I thought I’d share quickly my thoughts and experiences with EDSBY so far.
Why EDSBY?
Initially, for years, our school board was trying to find ‘the one’ – a gradebook for our secondary school that met our needs: web-based, user-friendly and intuitive and of course, had potential for data analysis.
After a test run and a few demos with EDSBY – sold.
It took many, many, many years to adopt our previous gradebook at the high school in a manageable, effective manner.
It took a couple of months with EDSBY.
But EDSBY is becoming more than just the gradebook solution.
In a hurry.
K-12 Vision
Moving beyond just assessment management (I’m working on them to change the name from gradebook to assessments) , EDSBY is an online platform that is made exactly for what K-12 needs. I foresee us implementing the following features within EDSBY over the next few years:
- reporting/report cards for K-12
- communicating with parents, students and staff (groups)
- including shared calendars
- student portfolios
- attendance
Internal Communications
Kind of a funny story; I was sitting with an elementary school during a PA day last month with the plan of showing them an overview of EDSBY later in the day. That plan quickly changed.
During the first fifteen minutes as I arrived, the staff were all sharing important dates verbally and – yes – they were each writing them down in their own notebooks!
The first thing I showed them that day was the staff room group, highlighting the shared calendar built into it.
You have no idea how many times they have thanked me for showing them that! 🙂
Evidence of Learning
We have been fortunate enough to have been part of EDSBY’s new evidence of learning tool test group. During the first week of school, we gathered all of our kindergarten teams together and spent about one hour showing them EDSBY, as well as the Evidence of Learning tool.
I honestly can’t do it any justice – hop over and check out their Evidence of Learning page by clicking here.
After about a month and a half of introducing this teachers, it’s been a huge success! Teachers are excitedly waiting for parents to have access (they will very soon!) so that they can share student learning back home.
Here’s a comment from our feedback so far:
EDBY’s Evidence tool is the only thing I tend to use. I find it easy to document, link expectations, and choose whether to take a picture or retrieve one from my photo library.
Reporting
After a successful test-run of reporting using EDSBY in the spring, the upcoming reporting period is happening next month, and kindergarten teachers are using EDSBY for progress reports this year!
We’re also hoping to have a few teachers in grades 1-8 use EDSBY for report cards in January. Stay tuned.
Final Thought (for now)
EDSBY has huge potential. As with any system-wide change to any process or organizational structure, there is a fear of leaving what’s comfortable and working. We’re bound to run into a hiccup or two as well along the way.
With goals in place and a vision for what can be possible – a ‘most-in-one‘ shop for many administrative processes, overcoming these fears and hiccups are inevitable for – what appears to be – the adoption of an amazing K-12 platform.
I will continue to share our EDSBY journey here both for my own reflecting as well to share any successes and failures – but there won’t be any, right Karen? 🙂 .