Over 3.5 million K-12 educators are teaching over 51 million children belonging to over 31 million families. These diverse groups present schools with a significant information management and communication challenge. In particular, the information gap between parents and schools presents a major obstacle to furthering the educational mission. Schools today rely on a combination of paper and computer methods to manage information. For example, in many schools, attendance is still taken on paper in each classroom, hand delivered to the central office, and then input into a computer by a staff person.
Schools also seek a presence on the Internet.
Because teachers do not have an easy way to post information themselves on the Internet, they typically must rely on giving information to either a designated person in the school or outside of the school to load the information onto the Internet and manage the site.