It goes without saying that we’re elated that the company had been selected to appear on the prestigious list of the most forward thinking and innovative companies from thousands of entrants.  Recognition as a 2013 BRW Fast Starter (number 90 in the rundown) reinforces the strength of our business model and provides recognition for everyone that works so hard at Alaress.

More importantly, our ability to fast track exponentially over the past 12 months must be attributed to our signature product Schoolbox which is the major driving force behind Alaress’ growth over recent years and our school partners that we cannot thank enough.

Now, just in case you’re not aware, Alaress is independently owned and was founded through the collaboration and subsequent merger of three entrepreneurial businesses in March 2009. “Whilst our company is relatively new, Schoolbox™ is the result of over 10 years hard work and investment to develop a unique solution for K-12 digital learning.

We now employ thirteen people, and experienced 120% growth in clients over the past 12 months, specifically for Schoolbox.

Alaress’ 2013 BRW Fast Starter achievement is testament to Schoolbox as the breakthrough technology for digital learning, specifically for K-12 schools to customise and personalise the teaching and learning experience for everyone,

Initially developed in 2002, Schoolbox officially re-branded in 2010 and now supports over 80,000 users in 57 campuses around Australia whilst expanding into the export market.  Schoolbox mobile was recognised as a finalist in the 2012 Australian Mobile Awards as one of the best of the Mobile Industry.

Schoolbox™ technology is the first of its kind to meet the specific need for the K-12 market providing live information to support the entire school community through one immersive destination.

The continued support of Schoolbox which now owns over 10% of the domestic market for its category made it possible to be included on the influential 2013 BRW Fast Starters listing. Many of Australia’s and New Zealand’s most prestigious independent schools have selected Schoolbox™ which is capturing existing market share from incumbent global competitors.

Every year we get a little ‘older and wiser’ and our experience grows. Recent transformations of our business have had positive effects for our customers that we consider as our partners. We’re challenging incumbent large international players and increasingly winning new business.

We are passionate about the future of Australia’s digital economy, in particular the digital engagement of our youth to collaborate, share information, exchange knowledge and connect openly online. Supported by a dynamic, dedicated team and leading edge technologies, this is just the first glimmer of Alaress and Schoolbox’s expected growth over the next 12 months.

The BRW Fast Starters 2013 edition recognises Australia’s fastest growing start – up businesses. In compiling each annual edition, BRW looks at trends across fast growing companies and includes profiles of many of the members. The list showcases growing businesses from across the economy and highlights strategies and tactics they use to be successful.

Check out our start-up and current photo’s:

Enjoying the journey 2013

A little older and wiser 2010

Boys starting out in 2006

Fi indicates in her article we come across many imposters claiming to be ‘digital experts’ who make promises and just don’t deliver.  She refers to Digital experts having the capability to build businesses online and this is what specifically resonated with me.

So now the drum roll…. I realised after reading this article that I am fortunate to work with a digital expert, James Leckie. Now James is not a blogger, podcaster, author, and does not meet the criteria of being 35-year-old-plus type. James is under 35 years of age yet meets all of Fi’s criteria detailed below.  James consistently surprises me with his understated ability to understand business and a digital business in context.  He’s especially expert when it comes to digital solutions for education, evident in Alaress’ flagship product, the Schoolbox learning management system. I encourage you to read Fi’s article, What makes someone a ‘digital expert’?, as it will help you the next time you’re introduced to a so called ‘Digital Expert’ to spot the imposter.

Register your place before Friday 3rd of May 2013, using discount code ALA10 to receive our sponsor discount.

We’re really excited to be participating in this event for our learning management system Schoolbox.

For anyone that doesn’t know, EduTECH is Australia’s largest education and technology event and in 2013 will provide exclusive access to some of Australia’s and the world’s best regarded education experts.

This is the ONLY event bringing together leaders from across the entire-life span of learning to discuss the high-order and strategic opportunities that technology offers for improving learning outcomes.

Choose between Five Congresses and an additional Five Masterclasses and hear from strategically sourced presenters from around the world.

Keynote Speakers Include:

• Sir Ken Robinson, Internationally recognised leader in the development of education, creativity and innovation (via live satellite link)
• Dan Pink, Author of Drive and Whole New Mind, Leading thinker on motivation, innovation & leadership
• Sal Khan, Founder, Khan Academy (via live satellite link)
• Stephen Heppell, Europe’s leading online education expert
• Alan November, International leader in educational technology
• Ewan McIntosh, Founder & CEO, NoTosh
• Karen Cator, Director- Office of Educational Technology, US Government
• Dr Gary Stager, Executive Director, The Constructivist Consortium
• Scott Koslosky, Futurist

More details on the conference and session topics
Date: 3rd- 5th June 2013
Venue: Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre

Register your spot for this event now and don’t forget the discount code ALA10.

We hope to see you there!

Aside from our client’s suggestion to promote Schoolbox to a broader market, there’s loads of benefits to entering the awards – as a winner you can:

• Extract maximum marketing advantage. After all, there’s nothing better than a third party endorsement that says “You’re the best and outstanding in your field”.
• Leverage PR and let your clients, colleagues, competitors, and the media know that you are an award-winning company and industry leader.  We all know that winning an award is a newsworthy event and a catalyst for publicity and new business.
• Enjoy the feeling of pride, honor and recognition that comes along with winning an award.
• Better support your clients as winning supports future growth and product enhancement.

Benefits aside, seeking recognition is a fundamental human endeavour and therefore it is natural to seek recognition in one form or another – especially by winning an award.

So it’s not surprising that the last few weeks have been somewhat challenging for Alaress as we ventured into uncharted territory to enter Schoolbox™ for the prestigious 2013 iAwards in the education category.

The Education iAward recognizes the most successful and innovative application of ICT to the delivery of education and training. Entering this type of award requires focus, dedication to getting the job done and teamwork. Whilst under pressure to finalise the submission and engage the Alaress team to help me along the journey my encouraging mantra has been – “The exercise of entering awards is a great litmus test for the business and presents an ideal opportunity to strengthen our Schoolbox brand”.

On this journey we discovered that entering an award provides great insight into the business’s strengths, weaknesses and insight to build a stronger organisation. Selection criteria include: uniqueness, marketability, functionality & features, quality and application of technology.

We also discovered that our clients were eager to help us in the process and are extremely grateful for the support from our client’s that resulted in:

• A great video showing how The Cathedral School in Townsville uses Schoolbox.
• Wonderful photo’s of Schoolbox in action from Saint Kentigern Schools (link to case study) in New Zealand, and
• Amazing examples of point of sale for parents who use Schoolbox from Moriah College.

If we win the award, we know I will be a significant milestone for Schoolbox and its recognition in the education market. If we don’t the effort required to prepare and submit the award, in our view has been well worthwhile and a terrific experience.

We have our fingers crossed so keep checking our blog for updates.

The event is being held at Melbourne Grammar School a valued client of Alaress who use our learning management system Schoolbox.  Given that the conference is designed to:

• Capture the essence of good teaching and learning
• Acknowledging that ICT is pivotal to future thinking and directions, and that
• People are the key

we’re looking forward to playing an important role on what already is shaping up to be a fantastic event.

Alaress Directors, James Leckie and Sean Richards will be presenting ‘Engaging Digital Natives – Their Devices, Their Web, Their Way’
We’re of the opinion that education technology is at its best when it facilitates communication, engagement, interaction, learning and understanding.

Balancing technology needs with academic goals place demands on teachers that can often be at odds with each other.

Our focus for the presentation will be on today’s youth who are living in a digital world surrounded by devices, technology, online communities and are socially engaged though the web.

The emergence of these digital natives is forcing traditional teaching methods/technology to move so rapidly, educators can be confused by how best to leverage digital learning to deliver an engaging learning experience through technology.

James and Sean can’t wait to introduce how digital natives learn, how BYOD can work and how to style teaching and use technology in the classroom to fit with the mobile, social and an online world that students live in.

Aside from the presentation at the ICTEV Conference, we will be featuring the latest 12.5 version of Schoolbox for the K-12 online learning environment including our mobile version. If you are attending we will be presenting on Saturday 25th May 2012 at Melbourne Grammar School, Wadhurst Campus – 1 Domain Road, Melbourne – Room 5 Upstairs or visit us on the exhibitor floor

Software needs to constantly evolve both on the surface and behind the scenes. As part of version 13 we will be undertaking a journey to introduce an improved framework to the core of the Schoolbox system. We spent the last 12 months planning how best to approach a framework rebuild and have cemented a staged action plan that will see the system moved to a future proof framework over a three year period.

Improved WebDav

In addition to the new online document editor, WebDav will be extended into the due work system. This will enable teachers to access submission boxes via their file browser, offering an alternative to downloading and uploading submitted work in order to return it to students.

Resource browser

The resource browser will be upgraded to add a new 3rd panel when browsing files. This will enable us to remove the right click context menu and add in the ability to preview files within the new panel.

Video Transcoding

This is effectively Youtube for your school. Users will be able to upload videos to Schoolbox and automatically convert into streaming flash videos for use on homepages and within learning content. This will enable schools to have their own secure video storage facility tightly integrated with Schoolbox.

Calendar and eDiary

We will improve the existing Schoolbox calendar system with a range of user interface updates and new functionality, so that it encourages students to use it day-to-day as an online diary or eDiary. Through an improved user experience and some new functionality such as the addition of user managed “tasks”, students will be able to use the Schoolbox calendar to plan their week, tasks and school related notes and activities within Schoolbox.

Some of the planned updates include:

• Update Calendar week view to detail days horizontally and time vertically.
• Update Calendar month view
• Ability for user to create an event by clicking on the day area which they wish to create it on
• Add in the ability for users to add “tasks” to their calendar
• Ability to drag and drop events and tasks
• The ability for users to subscribe to all their calendar feeds from external calendar systems (e.g. Google Calendar) enabling them to use their Schoolbox calendar from their preferred software and devices.

Mobile

With the release of Schoolbox mobile in version 12.5, the mobile module will now continue to be developed to improve stability and include more tailoring for different users. We will also bring more content through from homepages on to the mobile platform.

Other items in our pipeline

We have so many idea’s planned for Schoolbox and whilst they might not make it into version 13 we thought you may like to see what lies ahead.

Online document editor
Online document editors such as Google Docs provide collaborative editing in real-time of documents online. This technology will be utilised in the classroom as a tool for students to collaborate and by teachers to speed up grading and returning marked work to students.

Our initial plan is to integrate an online document editor into two core areas of Schoolbox.

1. Homepages: Enabling students and teachers to collaborate on documents in and out of the classroom right within Schoolbox.
2. Due Work: Enabling students to submit an online document and teachers to seamlessly open, mark-up, comment, grade and submit work back to students without the need to download and re-upload submitted work.

With the increasing use of tablets and mobiles in education, we hope that we can create a new workflow for teachers to quickly and easily grade submitted work anywhere, anytime.

Lesson Planner
We listened to the feedback from teachers suggesting that designing, storing and linking your lessons and curriculum into class pages could be simplified and streamlined. That’s why we have been working on a lesson planner that should assist teachers with this process and encouraging best practice for building and storing persistent learning materials.

ePortfolio
The ePortfolio module will be upgraded to include a range of new features that aim to improve the usefulness of ePortfolio’s as an area for students to showcase their work and achievements throughout their school life and beyond.

Upgrades will include:

• A new showcased work interface with support for reflection, commenting from teachers and students
• Improving the user interfaces to support new features
• Integration with the due work module
• The addition of a personal diary function
• Ability to add create and organise pages within the ePortfolio

Mobile
Mobile is a big part of the future Schoolbox and future updates to mobile aim to further enable and encourage its use in the classroom. These include:

• Making Survery/Quiz accessible via mobile enabling students to complete a quiz from their mobile class pages
• Enabling teachers to post due work and news from mobile
• Enabling students to comment on collaborative components such as forums, wikis and blogs from mobile

Renewed User Interface (a.k.a Babylon)
The Schoolbox user interface will receive a new look and feel in order to improve the usability throughout a number of core areas in the system.

We will be focussing on:

• User experience and revisiting the existing information architecture
• User interactions through increased presence of images, icons and interface user feedback
• Maximising the screen space available to cater for smaller resolutions
• Improving the layout of forms throughout the system
• Reducing the number of clicks required to access priority information

It’s going to be a big year for Schoolbox

With all of this planned and much more, we hope you are excited as we are to see Schoolbox come to life for your school. We would love to know what you think about these planned updates and the direction we are heading so please let us know in the comments below.

We’ve been so busy rolling out Schoolbox 12.5 and Schoolbox mobile that we haven’t had time to share our great news that Schoolbox mobile has been recognised as a finalist in the 2012 Australian Mobile Awards (Mobies).

The Mobies is an awards program recognising the best of the Australian Mobile Industry. Along with household names including Qantas, Renault, JB Hi-Fi, Commonwealth Bank, CFA, Australia Post, the Victorian Department of Health and the NSW Food Authority, Schoolbox was selected as a finalist.

We competed in the Education category which recognises education themed apps across all education sectors. The Mobies recognise leading mobile achievements through a broad selection of categories including:

- Best device over multiple operating system
- Best applications for Education and Innovation in the Mobile Industry, and
- Best Audience Migration to Mobile Technology.

To have been selected as a finalist for outstanding achievement across all aspects of the Australian mobile landscape and at the cutting edge of the industry makes us very proud.

Read more about our Schoolbox mobile project.

So when most people are trying to think of what they want, they default to what they’ve seen and liked before. I attest this fact to the phenomenon of Flipbooks, amongst other gimmicks. Without actually analysing what they are, they seem “cool.” People notice and remember them. My problem with this, is “cool” doesn’t mean good.

Though I’ve written this as a response to Flipbooks, I think these points apply to many such eye-catching gimmickry, and provide a set of questions anyone should consider before selecting the use of any technology on their webpage.

Usability

From my perspective, the single biggest issue with Flipbooks is they are not easy nor pleasant to use. Reading documents in Flipbooks typically requires zooming in, panning across the lines and down the page, zooming out, waiting for the page turn animation to end, so one can repeat. It is considerably more arduous a task than reading a webpage, PDF, Word document, or any other digital text medium.

The first time you turn a page the animation may seem cool, but the novelty wears off quickly, and then you’re just left with a difficult to read document, which will result in less people reading it. Needless to say, this is not ideal for advertising your services.

Accessibility

Flipbooks typically require a combination of Flash and Javascript, with no fallback. This makes them completely inaccessible on mobile devices, or to visitors using assistive technology (such as screen readers for those with impaired vision).

Since mobile traffic accounts for between 6-10%, any content in Flipbooks would be unreachable to a large segment of your audience. These users will blame you for failing to deliver content rather than themselves for attempting to access it in a manner you decided not to support, leading to user frustration.

Visibility

HTML and PDF’s can be indexed by search engines, which means that they can appear in search listings. Flipbooks cannot be indexed. This means any content in Flipbooks will not affect you search visibility.

The more content search engines can index, the more relevant your website becomes, and the higher you will appear in listings. If you have content, it doesn’t seem wise not to use it to promote yourself.

Size

To create a Flipbook, each page in the original PDF must be converted into a low and high resolution JPEG. These additional files means they are not only slower to load, but more expensive in terms of bandwidth and hosting.

If you use a lot of Flipbooks, it will have a impact on your hosting fees.

If not, then what?

As you may have gathered, I am not a huge fan of the technology, but there are factors beyond personal taste that should be considered before opting to use something that would adversely affect an end solution, and I personally feel the above cons (4) outweigh the pros (0) in this instance.

The alternative would be to simply provide PDF’s as downloadable PDF’s. Whilst not as ideal a user experience as providing pure HTML pages, I can assure you that Adobe make a much better PDF reader than any Flipbook, with none of the above drawbacks.

A second alternative would be to transpose the first page or so of lengthy documents into a HTML page, providing a download link to “read more.”

And when would I use a Flipbook? I had originally thought catalogues, where you need only zoom once or twice, and can flip through relatively unhindered, where SEO might not be such an issue, but still presents the accessibility issues. The only other instance (suggested by Steve) would be for artistic purposes, as a tool for visually laying out pages as a spread, rather than a scrolling stream. But this would still only be for personal or internal use, whereas the web is for publishing to the world.

Questions that need answers

Again, I know I’ve used Flipbooks as the chief example in this post, but before picking any gimmicky eye-catcher, ask yourself some questions.

1. Will this affect usability? Ask yourself, does this feature make it harder to use? There are plenty of ways to deliver exciting engaging content without making the content harder to use, so keep looking.
2. Will this affect accessibility? Ask yourself, does this feature have a fallback for mobile or text devices? Even if you cannot deliver your full experience to all audiences, there is no excuse in my book for denying access to specific audiences.
3. Will this affect SEO? Ask yourself, if you have interesting, well written, relevant content, do you want to pull the wool over Google’s eyes, and pretend you don’t? If this is an internal product, this may not be a factor.
4. Will this add bulk/cost to my site? Ask yourself, is this scalable? Are there any costs associated with this feature, and is your content so interesting users will wait indefinitely for it to load?

Bonus round

Now. Take a minute (or 10, or however long it takes), to read this article again, and tell me which was easier — the above HTML, or the below Flipbook?

We had a great turn out with over 40 people from 12 schools flying from all over Australia and New Zealand.  Before the event even started people were engaged in great discussions about Schoolbox and the future of technology in education.

Dr Nicole Archard Dean of Academic Studies at Wenona School opened the Meetup welcoming everyone. The first session was a presentation by Mr Colin McClure, ICT Integrator at Wenona demonstrating how the school uses the system and the features they love. Colin captured the system beautifully by explaining that ‘it just works’.

Teachers from the Junior School and Senior School followed and presented how they use the system in very different ways.  Ms Helen Dallas showed how she has built portfolio’s for students and linked them into the class page and allowed students to interact and create their own spaces.  It was great to see the rules being broken and teachers using Schoolbox outside the square.  It demonstrated to us that Schoolbox is more than just a tool it is also a platform with which whole strategies can be built.

A highlight was certainly hearing from Dr Louise Webb and how integral Schoolbox has become in her daily routine.  She gave a great presentation on the tools she uses at a Senior level, these included the online submission system and the assessments.  Dr Webb demonstrated a technique that she uses to quickly test students at the end of the class to ensure they have understood and comprehended the class.

After lunch I presented a discussion on the past, present and future for Schoolbox. For those who could not attend or you would like to share this content, parts of the presentation have been uploaded to our new Schoolbox YouTube channel.

• Schoolbox 12.0 Recap
• Schoolbox 12.5 Feature Announcements
• Schoolbox 13.0 and Beyond

The final session at the end of the day was a workshop to find out from all of the schools in attendance what features they thought were most important for future development of Schoolbox.  The recommendations gathered are still being reviewed but the top 3 items were:

• Lesson Planning
• Curriculum Development
• Mobile (specifically iPads)

These will no doubt feature high on our list for development next year. We have already started work on many of the ideas and it was great to have our vision reinforced and supported by our clients.

The entire team at Alaress would like to thank all those who attended and participated in the Meetup.  We would also like to specifically thank Wenona School and their staff Dr Nicole Archard, Mr Colin McClure, Ms Helen Dallas and Dr Louise Webb for their great presentations and sharing with us and the rest of the Schoolbox community how they are using Schoolbox. We are all looking forward to the next Meetup in 2013.