There is a significant shortage of full-time teachers around the country these days. So, to keep classrooms staffed, schools use substitute teachers to fill in for teachers when they are sick or can’t come to school. However, substitute teaching jobs are tough to recruit for, manage, and fill. One complication is that quite often, a teacher absence isn’t discovered until that morning when schools scramble to post an opening. This uncontrollable and unavoidable reality coupled with the dramatic shortage of substitutes who are qualified and ready to go is a significant problem in our nation’s schools.

The process of how to fill short-term or even long-term teacher absences with substitute teachers has not changed in 50+ years. Even the modern communication modes of emails, text messages and robo-phone calls are not any more effective at solving the problem for the angst-driven and uncertain process of finding substitute teachers.

Enter Swing. Swing brings a 21st century solution to a 20th century problem. Swing leverages social communities and technology to not only improve communication but put power back into the hands of substitutes and the schools that need them. Instead of scrambling to find anyone who will answer the phone – or for the sub – being completely in the dark about if there is only one opening today or ten, now both stakeholders have power: schools have power to match the best person for a particular need, and subs have the power to pick the best job for their day or week ahead.

For these reasons and more, Swing Education earned a Cool Tool Award (finalist) for “Best Administrative Solution” as part of The EdTech Awards 2024 from EdTech Digest. Learn more. 

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Want to save time and money in the procurement and referendum process? Here is a cool tool that helps with exactly that. With SchoolNetwork, you will find:

A catalog of K-12 bonding efforts nationwide. These include current and past efforts, upcoming, proposed, passed and failed. You can specify the characteristics of the district or project type you want to view and look at the efforts made by districts just like yours. You can set an alert for specific district capital improvement efforts and receive regular updates on their progress. You will learn who the key contacts are for each effort along with links to local news coverage and published articles.

An index of rated solution providers that you can sort by industry. Services to help you with your capital improvement or procurement efforts rated by school district administrators like yourself. Learn the track record of potential solution providers so that you work with the best fit for your needs.

Actual documents used to promote and create procurement and bonding campaigns. Save time and effort by borrowing from documents created for other procurement or bonding efforts.

View the actual Requests for Proposal (RFP) and Requests for Quotation (RFQ) used by other school districts. See the materials used to promote their projects, past and present, nationwide. Upload your own documents for solution providers to see. Receive alerts to see new and revised documents.

For these reasons and more, SchoolNetwork earned a Cool Tool Award (finalist) for “Best Administrative Solution” as part of The EdTech Awards 2024 from EdTech Digest. Learn more. 

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Colleges and universities risk fragmenting their missions without unified software solutions that provide clear direction grounded in the ethos of educational impact. Watermark’s Educational Impact Suite (EIS) is an innovative solution suite that unifies disjointed higher education technologies. EIS was born out of the need to centralize systems that drive critical action in leadership, student success, and continuous improvement. The suite dramatically improves operational strategies for leaders, administrators, and faculty to enhance engagement and impact with insight.

With its legacy of supporting over 1,700 higher ed institutions globally, Watermark has crafted the EIS to connect tools for accreditation management, assessment activities, faculty activity reporting, course evaluations, surveys, curriculum management, and student success. This suite ensures institutions can make sense of insights with unparalleled efficiency, precision, and authority.

The EIS is more than just a tool; it’s an institution’s internal compass. It aids in institutional storytelling, providing data points essential for conveying impactful narratives, especially crucial for historically underfunded institutions. Moreover, EIS empowers faculty by equipping them with insights that fuel their involvement in institutional improvement, ensuring they become active navigators.

One of its unique features is its user-friendly interface that streamlines and digitizes processes, integrating all data into one hub for contextual viewing. As institutions grapple with their post-pandemic identities, the EIS offers a chance to evolve by digitizing and consolidating processes.

EIS is tailored for higher education institutions aiming for improved performance, educational quality, student equity, and support throughout the student’s educational journey. Learn more.

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ClassWallet is a purchasing and reimbursement platform for public funds. Founded in 2014, the company’s technology is used by state education departments, districts and public and private schools to get public funds to the right people and ensure they are used for the right purpose – from teacher stipends for classroom supplies to scholarships and other federal and state education grants.

The company’s solution replaces outdated reimbursement processes including teacher/ administrator expense reports and receipts, debit cards and other manual systems which are inefficient and difficult to audit. Managing the compliance around getting public funds to the right people while ensuring those funds are used for the right purpose is very complicated. ClassWallet does it at a fraction of the time and cost compared to legacy processes, in a fully transparent manner, without any sacrifice to compliance.

ClassWallet has emerged as the national de facto technology standard in education with 10% of teachers in America having a ClassWallet account. It is used across 32 states serving 6,200 K-12 schools and more than six million students. The company has helped its clients realize the full potential of over $2.7 billion in public funds.

One ClassWallet school district reported a reduction in purchase orders from 3,772 to 37 and a 42% increase in funds being utilized for their intended purpose, aided by the digital wallet technology. That same district expanded their usage from one to eight funding sources including Pre-K Funds, Special Education Funds and State Classroom Instructional Supplies. For these reasons and more, ClassWallet was named “Best Reimbursement Platform Helping Education Funds Distribution in a Compliant Manner” as part of The EdTech Awards 2024 from EdTech Digest. Learn more. 

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