August 2000 — Industry Perspective
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Can Portals Make a Difference in the Work of Educators
Before we
get started, perhaps we should clarify exactly what a portal is meant to be. In
simple terms it’s a single entry point to a range of related resources and
information links: a figurative gateway that you pass through on your way to
somewhere else.
Today we have the education portal or school portal. Only a
small handful of such portals offer school-specific, individual student
information — the kind of information that concerned parents and motivated
students are most interested in. For the purposes of this article, school
portals will focus chiefly on those Web sites that deliver a full gamut of
secure student information, as well as learning resources, news content and
teacher tools.
The premise on which most portals claim to offer educational
value is that the information contained in, or offered through a portal, will
be of benefit to students, the parents of those students, school professionals
teaching those students, and a host of other users inside a school community.
Despite the appeal of such a premise, it seems likely that very few portals
have the capability to deliver information to a level of speed, accuracy and
quality that educators, parents and students would find meaningful or useful.
This degree of quality and integrity in the portal’s
information is only half of the equation. It is implicit that an education
portal is designed to be appealing and easy to use. The other half of the
equation is that parents and students, and to a lesser extent, the educators
who initiate the student information, will actually want to use it.
Most schools equipped with an efficient student information
system have a wealth of information that, up until the advent of the portal,
has been largely underutilized. Chancery’s K12Planet.com is a Web site and user
interface that integrates its own compatible, freshly-updated and accurate
student information into a meaningful medium for parents and students. By
taking information that’s already gathered, and giving members of the school
community secure access to it, K12Planet puts technology to work to address
some very real concerns shared by PTA members, families, educators and federal
politicians alike.
Technology making a difference
From an educator’s perspective, the Internet has opened up
an enormous range of possibilities for improving both the resources and
techniques for learning. But in seeking to make incremental gains in the
learning process, the missing link has always been greater parent involvement —
how to give busy, working parents a better chance to look in on their child’s
progress, stay in contact with teachers, and keep up to speed with school
events and initiatives.
