Digication Blog

Digication Surpasses 1,000th School Milestone in First Academic YearThe Boston Community Leadership Academy Honored as 1,000th School; Senior Capstone Project Showcases Power of e-Portfolios in the Classroom

Providence, RI - July 9, 2007 - The students and teachers of the Boston Community Leadership Academy (BCLA) in Brighton, MA, are pioneering an educational trend to publish projects to the Internet with e-Portfolios. BCLA last month became the milestone 1,000th school working with Digication, an entirely new concept in educational software and web publishing that is Simple by Design. With no training required, and no budget approval necessary (Digication is free for up to 1,000 students at any U.S. school), four senior history classes at BCLA began using Digication's web-based e-Portfolio solution immediately-highlighting an impressive Senior Capstone project where more than 60 students published and archived this culmination of their high school work to the Internet (http://bcla.digication.com/BCLAcapstoneclass/Home/).

"When we launched Digication at the start of the school year, our handful of pilot project schools had shown the simple yet powerful approach to integrating technology in the classroom was effective, but closing the academic year with widespread adoption by users at more than 1,000 schools exceeded even our loftiest expectations," said Jeffrey Yan, CEO of Digication and an educator at several New England universities. "Students and teachers are starved for effective technology that can motivate students and drive a more collaborative learning process. By filling that need, Digication is now creating online learning communities at schools in nearly every state across the nation."

Digication is centered around the creation, publication, discussion and archiving of educational content to the web with dynamic e-Portfolios. Simple by Design, users can skip the typical roadblocks of learning a new technology, and jump right into benefiting from the significant impact that customized technology can have upon today's learning experience.

"The Senior Capstone project was an opportunity for my students to ask important questions about the community they live in and develop significant answers. Digication provided an amazing opportunity to showcase the lessons learned and share their experience with the entire school community, as well as future classes," said James Liou, the senior history teacher, BCLA. "We've understood the opportunity the Internet presented as a medium to learn and reflect, but learning to build a web page is a time consuming task. With Digication, many students immediately said, 'I can do this' or 'I like this' and were excited by the opportunity to incorporate their personality into their e-portfolio."

"Before Digication in my previous years of teaching, the year would often end and I would be left with a lot of exemplary work without a way to effectively archive and share it," continued Liou. "But now each student's project can keep on living on the Internet for others to learn from and appreciate, and ideally, for their ideas of community change to become known and valued."

Recognizing BCLA as the 1,000th Customer
Digication is honoring the Boston Community Leadership Academy as the 1,000th school to sign-up and leverage their web-based software, with the gift of the Digication Admin Tool for one full year. The Digication Admin Tool empowers administrators to leverage the free Digication e-learning software with customization and enhanced management features.

With BCLA having so quickly integrated Digication so deeply into classrooms to enhance the learning experience, Digication chose to provide the Admin Tool as a gift that will help teachers and administrators get even more out of Digication as they plan for the next academic year. The gift is an enhancement to Digication's core e-Portfolio and online classroom/community solution, which remains free for up to 1,000 users at any U.S. accredited school.

The presentation of a plaque commemorating BCLA as the 1,000th customer took place in June, with Digication President Kelly Driscoll and CEO Jeffrey Yan visiting the school in person to interact with the teachers and learn first-hand how students are benefiting from Digication as a motivating and collaborative enhancement to BCLA's classrooms. Photos of the visit are available on Digication's Web site at www.digication.com.

Publishing Student Work for the World to See
Digication's e-Portfolios give students the tools to publish within the framework of their achievements, aspirations, educational experiences, and extra-curricular activities. The process of creating an e-Portfolio not only gives students an opportunity to build necessary technology skills, but also provides an excellent opportunity for acknowledging their strengths, recognizing areas for improvement, setting goals and marking milestones. They are powerful tools for learning and reflection and can provide dynamic platforms for sharing and collaboration to enhance the learning experience.

The Boston Community Leadership Academy is one of the Boston public pilot schools. It offers a rigorous college preparatory program with college acceptance as a graduation requirement, while focusing on developing future scholar leaders through community service learning and adherence to rigorous academic, social and civic expectations. Courses include AP classes, world languages, and arts. Seniors take part in their Capstone projects requiring action research in their communities. All students present portfolios and exhibitions to demonstrate mastery in their coursework. Students also have a voice as members of Student Government, Governing Board and Leadership Team.

Each year students from BCLA assemble and defend portfolios to present their year's work in final assessments. Digication was the perfect compliment to expand this established practice from a print portfolio that could be shared in a one-to-one environment, to a more dynamic, interactive web publishing environment that empowered the school community to share and learn from each individual project. It also acts as an archive, which helps educators document and track work for accreditation and other standards requirements.

The new one-to-many aspect of showcasing BCLA senior capstone projects with Digication extends the reach of student's work far beyond even the school community. Mr. Liou chose to publish his Senior Capstone Class portfolios to the public as well, and they can be viewed by anyone on the web at: http://bcla.digication.com/BCLAcapstoneclass/Home/.

About the Digication Admin Tool
The Digication Admin Tool enables schools to take control over the management of their Digication learning community, from linking user sign-up to existing student databases, to course management and user access privileges within the online community. It allows administrators to customize their school's Digication site, import user data and course lists, review usage metrics and control what users are allowed to do on the school's site. Digication's Admin Tool lets schools decide what e-Portfolios, what communications or online classroom content should be published to individual sub-groups of students, teachers, individual classes, clubs and organizations, or to the outside world - all with the simple by design Web 2.0 principles Digication was built upon.

About Digication, Inc.
Digication represents an entirely new concept in educational software that is simple by design. Easier to master and simpler to use, Digication provides all the connectivity, file sharing and e-Portfolio tools educators and students want. Designed by educators to serve the core needs of educators, Digication opens the lines of communication by creating a secure, private community that can learn and grow both inside and outside the classroom. Digication provides an online digital portfolio and academic social network solution for school communities and alumni across the nation. The e-Portfolio technology is integrated with a web-based online learning community designed for classrooms and internal school communities that supports the development of digital content to be showcased in e-Portfolios. For advanced use, the Digication Admin Tool provides customization and management of online Digication communities. Digication is headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island. For more information, visit www.digication.com.