Edsby Integrates With Office 365, Google Apps for Education
Learning management system (LMS) Edsby
has integrated with
both Google
Apps for Education and Microsoft
Office 365, giving teachers,
students and faculty more opportunities to take advantage of technology
in
learning.
The integration with Office 365 gives users the
ability for a
single sign-on, allowing Edsby users to log in to all three with one
click. It
also allows Edsby users to select documents from their Microsoft
OneDrive file
within Edsby classes and groups. Students can submit their work
digitally to
their teachers for assessment.
The integration with Google Apps for Education gives
teachers
and students another group of capabilities that can enhance group
discussions,
attendance taking, course planning, grading, report cards and analytics.
At the same time, Edsby officials said there is
little overlap
between the features offered by Edsby and Google Apps for Education.
Students
are able to do their work in Google Drive and then share documents in
Edsby
groups and classes, all while submitting work to their teachers
privately.
Teachers using Google Apps can also use Edsby to
share work; communicate
with parents; view student schedules, attendance and grades; and
evaluate their
performance against school, state or federal standards — all
with a single
log-in.
"Google Apps provides us with many capabilities, but
Google by
itself only offers limited learning management features," said Ally
Wenzel,
director of technology at Stevenson
School, a private school in Pebble Beach,
CA. "Connecting Google Apps for Education with Edsby gives our students,
teachers and administrators a more robust digital teaching and learning
experience."
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.