Case Study - Southwest Dubois County School Corporation

Southwest Dubois County School Corporation (SWDCS), located in rural southwest Indiana, serves over 1800 students, 100 teachers and another 100 in staff. In 1970, schools in Huntingburg and Holland, Indiana consolidated into one district. Now the SWDCS includes one high school, one middle and two elementary schools; and serves Cass and Patoka townships in Dubois County.

Challenge

With a mostly rural population, Southwest Dubois County School Corporation has unique communication and informational challenges. In 2004, with only a facial website, they began a search for a website solution that would allow their staff members to build and maintain additional web pages, creating a more collaborative effort and providing more information to district personnel, students and parents. Then in 2006, and as more individuals within their district were able to acquired higher speed Internet services; they realized the need to implement a project that would allow their clients to access key work and student information and applications, remotely and securely, without putting a strain on the districts resources or budget. They also needed a solution that could integrate into their current Novell infrastructure. “As improved Internet access gained momentum within our area, we needed the ability for our teachers to work on their grade books and other items remotely, as well as a way for parents to access their children’s records and information,” said Pat Bradley, business manager and technology specialist for SWDCS.

Solution

Moving from a single website greeting page, to a full website, to a district wide Intranet was a natural progression for SWDCS. “From the beginning we worked with Stoneware to help us expand our web presence and allow our staff to contribute and build our website, all without additional resources,” added Bradley. “So when we made the decision to migrate to more of an intranet/web portal solution, Stoneware was right there.” Through it’s suite of products, Stoneware provides directory-based web portal services for quickly deploying Intranets and extranets, enabling organizations to provide their employees and customers with a single point of access to all organization content via the web, safely, securely and personally. Stoneware solutions are open and flexible, supporting databases, directory servers, applications, operating systems, and hardware platforms from a wide variety of vendors. Stoneware delivers unparalleled levels of performance, security, and management within the webNetwork product line. The products are designed to benefit any size organization that needs secure remote access to the information that drives their business. Like many school systems in Indiana, SWDCS utilizes Novell, and the NetWare operating system. “We looked at one other solution for our portal, but the decision came down to how much the provider could integrate with our Novell infrastructure,” indicated Bradley. “We felt we had a much better chance of succeeding with Stoneware.” “What Stoneware’s webNetwork did is give us an intranet/extranet; providing us the opportunity we needed to allow our teachers, students and parents access to our internal databases and directories, remotely and securely, added Bradley. And we were able to do this without having to recreate a separate directory.” Through Novell’s eDir, the Stoneware’s webNetwork allows Bradley and his staff to turn on and turn off individual access to different dbases, directories or network services inside their firewall. Additionally, the software is designed for ease of use, requiring little to no programming experience or development. “We didn’t have a lot of resources and we needed something that we could utilize with the resources we already have,” said Bradley. “Now when we manage our directory, we in turn, are managing our portal.”

Results

“Before implementing Stoneware’s webNetwork our teachers would have to do a lot more work at home on pencil and paper, or they would have to catch up on their work during non-school hours,” indicated Bradley. “Now the teachers can access their grade books, home network directories, documents and email, all at home or remotely, saving them a lot of extra time and effort.” Not only are the teachers of SWDCS benefiting, but the parents are, as well. “Our school district parents can access their individual child’s grade books, attendance records, menus or food purchases, and other documents, to keep up with the most current information,” added Bradley. Stoneware’s tools have also been beneficial to SWDCS’s staff indicated Bradley. “Stoneware’s webNetwork provides a lot of tools on the tech side that really help us out,” said Bradley. “We can login, monitor the system, make changes, work on the website, and access our Novell network within the firewall, all from home, instead of driving the 30 minutes to work.” “The webNetwork has been very solid,” added Bradley. “It stays up and people are able to access when they need it. Silence is golden; so when we don’t hear anything from our teachers we feel that things are going very well.”