Enforcing Siena College’s strict digital media policy through SchoolBench

The Dominican Sisters who founded the college built a school where young women could follow their academic and cultural interests. The Sisters believed in the girls’ potential to become passionate life-long learners, and this tradition continues today at Siena College. 

Situated in Camberwell, in Victoria, Siena College was established in 1940 as an independent Catholic school for girls in Years 7 to 12. Although relatively small in comparison to other secondary schools, the College runs the full breadth of curricular and co-curricular programs, including sports, music, drama, overseas immersions, camps, retreats, language, global responsibility and digital technology classes as well as numerous student-led social justice initiatives. 

The College is a place where diversity and the unique gifts of each student are acknowledged and celebrated, and where young women are empowered to go out and make a difference in the world. 

A multitude of photos capture students partaking in various activities – the challenge is to identify publication consent for all the students appearing in all the many images. 

Siena College has a strict photo and digital media publication policy that is in line with the Australian National Privacy Policy. Prior to adopting SchoolBench, it was difficult to identify students in big groups. If the marketing staff didn’t know them personally, the task was challenging and time consuming.

Why Siena College chose SchoolBench

Facial Recognition 

The ability to verify faces in group photos and have this type of AI (artificial intelligence) recognition technology applied was a major drawcard for Siena College in choosing SchoolBench. 

Consent Driven 

With the assistance of SchoolBench’s facial recognition and the permission levels each photo provides, sync’d directly from the school information system (SIS), the College can confidently comply with Australia’s strict privacy and publication laws pertaining to children. 

Streamlined Workflow 

Using SchoolBench has helped the College to streamline photo processing,
workflow and storage, as well as the method by which photos are selected for the year book. This approach saves hours of work in the preparation of the year book. 

“SchoolBench provides Siena College with the ability to quickly and securely locate all consent driven images”.
Amy Stubbs, Graphic Designer and Marketing Assistant 

Continuous Improvement

“As a real world photo management solution, the team at SchoolBench is responsive to our ongoing needs from initial product launch to ongoing support.” 

“Siena College especially loves SchoolBench’s willingness to evolve and progress the solution as our needs change: listening to user suggestions for new features and ongoing improvements for the overall program.” 

Siena College expects for SchoolBench to stay at the forefront of new developments in technology and incorporate these into the solution.