This article originally appeared in the September/October 2015 Net Assets magazine.
Unlimited Cloud Storage on Google Apps for Education
All business officers should know about changes to the free Google Apps for Education suite. Google now offers unlimited cloud storage in Drive to all of its education customers. Users can upload individual files of up to an incredible 5 terabytes in size, virtually eliminating the digital storage headaches that for years have been a thorn in the sides of independent school technology departments. Additionally, Google has added Vault, its compliance solution, to education accounts. Through Vault, schools can archive and search for emails, chats and files across their Google Apps domain, as well as set holds and retention rules to comply with legal obligations. While Vault isn’t a proactive solution to thwarting harassment, inappropriate online behavior or worse, it will pair nicely with such a service by providing an easily searchable and organized archive.
Kelsey Vrooman
Director of Educational Technology
The Urban School of San Francisco
San Francisco, California
Co-founder and board member, ATLIS
Zenoss Core and LiquidPlanner
Zenoss Core is a free, open-source network device monitoring tool that performs tasks ranging from simple up/down reporting on devices on the network, to detailed graphs of measurable data collected via SNMP. We use it to monitor everything from our core networking equipment to all our access points and printers and even whether projectors are online or offline. It's reasonably easy to set up and manage.
Liquid Planner is a web-based project management system for teams. It blows away any other project management tool. We use it for mapping out our summer project plans as well as for major planned IT projects during the school year. My whole staff uses it to track their time on planned tasks, letting us link tasks, projects and packages, and it even updates in real-time as we complete our work. As the department head, I get a clear, up-to-date picture of our progress on major projects.
Christopher Butler
Assistant Head of School for Information Services
St. John's Preparatory School
Danvers, Massachusetts
IdeaPaint
As its website promises, "IdeaPaint transforms any surface into a boundless dry erase canvas, giving you the space you need to create, connect and fully explore your big ideas." In the context of independent schools, this product is friendly to technology (it can function as an interactive whiteboard, as noted below), the business office (less expensive than a traditional whiteboard), facilities (easy to maintain), and teachers (they can use it on any classroom wall). It can save schools time and money, and can help create a more creative learning environment. What’s more, it means no more installing expensive whiteboards—with the headaches associated with leveling, patching, breaking things, etc. Should it stain or begin to fade, you simply apply a new coat. As for functioning as an interactive whiteboard, you simply combine IdeaPaint with certain short-throw projectors, such as the Smart LightRaise.
Stuart Posin
Director of Academic and Administrative Technology
Marlborough School
Los Angeles, California
Co-founder and board member, ATLIS
Symbaloo and LastPass
I have found the combination of Symbaloo and LastPass to be extremely helpful. Both are cloud-based and free for use on the browser; LastPass also comes as a paid app that is well worth the small price.
Symbaloo is simply a graphical web-bookmarking system that lets you more quickly navigate to your favorite sites by letting you click on familiar graphical “tiles,” rather than having to type URLs or scrolling through bookmarks. An account login lets you access your page of saved links from any computer.
LastPass is a web-based password manager. This fantastic tool stores all your passwords on the cloud, so they are accessible anywhere and from any device. It can auto-load your username and password for saved sites. It can generate passwords of any desired strength. By remembering passwords for you, it lets you do what you are supposed to do: make strong, long, unique passwords for each site you use. It also lets you turn off your browser’s ability to save passwords, which is much less secure.
Tony Block
CFO/Corporate Treasurer
Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy
Pontiac, Michigan
TalentEd
We have been using TalentEd’s applicant tracking system for over a year. Both our HR function and managers like it as it is school-focused (unlike many other HR programs) and provides a number of great features. These include ease of use, flexibility, easy access for as many resume reviewers as we wish, a simple ranking system to help managers track whose resumes they have reviewed, and storage that HR doesn’t have to worry about. We are now in the final steps of implementing the “TalentEd Records” system, which will enable smoother onboarding and record storage. We moved in this direction after looking at a number of other HRIS record systems.
Steve Csotty
Human Resources Generalist
Community School of Naples
Naples, Florida
Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a project management tool that has proven very versatile since we introduced it in September 2014. We use it in a variety of ways, including:
- To manage the recruiting process
(we get 400 applications between November and January; all must be routed to and commented on by the appropriate stakeholders for selection). - To manage internally the gathering of
back-to-school documents. - To have employees and parents sign agreements such as those for laptop loaners and field trips (compatibility with DocuSign is great).
- We find Smartsheet very powerful as a project management tool, especially when multiple employees are involved. It cuts down on paper, uploading time (applicants do this themselves) and emails with attachments, and as a cloud-based solution it is accessible from anywhere. It also allowed us to eliminate the need to hire a temporary employee to manage incoming documents.
Evelyne Estey
Chief Financial and Operating Officer
Lycée Français de New York
New York, New York
Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics (formerly Navision) has supported a number of ISB’s business functions since 2008, including admissions, procurement, accounting, finance and budgeting. We chose this over bigger names in school management systems because our European location requires us to deal with complicated, country-specific VAT rules and be compliant with local accounting and tax legislation. In addition, we need multi-currency/multi-language functionality, along with the ability to register all data in a single system. Far too often, I have seen staff manually maintain all sorts of Excel spreadsheets. This is inefficient, creates extra work and causes mistakes. Another big advantage of a single database system is that we have certainty that every student attending ISB is invoiced to the parents.
We started with two modules, accounting and procurement, and over time added budgeting, sales and admissions. Today, Navision/Dynamics is the school’s sole master database, for everything from budget review to invoices. There is no double-entry!
Francis Trappeniers
Finance Director
International School of Brussels
Brussels, Belgium
