The education market is ripe for portals, says Derrick Dominique, an analyst who follows e-marketplaces for the Hurwitz Group. Automating the vast procurement process for school districts could lead to great cost savings, Dominique says. Andersen incorporates Epylon technology in work it does for schools. Accountability is key, and using the Internet to monitor objectives is smart, she says. IBM's Learning Village Internet-based tool is a standards database for schools.
Teachers then go online to create lesson plans tied to the specific standards.
And teachers can share lesson plans online, offering a shortcut for other teachers. Using the Internet to support education is still new, though. And this is really new for schools. What we're seeing is a complete transformation of the administration within these schools. Schools have focused more on using the Internet as an administrative than as a learning tool, he says.