Customize your school's Boardingware experience in a way that would make your founders proud.

Boarding school history is one of the industry's most valuable assets.  Many of Boardingware's clients are institutions that have stood the test of time (the oldest being 900 years old!). Through many economic cycles and disasters, these schools have maintained their popularity and relevance through even to today’s digital world. With rapid distribution and democratisation of education, what is it that makes real brick and mortar boarding schools remain an integral part of modern society?Many of us at Boardingware are boarding school alumni and we believe that it's the traditions, the values and the history that families are paying for when they send their child to your school. At the end of the day, the majority of parents want their children to walk away with your school’s name on their resume and a strong set of values instilled in them by the school. Throughout a student's tenure at a boarding school, they will undoubtedly repeat daily rituals and traditions which help to ingrain the school's culture.  Today, mobile devices are being integrated deeper into a student's day and with the growing use of digital applications your community is using, it’s important not to dilute these traditions and the philosophy laid out by the school’s founders.This is why we built School Pride. With this feature your school is empowered with the ability to implement a beautiful customized experience for your community in a way that would make the founders of your school proud.

So... I get to put my colours and logos into the app, what’s so great about that?

We know the idea of custom-branded software is nothing new, but we’ve done our research across the Edtech industry and software companies outside of education that offer ‘white labelling’. In some cases schools/companies will send their branding details to a software provider who then tries to customize the application to suit them which didn’t seem quite right to us - the main problem there, is that there is no emotional understanding of your school's ethos on the side of the software company. Therefore we foresee constant ‘back and forth’ in order to get it right and schools would often end up settling for a ‘good enough’ result. We’ve also seen cases where schools are given complete control of coloring every button within an application, which on the surface sounds like 'creative freedom', but really, it becomes so complex that you’re limited by the design capabilities of the 1 person at your school that knows how to use a feature with that kind of complexity.Instead, we started by understanding what our clients want by analysing many schools' branding guidelines which are publicly available online. By doing this we believe we have designed a solution that provides the freedom and ease of use that you need but it also comes with the right amount of structure that we think you will find helpful to maintain the standards held by your marketing team.

Why should a school’s marketing team care about this?

A school's marketing team is responsible for promoting the school's brand and making it's values known -- School Pride is doing exactly that.A parent's interaction with the school is often administered online so it’s important to make sure the school’s brand is not lost amongst the dozens of apps they will be using. This leads to better retention for your current students and a great recruiting tool for prospective students. Click here and request a demo for your marketing team.How it works.Once you’re signed up to use our School Pride power-up you will have access to customize your Boardingware app. Here you control all of the aesthetics for the platforms that your community will use.[caption id="attachment_2292" align="aligncenter" width="1440"]

With Visual Identity you can customize every one of your users experience.[/caption]From the Design Studio you can insert school colours, logos and your choice of imagery to automatically place throughout your app’s experience in a way that you can be proud of.You can choose to lead with your primary or secondary colour however, if you think your colours are overbearing - you can use a neutral grey as the primary colour and then choose to have some of the more subtle elements coloured with your primary colours. This may seem simplistic, but it’s important to note that we have made it incredibly hard for you to make the system look bad. The structure ensures it appears professional and it helps even someone with no design experience to create an effortlessly beautiful solution.

Culture Code/Culture

Here’s where we are bringing something entirely different into the mix. The visual appearance of your school is not the only aspect that influences culture across your school’s community. In order to truly immerse your community in your culture and ethos, it’s important to communicate your values effectively. The Culture Code feature allows you to input the school’s values and choose where you would like them to be recited throughout the application.[caption id="attachment_2282" align="aligncenter" width="524"]

Above: A school's values being promoted through the Checkpoint App[/caption]So, if your school is serious about promoting your philosophy and maintaining your traditions but you don't want to hire a designer or developer to get it done. Click here to request a demonstration and one of your local Boardingware consultants will be in touch to show you through School Pride. Or feel free to access the power-up through your app and request an upgrade.If you have any questions, feedback or words of encouragement email me at paul@boardingware.com or let us know in the comments below!Paul