Author: Vincent

This month we focus on the marketing efforts in schools and how SchoolBench is adding value in this space.

Highlights are:

• Begin with the end in mind – annual marketing plans
• Feature update
• Health Check – have you upgraded your version of SchoolBench
• Milestone – breaking the 1 Million media ceiling

Begin with the end in mind

In 1989, Steven Covey coined the above phrase in his best-selling book “The 7 Habits of highly effective people”. This strategic focus remains a key part of any organisation’s planning for the year ahead – what do we want to achieve, how are we going to get there, what resources do we need to put in place now, so we succeed?

At this time of year, we see many school marketers preparing their annual marketing plans for enrolments, fundraising, community participation and engagement, yearbooks and a myriad of other projects.

So, you have your plans in place, your channels to market are set, your timing for release, your social and traditional media lined up, you’re in the process of copywriting the content and then comes the task of choosing photos and videos from your school’s events that you want to use and promote visually. What a task and as the saying goes, a picture tells a thousand words.

Your photos are easily sorted into year or event and all students appearing can be clearly identified by their media consent status. In the words of the meerkat, simples.

If you’re already using SchoolBench then it’s an easy task, right?

Is it that simple? Or are you still searching G drives and N drives and other shared drives clueless on whether you can use that photo. Are you still spending countless precious hours trawling through your media library for a supporting image?

If you do the job right the first time, then when it comes to designing your communication projects, your visual media assets will be ready to find in SchoolBench and apply accordingly to your projects now and throughout the year.

SchoolBench was introduced at Pulteney Grammar in 2018. Ms Sam Cooper, Archivist at the school, said that, “Pleasingly, SchoolBench helps make Archives part of the school, as opposed to being a separate entity. Through its security and its central storage, SchoolBench has made self-service possible, which is a huge time saver for me as I could spend up to 70% of my time fulfilling requests.”

Fortune favours the prepared.

If you want to know more, simply email us at contact@parashift.com.au or call your friendly SchoolBench team on 1300 769 809.

Feature update – ADFS 2016

After many customer requests, we are pleased to announce that Parashift has completed testing on and can confirm that SchoolBench now supports ADFS 2016 for single sign-on.

What this means for you?

Now when using SchoolBench, you no longer need to remember your password when logging in. Once logged into the school network, you can access SchoolBench if your schools uses AFDS. This results in a much easier and smoother usage of SchoolBench.

Why did we build  this capability with SchoolBench, well we listened to our customers. This makes your life easier and directly aligns to our cultural values of ‘Responsiveness’ to our customers’ wishes and ‘Intuitive’ in ease of use.

This month’s features

This month we have new features neatly unwrapped from Santa under the Christmas tree that include:

• Last year’s profile photos will now automatically be retained as historical reference points when replaced with this year’s profile pictures. This will occur once your SIS has been updated with the new student images.
• We’ve compiled documentation for tested photo editing software with new features now available for watermarking
• To improve security, the SchoolBench parent portal will now either inherit the security timeout imposed by your existing LMS, or if standalone, a time limit of 5 minutes with no user activity.

Check your SchoolBench online documentation for full descriptions.

If you want to know more, simply email us at contact@parashift.com.au or call your friendly SchoolBench team on 1300 769 809.

Healthcheck

This month we are asking you to check the health of your usage and understanding of SchoolBench to ensure it is adding value to your school, your media management policy, usage and future scoping your school’s historical repository requirements.

Questions to ask yourself and your team, am I:

• Using the latest version of SchoolBench?
• Aware of all the features?
• Using all the features?
• Getting the most out of SchoolBench, what more do I need to know?
• Up to date with training?

To book a refresher, targeted training session or if you need a question or two answered, simply email us at contact@parashift.com.au or call the friendly SchoolBench team on 1300 769 809.

Breaking the 1 million barrier

Just before Christmas, our system analytics reported the number of photos under management by SchoolBench had surpassed 1.2 million. This will continue to grow exponentially this year.

This growth is testament to the confidence in and use of SchoolBench as the premier school photo management solution. This is driven by the school retaining complete ownership of its images and information, management of privacy consent and automatic school-context tagging. These are the cornerstones of SchoolBench’s value. The features continue to grow as we continue to listen and understand the challenges faced by our clients’ and confidence in new markets.

We expect the number of photos managed by SchoolBench to continue to grow throughout the year, a figure we will share with you at this year’s EducatePlus and EduTech events.

Your feedback

We love hearing your stories about your digital media management experiences within your school community.

If you have a success story you would like to share with the SchoolBench community, contact us. Have an idea for an UpVote Feature in SchoolBench? Chomping at the bit to submit a case study?

By sharing you could win a Gold Class movie voucher for two, redeemable in your state.

This month’s lucky recipient is Annie Markey, Director of Communication at Newington College in Sydney, for her superb efforts in working with us to finalise the latest SchoolBench case study.

smart + simple + safe

Another year close to completion and we find ourselves moving into a new decade. The year 2020, to a boy who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s, seems more attune to a Buck Rogers episode than today’s date, yet here we are.

Achievements

Parashift enjoyed many achievements this year, one of which is the several new and highly talented people joining the team.

The technology industry is often thought of as male-dominated, however in mid-January, Parashift will be precisely 50% male and female in its workforce ratio. This is not the outcome of an imposed quota system but the result of hiring the best candidate available. All employees deserve the pride in knowing they are here on merit.

Our people

Firstly and all the way from France, I am thrilled to welcome Desline Simon to Parashift. Desline joins Parashift in the role of Technical Lead and is tasked to build a world class technical team for Parashift. She holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Research in National Language Processing and has worked on several cutting-edge projects in both academia and the commercial world. Desline brings a wealth of technical expertise to Parashift and we are incredibly fortunate to have someone of this calibre. With much enthusiasm we say “Bienvenue en Australie!”.

Catherine Rowland returned to work after taking some time from raising her two beautiful children Liam and Lexie. Catherine’s extensive knowledge in software testing provides Parashift with a mature approach to our production of quality software. With a keen eye for usability and defects, Catherine has an uncompromising commitment to getting the job done. Coupled with a dry wit, Catherine has become an integral member of the Parashift team.

Marketing for any company is a vital function and Parashift elected to bring this function in-house in 2019. We sought the services of a talented person with excellent creative and organisational skills.
Enter Aretta Holtman, experienced marketer in the technology and business to business space. Aretta holds a Bachelor of Business (Marketing) and has worked for blue-chip companies such as Telstra. With no time to rest, Aretta successfully coordinated two trade shows, one of which was our first foray into Singapore, all in her first two months. Aretta’s personality can lighten the mood all the while keeping her job nailed down and her young family ticking along. As the saying goes, “I don’t know how she does it!”.

Customers

On the customer front, Parashift doubled its customer base welcoming schools of all types and sizes across Australia to the SchoolBench family. Since SchoolBench’s inception in 2017, our inaugural members of Seymour College and Pulteney Grammar remain active and continue providing valuable suggestions to the product roadmap.

This year we were joined by brands such as The King’s School, Shore, Kardinia International College, TSS and All Saints Anglican School to name a few. With the help of Annie Markey, Director of Communications at Newington College, a new SchoolBench case study was produced.

RecordBench was soft-launched mid-year and we worked closely with Santa Sabina and St Columba in NSW to ensure it is fit for purpose. In Term 1 next year a release candidate will be made available to schools nationally who are serious about the long-term preservation of their corporate memory. A must have in today’s litigious world.

For 2020, the Parashift team will continue to address known and new challenges faced by schools through our products, SchoolBench and RecordBench. The feedback and suggestions we receive are invaluable. The now annual Customer Roadmap Survey ensures we continue to be on the right path.

And finally, I extend my gratitude to Parashift’s leadership team, Henri and Peter, as well as all staff, customers and stakeholders for their contribution for what was, simply put, an amazing year for Parashift.

It is my wish for you and your family to have a safe and enjoyable Christmas and a healthy and prosperous 2020.

“SchoolBench frees our time to fulfil our vision to empower boys to develop great hearts, inspired minds and strong wings: ready to make a positive contribution to society and the future.” Newington College

Rich history

Newington College was established in 1863. Today the College provides an environment where boys are encouraged to pursue their passions with purpose, enthusiasm and to support friends, families and their communities.

The College, located in Sydney’s inner west, has a rich history with photos, archive material and memorabilia dating to the time before Federation. Throughout two world wars and into a new millennium, the College has seen meteoric changes and economic, social, cultural and technological advancements.

Newington College has four campuses that consist of Years 7-12 at Stanmore, prep schools at Lindfield and Wyvern House, and an Early Learning Centre.

The need for SchoolBench

Newington educates more than 2,000 students each year. Its extensive academic, pastoral, sports and co-curricular programs mean thousands of photos are taken each year to capture these moments for the future.

Imagine trying to piece together a photo album featuring 2,000 children over decades. Now imagine if someone asked you for a particular photo. How would you know if it existed, or which album it is stored in?

Search with ease

Until late 2018, Newington did not have a searchable, central or shared image library nor a school photo management solution. So their ability to respond quickly to requests for images was limited. Additionally, images lacked information and metadata. The process of finding images was difficult and time-consuming.

Through its feature-rich and user-friendly layout, the most notable function of SchoolBench is its ability to assign properties to an image by year, event and location, thus making searching fast and easy. Each image is assigned an identifying property, automatically taken from the school’s existing student information system. In short, the student information system is the primary source of truth. This includes the names of the students in an image and indicates whether media consent is provided by their parents. This provides photo security and online safety around the use of student photos.

Additional information is applied through the calendar integration process, automating the time, context, year, term, term-week and the activity, all from using the time and date stamp of the photo.

Golden Days

SchoolBench can manage images from far older than those captured today.

Newington College has built up a strong collection of images over decades that provide the school community with a rich, deep understanding of the College’s history, activities and achievements

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Learn more about SchoolBench and how this school photo and video management solution can assist your school.

Click here to send us a message or call us on 1300 769 809

This month, we dive into the debate on facial recognition as a safe technology and how SchoolBench is adding value in this space.
Highlights this month are:

• Facial recognition – a smart technology
• Feature feedback from Trinity College
• Reportage on EduTech Singapore
• Our Kindle winner from St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School
• Share your story

Facial recognition – a smart technology

Meaning: a noun; a machine or system capable of automated and seemingly intelligent operation.

One of the most frequent and common concerns raised by clients is the use of facial recognition in schools and whether this technology may encroach on the human rights of students – specifically, their privacy. Strong imagery and fear tactics point to facial recognition technology, in that it may be misused by some organisations or governments.

At SchoolBench, we take these concerns seriously and is at the heart of our solution. We often discuss this and the value it provides a school. Our approach has resulted in an ever-growing list of happy customers.

Key in this debate is that the information, data and referencing remains at the school. No outside organisations can access or use the information without the school’s consent. It is the school’s data, plain and simple, and no one owns or have any copyright over the images. This is a fundamental reason why SchoolBench is the superior choice.

It is important to remember why SchoolBench uses facial recognition in the first place.

Its purpose is threefold.

Firstly, facial recognition of images is used to protect the privacy of students who appear in images.

Additionally, the technology provides the school with a level of compliance in relation to Australia’s stringent privacy policies.

Lastly, it provides confidence to parents by automatically applying their media consent to each image of their child.

By using this technology as part of the solution, SchoolBench is contributing positively and proactively to ensure peace of mind, and media consent becomes a key property and identifier for all images in SchoolBench, not just today, but in years to come.

Should the law change, so will the stringent parameters of what information photos need to contain, to not only be publishable but also be searchable.

If the image has no clear permission level, you simply don’t use it in any external communications, be that social, print or other community media.

With the added security layer of the school owning all the images, the governance processes a school sets in place underpin how images are used. SchoolBench places that control into the hands of the marketers, business or school administrators responsible for using and publishing photos or videos.

SchoolBench policies about facial recognition satisfying Australia’s privacy laws, and parent consent has been an overwhelming driver and a key uptake reason for the product’s success.

Mr Kieren Fitzpatrick, Managing Director of Parashift and the company behind SchoolBench, said,

“While all organisations have a duty to ensure the privacy of Australians are kept at the forefront of their business dealing, facial recognition technology serves a tremendous purpose in streamlining the management and use of images by the thousands of schools in Australia for communication, business, marketing and community communication purposes. Like all technologies, there are risks, and SchoolBench has been designed to address these from the get-go.”

“The ability to use smart technology to provide our schools and parents with control on where and how student images are used is a primary focus for our clients and their governance process,” said Mr Fitzpatrick.

As an Australian solution, SchoolBench proves facial recognition of children in schools can have positive effects and provides privacy and safety for children and parents alike. The technology will grow and adapt according to the evolution of the product and in line with Australian privacy and human rights laws.

Your opinion counts, so if you would like to drop us a line on this subject, click here.

Feature feedback

This month we share the three most valued SchoolBench functions that Trinity College in Adelaide has found since adopting the solution in January 2019.

The pain points that are being overcome include:

• not having to rename images and to encode metadata is resulting in an enormous amount of time being saved by the school.
• One single system, that being one application, one repository, one place where all imagery is stored and accessed. In Trinity College’s own words, “So much better than images stored all over the place on all sorts of devices.”
• Colour coding because an instant visual identifier of parental consent, or no consent or unknown consent, is just a mouse hover away. Quick, nimble and efficient.

What’s your favourite SchoolBench functionality?

Reportage – the Singapore report

Our team attended EduTech Asia earlier this month and what a show it was!

The SchoolBench stand “popped” in colour and activity as educators, marketers, technology staff and government personnel including our very own Austrade and Australian High Commission, stopped by to learn about SchoolBench, what is does, how and what this solution could mean for their school. We learnt a lot about our South East Asian neighbours’ media assets and record compliance needs. The conversations were fast and furious.

Client Director, Henri Guillaume, delivered an extremely well attended talk on day two of the conference: Photo and Video Management in the Age of the Internet. The evolution in media, volume of data, regulatory challenges and how to navigate this new paradigm were hot topics that elicited many questions. The talk was followed by many of the delegates making a beeline to the SchoolBench stand where interest piqued, business cards were exchanged and appointments booked for future discovery discussions.

Needless to say, the conversations had and insights gleaned have opened greater awareness for SchoolBench’s application in the South East Asian region.

We know this because the team uncovered the same pain points schools in Australia have and are discovering and the risk associated with storage and use of student imagery needs to have the same risk factors overcome, regardless of geographical boundaries.

We are looking forward to showcasing SchoolBench’s versatility to an international audience regardless of geographical boundaries.

The winner is …

We had a very happy and radiant Alice Tidmarsh, Director of Marketing and Admissions at St Aidan’s Girls’ Grammar School in Brisbane, send us this photo recently. Alice attended and met us at the EducatePlus Brisbane conference earlier this financial year. We had an insightful discussion and demonstration. Post conference and hey presto, Alice’s business card was randomly selected as the lucky winner of our giveaway Kindle. Congratulations Alice!

Share your story

We love hearing your stories about your digital media management experiences within your school community. What hurdles are you facing with your current photo library? Does your school even have one? Can you find what you need and fast? How has SchoolBench made your life easier? What else would you like SchoolBench to do?

If you have a success story you would like to share with the SchoolBench community, drop us a line.

By sharing you could win a Gold Class movie voucher for two, redeemable in your state.

Video Facial Recognition
On average, the top mediums of communication used by schools, e-newsletters and social media, has brought ever increasing challenges for school professionals.
Did you know, that by 2022, Cisco research predicts that video will be 15 times higher than it was in 2017 and will represent 82% of all consumer internet traffic.
Additionally, a staggering 95% of the message is retained when video is used. This statistic denotes a move in communication from text and image to video, and is beginning to change the marketing and communication landscape, specifically for schools who are operating in an increasingly competitive market.

Mobile App
SchoolBench is soon to release a mobile application that aims to engage teachers and parents as an additional source of photo and video media production for your school.
SchoolBench in turn becomes the central point of storage for digital assets and retains the publishing permissions for any such submissions, using your SIS (Synergetic, TASS and many more) as the source of truth.
This means, if a family member captures a great photo of their child winning the relay on sports day, SchoolBench has the ability to apply the permissions on that child and any others in the photo or video, to protect the school, prior to sharing.

Together with video facial recognition, we are in the process of developing and fine tuning these developments. 

Great news! – Edumate Integration
SchoolBench has completed yet another successful integration with the student information system, Edumate. Roseville College and St Lukes Grammar in NSW are using SchoolBench to manage their digital assets (video and photos).

What does this mean? 
In addition to Synergetic, TASS, Simon, Maze and PC Schools, schools that now use Edumate can now provide student data automatically to SchoolBench for your images and movies including student identification, media consent and even identifying the activity from your calendar.

Share your SchoolBench story
The team at SchoolBench is working hard to provide regular enhancements by engaging with and understanding the challenges faced by schools. We love hearing your stories about your digital media management experiences within your school community.

If you have a success story you would like to share with the SchoolBench community, drop us a line. By sharing you could win a Gold Class movie voucher for two, redeemable in your state.

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SchoolBench – A smart, simple and safe solution to managing digital media for schools

August, the month named after Rome’s first and arguably most successful emperor, Caesar Augustus. Parashift are pleased to confirm that SchoolBench v10.1.0 will soon be released and it includes a handful of awesome new features, all heavily requested by our growing list of client schools.

Colour Configuration
You can now specify colour coding for your assets in SchoolBench’s Admin Panel.
Easily match against field values such Media Consent, for a quick visual way to filter photos.

And the results view:

New Other Names
SchoolBench now captures alternative names that students and teachers may be known by, e.g. nicknames.

This allows you to specify Nicknames or other preferred names of profiles and use them when searching.

Shift + Click to select blocks of images
You can now shift + click to select blocks of items rather than clicking and dragging through them.