Lou is talking about the use of SharePoint at Lakewood High School, and how students are deeply involved.

Some notes:
– Lakewood has been using SharePoint since 2001. SharePoint 2010 was the eye-opening experience; “look at what we can do with this.”
– CATNIP – Center for Advanced Technologies News and Information Portal. Built originally in 2001, as a site for students and teachers. It is the learning management system at the Center for Advanced Technology. Have been moving to Office 365.
– … the teachers live in SharePoint – with assignment calendars, email dropboxes, textbooks are digitized and online, videos … all of this is perfect for what SharePoint is designed for. The whole design principle is to make the student successful.
– … using SharePoint Online, have set up a mini calendar to pull data from a teacher’s Exchange calendar of Lync meetings. Students get quick access to the different Lync meetings.
– … students live on their mobile phones. Among high school students, 86% or more of students have a smart phone. It is thus imperative to support mobile devices. Can take the most important information out of a SharePoint list and put it on a mobile device. Using native mobile apps.
– … parents also love the mobile apps. They can keep track of what their children have to do – assignments, etc.
– … provide external access via SharePoint Online for parents.
– other projects / applications:
– … the Student Schedule Builder – an academic planner. A replacement for choosing schedules based on paper forms. Now a touch-activated process. Kicks off a workflow that kicks off an email to parents (“this is what your child has chosen; do you agree or disagree?”) and to the guidance counsellor. Once the latter approves it, it sits in the student information system as a requested course request.
– … the Teacher Lesson Planner – an early success from 2010. The district said, “every teacher has to store their lesson plans online.”
– … built a regular portal / intranet for all of Lakewood High School. First iteration in SharePoint 2010 with minimal branding. The new page is very icon centric. Did a lot of quantitative analysis to figure out how to make things simpler for teachers.
– … the Campus Hall Pass System, started in 2010. In the US, in order to leave the classroom, you have to have authorization. The teacher gives this. Part of this is to increase safety, increase seat time, etc. Was previously done with paper.