The most called for target of technology are school systems, which even today have some of the most traditional and obsolete technology in the world. Schools require a lot of data about students, faculty and other members to be constantly accessed, parsed and evaluated.
The data can range from student/faculty attendance, fee records, grades and much more. The lack of a technologically smart management system has now become the cause of distress for a school’s management.
Clever is an emerging San Francisco based startup, developed specifically to resolve such issues. It builds APIs for connecting to school’s Student Information Systems (SIS). It is a service that makes it easier for schools to use a diverse range of credulous education technology products and integrate them into their existing systems. It gives trusted third-party developers a way to access the data and build new applications that can help teachers access and analyze the data they have, making them better at their jobs. It also reduces the overhead tech costs by more than 50%, since it makes it easier and quick to access, move and update data.
Clever has its own way of capturing all the school’s valuable data. It does so by interfacing with all the systems that schools run on today, the SIS which have information about students, attendance, grades and everything else. The data is brought out, cleaned up and developers are provided with a modern way to access it (an API). Clever also considers the security aspects associated with the fondling of data, so before any data is moved, a school authorizes Clever to send data to a provider before Clever will do it.
To start using the services of Clever, you need to sign-up to contact its team. Clever has developed a modern REST API , which allows the education software developers to access real-time school data from SIS. It has also developed an API named, OAUTH using which you can enable Student/Teacher Single Sign On or School/District Administrator Signup. Clever benefits schools in many ways:
- Swift and Simple Setup: It understands that schools are strapped for time, so setting it up takes less than five minutes and requires no ongoing maintenance.
- Saves Time and Money: With Clever, student data only needs to be entered once, after which Clever syncs ongoing changes to all Clever-enabled applications. It makes data entry cheaper and quicker and improves data quality by eliminating data entry errors.
- Trustworthy Technology: Clever is 100% secure and FERPA compliant. When schools use Clever, student data is transported with end-to-end, bank-grade encryption. Additionally, student data is never stored on a laptop hard drive, where it could be lost or stolen.
- Clever works very simply. You just need to enter the data about your students in your SIS, once and afterwards; Clever will keep all your student accounts up-to-date across all your programs.
Dan Carroll, the co-founder of Clever feels that the biggest problem with the school management systems was moving student data between systems plus there is a massive burden of introducing new applications into them. As a result of this, Clever was developed. Let’s see how Clever solves these problems.
- The Clever team has built a REST API that eliminates the need to manually convert data from Student Information Systems for each new application schools adopt.
- It allows schools with a push of a button to connect the data they have to the applications they use without having to worry about a mess of a data transfer.
- Schools install the Clever API, Clever pulls data from the SIS in real time, converts it to a standard format, and keeps that data synced, updated and compatible with a huge number of EdTech apps.
Clever currently has over a thousand schools signed up with it and amazingly it is free for schools to sign up for and download. It makes its revenue by partnering with EdTech developers and apps. Some of Clever’s current EdTech partners include Dreambox Learning, MasteryConnect, Sokikom, Ten Marks, and All In Learning. Right now Clever is only available for K-12 schools, not colleges or universities.
Clever’s growth not only speaks to the current issues facing schools and developers, it indicates the founders’ desire to show the potential of education startups. While K-12 education has more recently attracted investment, investors have historically abstained from the field and here’s where Clever comes as a blessing, to the rescue. It strives to prove that education can be a valuable business if you approach it the right way and hopes that it can take away the barrier and prove that education is a real market and there’s a lot of room for innovation in this space.
I hope that Clever can be a tool to help people find areas of need in the EdTech space, write great softwares and not be held back by painful data interfaces. You’re invited to share your views, further knowledge or clarify doubts on the context. The comment box awaits you.
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