Colorado District Adopts LMS for Curriculum Management
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 02/05/14
A school district in Colorado with nearly 53,000 students has adopted a cloud-based learning management service that integrates curriculum management, instructor tools, data analytics, a learning community and mobile access. Cherry Creek School District expects to deploy Schoology in its 60-plus schools.
The application integrates with Pearson PowerSchool, the district's student information system (SIS), through an open access application programming interface.
The district also considered several other alternatives, including Edmodo, Blackboard, Instructure Canvas, Edu2.0 and Haiku Learning. According to a resolution submitted to the board of education, Schoology was chosen because it had "the richest feature set and...the lowest cost."
The district is spending $212,000 for access to the software.
"Schoology met a number of our needs for improved communication and collaboration, but the management features and tie in to PowerSchool were very important for our district," said Kellie Ady, coordinator of instructional technology. "Schoology allows us to cleanly and easily share content and data between multiple systems. We can do tasks we never could before, like automatically grab enrollment data and share that with our PowerSchool SIS."
Ady noted that the application's "intuitive user interface" encourages teachers to "hop on board."
"A large group of early adopters were teachers who haven't always been comfortable using technology in the classroom. Schoology helped them embrace a digital teaching and learning environment in new ways," she explained.
Cherry Creek teachers are using Schoology for professional development and peer collaboration with professional learning communities and in their own classrooms.
The Web service also allows for families of students to monitor progress in the classroom.
About the Author
Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.