Web Software Makes Sense for Educator Tools
Education is a very interesting environment in which to design software. There are many moving pieces of information. Students move into and out of the system, they progress through multiple classrooms and through many different teachers. Software designed for educators to track data on students must take this into consideration.
Desktop software can be a very isolated experience. Each user installs his own fresh version of the software and sets to work in his own private environment.
Perhaps I’m a teacher who has gathered assessment data on my students. If I want to share the data I might create a file and send it to you, but then you’re posed with the task of loading it into your version of the software. Along the way there are many places in which things can go wrong. Perhaps your version of the software isn’t up to date and so you can’t open my file. If we’re on different operating systems we may find we can’t even use the same piece of software. Maybe I’ve got the student first period and you’ve got him fourth. So I’m recording more information each day, am I supposed to send you a data file every morning for every student?
Web delivered software addresses all of these issues and has many advantages, especially within an education system.
Mobility and Collaboration
As I mentioned above, educators frequently struggle with issues of mobility. Students who arrive in a classroom often come with very little (or no) data. Maybe the previous teacher had kept meticulous records in her own electronic score book and recorded a whole year’s worth of data, but that doesn’t come with the student. For a school district which has adopted an web delivered solution all of the data from every assessment is stored in a central location on the server. Teachers have instant access to the entire depth of the student’s educational data within the system including multiple years of performance without needing to do any data transfers or imports.
Similarly an English teacher may be tracking the student’s Reading abilities, and the Math teacher his Math abilities, but neither can see that the two are related when the records are stored on separate computers. If the data is housed in a central location, the breadth available to teachers is greatly expanded. Suddenly it becomes apparent whether the additional instruction in Reading is improving the student’s Math scores as well.
OS Agnostic
People have their preferences and the divide between Mac and Windows users can run deep. We could argue at length about which OS is best for the educational environment but we would never be able to reach a decision on which everyone could agree.
Some software will only run on a single operating system; I’ve actually seen staff members with two computers on their desk to deal with just this type of issue! Whatever the operating system preference, any modern operating system must be able to support a web browser.
By creating web based software we can avoid the OS question all together. In fact, as mobile devices such as cell phones become more sophisticated and web ready, it’s not inconceivable that teachers could be entering and accessing assessment data from their cell phone while waiting to check into a conference or get a table at their favorite restaurant.
System Requirements and Upgrades
Obviously, if we’re talking about crunching data from cell phones, we’re talking about quickly outpacing the processing capabilities of such a small device. With a web application, the number crunching can all be done on the server, and the results can be sent as something displayable on even the oldest or weakest computer. For public institutions concerned about budget allocations a single server upgrade can be very cost effective when compared to upgrading hundreds of teacher computers.
At the same time, software upgrades can all be done within the server. Users never have to download or install anything to get the latest and greatest versions of the software. Bug fixes can happen instantaneously and we can be confident that all users are seeing corrected information.
Conclusion
Web delivered software has many advantages over traditional desktop software, particularly when used to collaborate between many different people. It can ensure that everyone has seamless access to the most recent data and software improvements.
Education is an environment where dozens of people may collaborate on the education of each student. Web based software is the most effective method for that collaboration.
[...] For the educational environment which can require collaboration on hundred of data points around students which move between classrooms, web based delivery is a must. [...]