Google Workspace for Education is a user-friendly, reliable, and secure digital infrastructure, but provisioning classes in Google Classroom can be an especially manual process, and keeping them up to date can be challenging. As technology becomes more accessible in the classroom, teachers need to have tools that allow them to easily manage their student rosters. Dedicated to enabling schools to get the most out of their Google Cloud, Amplified IT has a new Little SIS.
Schools going Premium
Little SIS Premium has already proven its value as schools adopt it into their workflow. Silver Lake Regional School District, on the South Shore of Massachusetts, migrated to Google Workspace for Education 3-4 years before they first engaged with Amplified IT as a Little SIS Sync Agent beta, previously Big SIS, participant. “Because we were trying to get Google Classroom going in our district, we agreed to be ‘guinea pigs’ and go through the process. We’ve been Amplified IT Customers ever since and have branched into other products and services like Google Workspace licenses, Gopher tools, Centipedes, the Collaborative, and support hours,” shared David Murphy, Manager of Information Systems.
Responsible for managing the district’s SIS and Google ecosystem, David solved many challenges in syncing Classroom classes with Little SIS Sync Agent, but wanted a Cloud-based tool that wouldn’t operate as a local application needing to run on a district server and tie up resources. When he was introduced to Little SIS Premium, he did not hesitate to utilize it.
Little SIS Sync Agent increased Classroom adoption in our district. We maybe had 10% of teachers using it before, but afterwards we had 80% in the first year. Little SIS Premium streamlines everything into one cloud application, making it easier to manage. I can pull out my phone and open a website to check on the status of our Classroom syncs. I won’t have to worry about installing Windows or keeping Little SIS updated on our locally hosted infrastructure anymore.
In transitioning to Little SIS Premium, schools will find that there is no difference in the core functionality, design, concept, or dialogue from Little SIS Sync Agent which makes the adoption process smooth. “I can’t tell you how many vendors who start with a locally hosted product and move to the cloud forget to factor in ease-of-use,” David said. “It’s completely different. They change the paradigms, the data requirements. It’s like they farmed out to somebody else. With Amplified IT, you know it’s a homegrown product that the core team developed and made sure to keep it familiar.” While some qualities are new to the Little SIS platform, they serve to enhance teaching and learning.
As previously mentioned, the Teacher Review feature gives teachers administrative control over Google Classroom. In the past, if a teacher had 5 classes in SIS, they would receive 5 Google Classroom classes. Now teachers can customize their Google classes without having to worry about their students being rostered and synced as they come and go throughout the year. “I can say a good 20% of our power users are going to be all over Teacher Review. As teachers use it and give feedback to Amplified IT, I really think it’s going to grow,” David enthused.
When asked how Little SIS Premium would support other schools, David responded, “It is going to be great for the districts who want more teachers to adopt Google Classroom with a simple system but don’t want to manage another local server or don’t have the resources to do so.” He added, “So many schools have some rostering technology and they don’t know what they can automatically provision and keep rosters up to date in Google Classroom. Once they learn about this tool, they’ll want to hop on it. I can’t even imagine you’ll want to have anyone using the old product after using this one.”
Little SIS Premium is an optimal solution that includes the characteristics of Little SIS Sync Agent and Little SIS for Classroom with a few enhanced abilities. To adopt Little SIS Premium into your Google Workspace for Education workflow, contact an account manager.
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Casey Zawadzki
Product Manager -
About the Author:
Casey lives just outside of Orlando, FL and is part of Amplified IT’s growing Product Development team. After serving in the United States Marine Corps, Casey received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Central Florida and has spent the last 12 years working within Higher Education, Education Technology, and K-12 SaaS in a variety of roles. When he isn’t working Casey is spending time with his 8 year old son, inshore kayak fishing, or woodworking.