their own identity and access permissions, through a unique parent dashboard. This gives parents visibility over their child’s learning progress, teacher feedback, and wellbeing information, as well as the ability to see school notices and news, plus student calendars and timetables.

Schools can control who can publish information to parent dashboards in the school roles and permissions, making it easier for schools to control the sharing of information. Most importantly, centralising all communication makes it easier for parents, students, and school staff to connect.

The power of learning data to engage + connect

Schools are increasingly looking at ways to harness the power of data and analytics, to assess student development, as well as keep parents informed of their child’s progression.

By providing continuous feedback and learning progression, parents can engage in their child’s learning, but for this to be effective, we need to ensure parents are able to easily access the information they need. Through the power and convenience of the Schoolbox LMS and Portal solution, parents are able to access real time updates on their child’s progress, including feedback on assessments, and wellbeing information.

Whilst Google Classroom + Microsoft Teams are effective live collaboration tools, they don’t collect data in a consistent way, meaning schools can’t easily share or communicate student achievements, showing student progression over time. However, Schoolbox provides educators with analytics and insights across the diverse attributes of assessment and student wellbeing, providing important insights into a student’s progress, as well as areas of support that may be required.

Keeping parents in the loop

Recognising the importance of timely communication and parental engagement, Schoolbox is configured to be device responsive and send push notifications to a parent’s mobile phone, or email account, when information becomes available. As parents are busily going about their day-to-day activities, Schoolbox will automatically send a notification via their mobile phone or via email, whenever something pertinent happens – e.g. a new piece of feedback has been given, a new assignment has been set, or a student hasn’t handed their work in on time. Providing even more convenience, these notifications can be configured within Schoolbox to go out automatically to notify parents – the teacher doesn’t have to do anything (saving them time and reducing administrative overheads).

This level of parental engagement is not achievable when using Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams, alone. However, with a platform such as Schoolbox, communication to parents can be personalised and centralised – providing access to a variety of resources and feedback, ensuring maximum visibility and convenience for parents.

Systems such as Microsoft Teams or the Google Apps for Education suite continue to provide value in today’s learning environment. By augmenting these technologies with Schoolbox, educators are given the features they need to be true leaders in education.

Bringing everything together in one place, the Schoolbox platform supports schools to achieve an enhanced learning experience that connects the entire school community, ensuring parents are active participants in their child’s learning.

To find out how your school can achieve a greater level of connection and engagement across the whole school community …request a Schoolbox demo, today.

The post Technology that supports parental engagement a ‘top priority’ for schools appeared first on Schoolbox.

Ready To Take your School’s Learning Management System to the Next Level?

James Leckie — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 23:46:16 +0000

Schools without a Learning Management System in 2020 were forced to scramble for technologies that would allow them to share learning materials and communicate remotely with students.

Needing to act quickly, many schools embraced real-time collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams or the Google Apps for Education suite to enable their remote learning environment.

While these solutions served an important, foundational role in enabling communication with students, leading educators recognise that these technologies on their own are not enough to fulfill their school’s needs.

Let’s investigate some of the reasons why schools are looking to extend their edtech and embracing an LMS like Schoolbox.

Delivering consistency, without the workload

With common assessment tasks and rubrics providing consistency in how students are evaluated, many schools are now seeking technology solutions which will easily support curriculum management and continuous feedback, within a common reporting and assessment framework.

Faculty collaboration allows for a streamlined approach, with the whole team working on assessments and learning resources, ensuring students receive the same learning experiences. While classroom-based tools have some capacity in terms of curriculum development, by using an LMS like Schoolbox, schools can easily deliver courses aligned with the curriculum, ensuring a level of quality and accountability of learning delivery across the school.

By aligning the course with the curriculum, Schoolbox allows schools to build courses and roll out those courses to all classes and teachers in a specific subject area. This allows for the delivery of a common assessment task, which is much harder when using a tool that is classroom based and doesn’t facilitate sharing across a cohort.

Schoolbox offers transparency over assessment delivery. Using the built in course and unit structures, a faculty head can facilitate the creation and completion of common assessment tasks, while viewing which assessments have been delivered in a class, which have been completed, and which have been given feedback.

The Schoolbox approach to course development ensures that at the beginning of each school year, teachers have their course already built and ready to be populated into their digital classroom. This benefits educators in the following ways:

Reduced duplication for teachers in setting up class materials and assessments
The ability to apply course structure to multiple classes, ensuring a consistent course delivery across all classes
The ability for educators to assess students across a cohort
Student experience and assessment are consistent, regardless of the teacher
A consistent parent experience can be achieved through continuous feedback and reporting, something which can’t be achieved with classroom-based tools alone.

Is continuous feedback and reporting important to your school?

From enhancing the student experience, to engaging parents in their child’s learning, there are major benefits to providing continuous feedback. When feedback on an assessment is delivered in real time and is task-specific, students are supported to learn and grow at their point of need. When it comes to parents, continuously receiving feedback on their child’s learning activities and progress is a powerful tool for increasing their engagement.

When the delivery of continuous feedback and reporting is supported by a Learning Management System, schools can ensure their staff provide consistent and timely feedback to students and their parents. With the Schoolbox LMS, parents and students are notified when new feedback is made available, with the option to send push notifications to a parent’s mobile phone, providing a convenient and effective way to engage parents in their child’s learning.

“Schoolbox ensures educators have a consistent, low effort, high quality continuous reporting solution that can be deployed across the whole school.”

Easily scope and sequence within an asynchronous learning environment

In addition to continuous assessment and reporting, a top priority for many schools is providing students with an asynchronous learning environment where learners have the flexibility to access reading, homework, and classes over a longer period of time.

Leaders in the synchronous learning space, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet have proven to be effective solutions for enabling live discussion or interaction. However, with most online learning happening in a student’s own time, educational leaders are now looking to extend beyond these technologies and offer students the opportunity to learn at their own pace.

By enhancing real-time collaboration tools, the Schoolbox platform enables self-directed learning, empowering students to learn at their own pace and consume learning materials while still aligning to scope and sequence as defined by the teacher.

Playing a particularly important role in a remote learning environment, synchronous real-time tools lack the ability to set a scope and sequence. However, thanks to its sophisticated learning management system, Schoolbox empowers educators with the ability to define the scope of work and the sequence in which the students can access course content.

Undoubtedly excellent facilitators of communication, these real-time collaboration tools are not enough on their own to deliver a consistent, asynchronous learning environment. However, when used in conjunction with Schoolbox, this forms a powerful combination to support communication, collaboration and learning in a remote learning environment.

By extending and enhancing the capability of these classroom-based tools, Schoolbox ensures educators have consistency across assessment + reporting. Furthermore, the progressive reporting functionality in Schoolbox supports parental engagement through the consistent collection of data over time across the three pillars of a student’s progress (attendance + assessment + wellbeing).

With a portal, intranet and LMS solution, the Schoolbox platform brings everything together to deliver a consistent approach to learning, leading to enhanced student performance. To enhance your school’s capability to deliver a more consistent approach to learning, book a Schoolbox demo today.

The post Ready To Take your School’s Learning Management System to the Next Level? appeared first on Schoolbox.