The Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board (KPRDSB) covers 7,000 square kilometres. It stretches from the shores of Lake Ontario all the way up into to the rugged northern reaches of the Kawartha Lakes. Its schools can be found everywhere from the busy downtown streets of Peterborough to rustic dirt roads surrounded by farmer’s fields. But wherever the board’s teachers, students and parents find themselves, they know they can count on cutting edge technology.
The KPRDSB is on the ORION network. And thanks to ORION, schools across the board are able to connect directly into Edsby’s learning management system.
Vice Principal
Scott Johnson
Clarke High School is one of those rural schools; it’s on Highway 115 outside the small community of Newcastle. Vice Principal Scott Johnson is seeing the difference access to innovative technology can make in the lives of his students. “In my opinion,” he says, “Edsby has the potential to be a key component for true modern learning to take place in our schools.”
Edsby is a cloud-based platform that acts as a digital portal for teachers, students and parents. It provides one convenient place for everyone to find the information they need: whether it’s teachers logging in to send parents a message, students collaborating with classmates on a project or parents tracking their child’s progress. It’s private, mobile-friendly and available 24-hours a day.
“Having Edsby provides tremendous advantages in accessibility and user friendliness,” Johnson explains. “The advantage of everything being in one place cannot be overstated. As an app, it allows me to have a wealth of relevant information available at all times, and when situations arise, at any time of the day or night, I am confident that I can make informed decisions in the best interests of the students and the school.”
ORION helped to forge the partnership, bringing Edsby and the KPRDSB together. It’s exactly the kind of valuable connection we’re here to make. And ORION makes using Edsby easy. School boards are able to access the platform through their usual, reliable, private ORION connection: they don’t have to pay any extra transit costs or use public internet bandwidth.
“ORION is giving Ontario boards a robust and reliable way to use the system,” says Edsby’s Vice President of Marketing, Dallas Kachan. “Its high performance, cost-effective gateway is giving teachers and students a faster and more consistent way to enjoy Edsby’s features.”
That means educators and students — no matter where they are — can benefit from cutting edge technology. Instead of wrestling with paperwork, teachers can focus on providing the best possible education, and students find themselves excited to learn, equipping themselves with the digital skills they’ll need to participate fully as citizens and contribute to a diverse and innovative workforce. It’s just one more way ORION empowers those who help make Ontario a better place.