Edsby®, a cloud-based learning management system built for K-12 school districts that connects teachers, parents and students, has been chosen as the new parent portal, news source, and teaching and learning collaboration platform of the Greater Essex County District School Board (GECDSB). The district will also be leveraging Edsby’s modern attendance, assessment and learning management tools.
GECDSB spans 71 schools with 35,000 students and 4,500 staff in Windsor and Essex County, Ontario, the southernmost tip of Canada. The district selected Edsby to give students and teachers modern collaborative capabilities in and out of the classroom, as well as real-time communication of academic achievement with students and their parents and guardians.
“Edsby is a modern, world-class learning environment for our students, teacher and parents. And because it works with our existing systems, including staff and student Office 365 accounts, we get the best of both worlds,” said John Howitt, GECDSB Superintendent of Education and Information Technology.
Also important to GECDSB was Edsby’s collaboration features for professional learning communities, school clubs, teams and parent groups that can be used to engage teachers, students and parents/guardians at the school level and district-wide. And it was critical to the district that the winning solution be scalable. In its selection process, the district asked for evidence of large deployments.
Greater Essex is the fourth large Ontario region to adopt Edsby recently. District School Board of Niagara announced in October, 2015 that its 36,000 students were moving to Edsby. In June, the 60,000-student Halton District School Board announced it was implementing Edsby. And in April, Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board announced it had selected Edsby for deployment to its 34,000 students.
