Jo Robinson - King's Christian College
“Schoolbox connects to our Student Information System, we have set up our dashboards so timetables show on student and teacher dashboards. Easy to use, Schoolbox's training is always available, the forum's are active. Schoolbox staff are active on the forums. Product enhancement, upgrades are drawn from user forum posts and requests. They listen to their customers. One place for student learning, notices, news and staff/parent information. Professional appearance. Schoolbox has delivered what was promised. The product continues to improve. Support is excellent (both via phone and ticketing system), support staff knowledgeable.
Brett Bastian - Director of ICT - Genazzano FCJ College
“Schoolbox provides an online environment that is extensively customisable to meet the College branding, extends and enhances the learning opportunities for students and facilitates numerous communication approaches to keep our families informed.”
Mary-Louise O'Brien - Director of eLearning - Melbourne Girls Grammar School
Schoolbox was introduced in 2010 to support student learning in a way never seen before at Melbourne Girls Grammar. Students, parents and staff have access from any internet connected devices which meant that as we moved from a traditional 1:1 model to a BYOD environment the transition was easy. For our community the combination of the Synergetic Information Management System with Schoolbox allowed us to provide more timely and accurate information as well as offering a secure portal for parent directory, parent teacher conferences, bill payments, the calendar, and online reporting. The system offers a rapidly growing array of Web 2.0 tools that allow students and teachers to collaborate and share information via different online mediums i.e. real-time group conversations, images, links, videos, audio and more. SchoolBox allowed us to streamline our systems and the range of tools being used across the school. Best of all, is that the product design is quite flexible and the developers are responsive to customising so Schoolbox continues to evolve and to deliver on updates to meet our changing needs.
Ashley Voigt - ICT Manager - Fintona Girls School
Schoolbox for us at Fintona Girls’ School has been a fantastic way to bring together the needs of the school into one online place. What once for us was several separate systems that weren’t used well is now a ‘one stop shop’ for our staff and students incorporating features we had only dreamed about, along with all those we expect in a LMS/Portal/Intranet. Alaress support is fantastic, and are always willing to help at the drop of a hat, and the best thing about Schoolbox is the constant improvements, responding to the needs of schools to present a feature rich environment. From an IT management perspective, it has simplified our management of these services we provide to the school saving precious time, while delivering an effective tool for the staff and students to use to assist in the delivery of curriculum and information sharing.
Victor Dalla-Vecchia - ICT Manager - Loyola College
Schoolbox is the best-of-breed on premise Learning Management System Loyola College has come across. Over a three year period the College trialled and implemented two other leading systems, both good in their own right, but their critical impediment to success was slow teacher uptake of the technology. Then, last year after extensive research we invited three other LMS vendors, Schoolbox being one of them, to demonstrate their products to us. Our review panel voted overwhelmingly in favour for Schoolbox, which presented firstly as a user friendly, platform agnostic, intuitive and modern interface, and secondly it was a system that could integrate natively with our Student Information System (SIS). After spending one semester trialling Schoolbox, our user acceptance testing survey data convincingly shows that this is indeed the Learning Management System that staff, students and parents will want to use and which will help to drive our students' learning outcomes upward.Schoolbox's on premise, externally accessible solution guarantees data privacy while insulating teachers and students from the Internet bandwidth bottlenecks that can be associated with Cloud-based data download/upload events. The Schoolbox interface is instantly familiar to a digital native, accessible from any browser and any device, and its native integration with the College's SIS means teachers can communicate with parents and mark assessments without even having to leave the LMS. Schoolbox pretty much ticks all the boxes for Loyola College.
Richard Jones - ICT Manager, Shore School - Sydney, Australia
Shore replaced an existing Intranet with Schoolbox at the beginning of Term 3 2009. Schoolbox was selected because it is easy to use, has a powerful content management system and is supported by a company that shares our passion for education. The implementation went very smoothly with no major issues experienced since the launch. Schoolbox is a flexible product that has been adapted to the specific needs of Shore. The willingness of Alaress to make such changes has been a major contributor to the acceptance of the system.
Sarah Buchanan - Admissions and Marketing Manager, Tintern Schools
The commencement of the 2014 school year saw Tintern Schools take a leap forward in its use of digital technologies by implementing a new learning management system and school portal, known as MyTintern.
MyTintern is built upon the Schoolbox product and allows students to log in each morning and see news and announcements, check their timetable and throughout the day to input their homework. It allows teachers to post key learning resources, interact with their students, post videos, notes from lessons and study tools. One semester in, we have seen all classes posting resources, blogs and forums, work being submitted online, tests being conducted online and numerous pictures and videos.
What is fantastic about MyTintern is that it allows students to connect anywhere, any time and on any device. They can manage their learning needs and engage with their peers and teachers outside of class time. We seek to prepare each student for life after their school, where technology will be at the core of day to day functioning both in the workplace environment and at home. Parents are also able to utilise MyTintern by logging in to read the latest news from the school, as well as view their children’s timetables, class resources, homework and class pages. This allows them to be informed of the work being set at school and easily contact teachers if required. Staff at the school have all been provided with a mentor, to help them learn what is possible within the new system.
Tintern Schools has been absolutely thrilled with Schoolbox and the ways in which it has improved our ability to communicate with families. The team at Schoolbox are incredibly helpful – from our initial discussions, through to the implementation and their ongoing support. We are particularly excited that the product continues to develop. We know that as our school’s needs change and evolve, that Schoolbox will already be working on a solution.
Muriel Bakker- Director of Learning Technologies - The Peninsula School
The Peninsula School implemented our new LMS in 2014. The upgrade from our previous system (Learning Point) has opened ‘doors’ for our entire community including students, staff and parents. The tailor made product designed by the team at Alaress ensures that teachers now have available to them an extensive range of tools which allow them to deliver classroom content and teaching resources in a manner conducive to the needs of our students of the 21st century. The features of Schoolbox not only allow the teacher to disseminate information easily - the students can become just as involved in the learning process ensuring a truly collaborative learning environment. The accountability that comes with maintaining visible class pages, assessments and feedback benefits everyone. Best practice is more easily shared, students and their families are informed more consistently and collaborative learning is more accessible. Communication for our community is now centralised and simple. A one stop shop.
David Carter - IT Director - Cedar's Christian College
Schoolbox is a great system that always is changing and being developed to incorporate new technologies. The support is always good with someone one on the end of a phone or using the ticket system through which the team are very responsive. Contact is always made quickly and the support team is very efficient. The fact that Schoolbox utilises existing data that is stored in the student management system means that configuration of the system is small and easy with all the data about the school community used from one central source and no configuration by teachers is necessary.
In terms of features, Schoolbox has everything the average teacher needs plus more. It is a system that is very adaptive and can be used across the school in all manor of ways. In terms of teaching and learning, the ability to set assessments, mark and return them is really easy and allows parents and students to see results instantly. The easy of which a class can be communicated with is also quick and easy and can be performed within minutes thereby giving students the ability to keep up with missed work or clarify work easily and quickly which then improves the students organisation and allows them to engage with the work. A class page for a teacher is fully customisable and can be performed any time and anywhere. We have seen the site organically grow and adding more resources and content everyday.
I could not recommend this system highly enough.
Paul Reid - Director of Learning Technologies - Donvale Christian College
Schoolbox is a product upon which we rely immensely at Donvale Christian College. The product effectively assists the merging of our learning and technology components and occupies a unique place that allows for everything from delivery of learning resources through to assessment.
The product assists students and teachers with collaboration in the classroom and provides further scope for staff to deliver dynamic, technologically assisted lessons and resources with intuitive interfaces.
The ongoing development of the space and the support provided by Schoolbox allows us to continue to develop engaging teaching and rich learning experiences in our College and effectively matches these with the increasing technological requirements and expectations of modern education.
Judy Burriss - Director of ICT - Toorak College
I'm very pleased with the rollout here. We've seen widespread adoption and acceptance of a new system, and our parent community has provided positive feedback too.
Yvette Sher - PR & Communications Manager - Moriah College
Our version of Schoolbox – eLY – brings the whole Moriah Community together, online.
It's a one-stop-shop for quick and easy access to information for parents, staff and students; and a comprehensive interactive teaching and learning environment where everyone can communicate and collaborate together.
In my role as Communications Manager, overseeing the way that parents communicate with the school, I have found Schoolbox to be an efficient and effective way to streamline our communication with parents. Parents have responded well to the introduction of eLY and enjoy being able to access their child's timetable and due work, have direct links to teachers' email addresses and have easy access to news items, permission slips and other documents and photographs. As eLY integrates well with our Synergetic database, parents no longer need a separate login to access the Synergetic Community portal which has very successfully streamlined the process of booking parent/teacher interviews, checking medical records and downloading copies of academic reports. Everything is now in one place.
A recent wholistic survey of our Primary School, which included questions about the way Moriah Communicates with parents, indicated that the majority of parents are very satisfied with eLY and find it informative, effective and user friendly.
Fiona Longfield - Resource Centre Co-ordinator - Fintona Girls School
We have been delighted with our Schoolbox experience. Our students have enthusiastically embraced our LMS and Intranet and staff have been quick to realise its ease of use, and the advantages it offers in collaboration and communication with both their fellow staff members, and their classes. Our database continues to grow and expand as our staff and students both grow in confidence that they will be able to find what they need easily and effectively. It enhances our teaching and learning experience and allows us to access and use technology to benefit the needs of our curriculum and learning community.
Kay Forrester - Strategic Marketing Manager - Saint Kentigern
The WOLE Alaress has designed and developed is integral to Saint Kentigern’s ‘Framework for the future’ and our five year focus on being one organisation; providing the best teaching and learning; ensuring quality pastoral care and engaging with a digital society.
We are delighted with our new website and Schoolbox has been so easy to roll-out. It just works!
The involvement of our parents and families in many of the aspects of school life is a vital part of the Saint Kentigern experience. Our new WOLE enables increased involvement of parents in student learning outcomes and achievement and with extensive collaboration and communication functionality creates a seamless online community between the students, teachers, parents and our external community.
The entire OLE interacts seamlessly with our School Management systems, which saves time, cost and duplication of data across all campuses.