The Challenge
Striving for bell-to-bell instruction
Laguna Beach Unified School District strives for bell-to-bell instruction, but as a 1:1 Chromebook district with nearly 100 digital applications, technology issues were disrupting instructional time in the classroom.
Students and teachers often spent 30 seconds to a minute just trying to find the education apps they needed for class. Even more time was wasted trying to remember—or worse, change—forgotten passwords. With over 3,000 students, the potential for lost instructional time was significant; the district needed a reliable solution immediately.
Choosing ClassLink
Instant access and informed purchasing
The district adopted ClassLink’s SSO platform and immediately had a central place where students, teachers, and staff could easily find and access digital applications. Branded as “Beachport,” ClassLink’s LaunchPad puts every digital learning tool at students’ fingertips with just one username and password.
IT staff love that ClassLink acts as a password management tool and provides valuable usage reports they can use to make informed purchasing and subscription renewal decisions.
The Outcome
Cutting disruptions and lag time
Now, students take “just a few seconds” to sign-on to ClassLink every morning. Lost instructional time—due to forgotten passwords or searching for digital tools—- is a thing of the past. With sign-on and access issues out of the way, using digital tools to enhance learning is easier for teachers and students. Students toggle back and forth between tools like online curriculum, Google Drive Docs and more without disruption or lag time. And that means more robust learning opportunities in the classroom.
“In the classroom, we want to teach bell-to-bell as much as possible. We have so much to get through in such little time and [ClassLink] really helps us to maximize our time,” explains teacher, Sarah Schaeffer.
And IT staff say ClassLink’s customer support is outstanding, especially when it comes to adding new digital apps to “Beachport”. They simply ask ClassLink to add the app and within 24 to 48 hours, the app is added with single-sign-on capabilities—all without programming work from district IT staff.
“If kids and teachers are taking 30 seconds to find a certain app, that adds up quickly with 3,000 kids. Every little bit of time is important in the classroom. If we can shorten that lost time by a little it adds up to more instructional time.”