Clearly define your needs, get creative and speak up to your vendor says Greater Essex County District School Board, which has deployed Edsby to its 35,000 students and their parents

Customization was key to the Greater Essex County District School Board (GECDSB) as it implemented the Edsby learning and analytics platform district-wide.

In an article published by edtech analysts Getting Smart, GECDSB IT Supervisor Shelley Hudson reflects on three key steps the district followed in modernizing its digital infrastructure.

Originally the district intended to replace its legacy student information system (SIS), according to Hudson, in an effort to give new capabilities to its teaching staff, students and parents. But then it found it didn’t need to:

After reviewing the responses to our request for information, we ultimately chose an alternative solution to an SIS. Rather than completely replacing our SIS, we decided to have Edsby, a learning platform that focuses on parent, student and teacher engagement, wrap around our current SIS to provide desired functionalities.

Being able to embrace existing systems, no matter how dated, was key to the district’s choice. And ultimately the customizability of the platform was a large factor as well:

Even though a lot of forethought went into the foundation of our engagement solution before rolling out, we have made many other customizations since our implementation. For example, secondary schools wanted to provide updated information to students for posted community service hours. We are now working together on a workflow where students record their community service and guidance approves it for posting.

Read more about GECDSB’s journey with Edsby here.