Sister Debbie Timmis, director of educational technology at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, N.Y. (www.rcda.org), was seeking out a more seamless and secure solution for providing and exchanging information with the principals at the 26 elementary schools and four high schools that make up her diocese’s district. Her previous solution was cumbersome, time-consuming, and could not ensure her principals got all the files they needed.
Years ago, Timmis’ office had decided not to print out hard copies of everything it sent out because of environmental concerns. So every month, Timmis would create a password-protected Web page labeled with the month and year where she would post folders of information that included administrative forms and budgetary files, among other things, that the 30 principals could then download from the password-protected Web page.
But the setup was maddening, Timmis admits. For example, she would post forms that needed a response by a given date, and too often, people would say they hadn’t gotten the forms. Conversely, there were times that she would need one of the principals to complete a form before she could post it, and she often wouldn’t get it until the last minute. Meanwhile, people would ask to see a previous month’s folder, which required hyperlinking all the previous months’ Web pages. Timmis also was unable to monitor who was accessing the files, which concerned her because of the security ramifications.
Additionally, large files, such as budgets, couldn’t be sent back and forth because Timmis’ email client wouldn’t accept them, even if the principals had the capability to send them. “And they didn’t know how to upload files to the Internet,” Timmis says. “I wasn’t even going to go there.”
Timmis researched different password protection programs, but they were expensive and required the Diocese to purchase a secure server at a monthly cost that was prohibitive. Even then, this type of solution didn’t solve the problem of getting 30 different revised budgets sent back to her without her knowing conclusively where the revisions had originated.
Then Timmis found an almost perfect solution that would cost the Diocese an initial setup cost of $800 and then a dollar per person, per year for subsequent years. What she found was the SaaS-based School Web Lockers (www.schoolweblockers.com), a solution designed to create virtual secure storage lockers for K-12 students.
Complete Article: Not Just For Students: Principals In Diocese Find Security & Ease Of Use With School Web Lockers
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