For 26 years, ClassLink has been making software products that strive to provide excellence in tech experiences in education. To achieve this, we’ve specialized in solutions that support secure and instant access to online resources, learning analytics to help decision-makers, and enterprise-level data exchange systems. That last item is sometimes the unsung hero of edtech. Without reliable and secure data exchange systems, very few modern-day online learning resources would function as intended. Part one of this blog series discusses the areas of friction that exist with regard to data exchange and the great efforts already made to maximize the innovation potential of edtech resources.
Why ClassLink supports the elimination of data exchange Friction Type 3.
Even with exciting bursts of funding from time to time (post-COVID stimulus funding), school budgets are generally undersized to achieve their ongoing goal of helping all students succeed. This condition of undersized education budgets is true around the world. To help schools succeed, vendor partners are counted on to help. Education vendor partners know we must provide high-quality resources with great service and avoid hidden and needless costs. Data exchange fees are needless, as evidenced by their nonexistence in commercial and enterprise software solutions. Data exchange fees stifle innovation and waste money. Deceptive business models that appear to have no direct cost yet create a pyramid of indirect costs through veiled fees can have a particularly nefarious effect by increasing product prices across the industry.
ClassLink supports the avoidance of data exchange fees through system architecture.
The data exchange solutions that ClassLink makes are secure, operate independently, and avoid data exchange fees. Our data exchange technologies operate as independent databases wherein schools choose the data to insert into their database, choose how to organize it, and choose what organizations to share it with. When a school uses our data exchange solutions to move data between systems they already subscribe to, it’s like moving files between Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive. Google and Microsoft do not pay each other data exchange fees for the moved files.
ClassLink supports the avoidance of data exchange fees through principle.
ClassLink does not charge integration fees with any of our vendor partners. We support our vendor partners and their wonderful products through training and technical support services to ensure our shared school clients have a great experience. We also believe the data that is exchanged between our systems is not ours on which to place a fee. Our license agreement flat-out says the data doesn’t belong to us, and many state and national laws clearly remind us of that fact. Similarly, because schools choose their own data to insert, organize, and share using our software, neither should ClassLink pay a fee to another vendor because they are the source or destination of the data exchanges established by our school clients who are moving their own data.
ClassLink supports the avoidance of data exchange fees through examples.
Our data exchange solutions empower schools to create and manage their own data sets and pathways for exchanging them. Like a spreadsheet software application can accept and deliver rows of data from just about any source, our systems can do the same. Establishing payment gates that artificially limit those sources and destinations would limit the potential benefit of ClassLink technologies to our schools and potentially limit the number of worthwhile vendor partners we support.
These are the reasons why ClassLink supports the elimination of data exchange fees.