School Web Lockers Signs Five New Schools and School Districts for...

School Web Lockers, a leading provider of cost-effective, web-based computing solutions for education, today announced that five additional K-12 schools and school districts have joined its growing customer base for online file sharing, collaboration and storage. The new customers include the Roman Catholic Diocese Schools of Albany, NY; Clarkstown Central School District, based in New City, NY; De La Salle Institute, a private, Roman Catholic high school located in Chicago, IL; New Urban High School, a public charter school in Milwaukie, OR; and Pierson Vocational High School, in Nogales, AZ.

Through its software as a service (SaaS) platform, School Web Lockers provides each school or school district it serves with a secure, password-protected web site for file sharing and storage. Students, teachers and administrators alike are then given access to their own digital drop box, or web locker, which is available via password from the web site. Use of the system is easy: users can create work on one computer, and then stash files in their web locker for completion later -- either on the same computer, or on another one at home or elsewhere.

For Half Hollow Hills School District, which began using School Web Lockers late last year, the service has already proven its value. "Before School Web Lockers, our students and teachers had to save files to servers that they could not access from home. They were using flash drives and burning CDs to transport information to and from school," said Ellen Robertson, Coordinator of Instructional Computing. "Now they just upload files to their web lockers for easy anytime access -- from any computer, at home or at school, or even on vacation. Although that is by far the best aspect of School Web Lockers, the pricing is also very competitive."

File sharing with School Web Lockers is not only more convenient, but it is also safer and more secure than allowing students to use portable devices such as USB drives or compact disks, which can threaten the security of district networks. Another advantage is that students access their data on a separate domain from the school network, which also addresses further security concerns.

Offering unlimited storage capacity for as little as $1 per student, the School Web Lockers service is priced at a fraction of the cost of storage area networks (SANs) and other systems that would be required to support the large student and teacher populations in most schools and school districts. With many SANs priced as high as $50,000 or more today, more schools are turning to web-based storage as a cost-effective alternative, particularly when the costs of hiring a salaried employee to manage and maintain the SAN are also considered.

All School Web Lockers files are backed up daily and preserved from year to year to allow students to easily create a portfolio of work. The service also offers built-in security and safety measures, such as blocked file types, parental sign-in, and the ability for teachers and school administrators to monitor what students are storing. For collaboration beyond file sharing, School Web Lockers also provides teacher blogs and message boards (for school-wide or even district-wide online discussions.)

"The School Web Lockers system is completely hosted within a co-location center, which means schools not only reduce their investment in technology infrastructure, but they also eliminate software maintenance and administration costs," said Kelly Agrelius, manager of sales and marketing for School Web Lockers. "And, while many districts already rely upon on-site SANs for administrative files, they can expand their storage environments by using SaaS-based systems to support the increasingly complex video and data files that students and teachers use."

School Web Lockers also saves further costs by eliminating the need for paper: teachers can simply upload one file or assignment, and then post it in all student lockers electronically, instead of making multiple handout copies. In turn, students can complete an assignment on the computer and upload the document into the "homework due" folder, from which it is then sent directly to the teacher.

About School Web Lockers

School Web Lockers is a leading provider of cost-effective, web-based tools for collaboration, distance learning, one-to-one computing and online storage. Formed in 2004 as a division of San Diego-based Networld Solutions, Inc., School Web Lockers today serves hundreds of K-12 schools and school districts across the U.S. with secure, easy-to-use computing solutions for students, teachers and administrators. For more information, visit http://www.schoolweblockers.com or call 1-866-499-6527.

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