Educational communities are a major source of support, opportunity, and connection for people and organizations eager to foster learning in pursuit of shared goals. Educators and students are often members of multiple learning communities, whether for instructional support and guidance that’s complementary to classroom, online and at-home study, or to pursue shared interests and hobbies within an educational framework.
What is an online learning management system (LMS)?
Educational communities may be as simple as a piano teacher regularly communicating with students or as complex as a university hosting multiple programs, associations, and alumni groups. Regardless of size or mission, as students expect learning materials, records, and transcripts to be delivered online in today’s digital age, each of these communities need a robust, secure platform for sharing and developing community affairs and information. An online learning management system (LMS) provides the perfect platform for all these elements.
What are the benefits of using an LMS?
The right online LMS offers a centralized location for storing, sharing, and organizing school records, including diplomas, transcripts, IEP plans, progress reports, and so on. From preschool to post-grad, the learning process can take several decades and span multiple schools, school districts, and involve several academic institutions.
Student record management
Collecting, tracking, and sharing records from all of these institutions over time can be important as students make progress, but oftentimes, paper records are lost, details are forgotten, and certificates of proof are rarely available immediately when you have to act quickly on an opportunity or meet a pressing application deadline.
Not only does Kinscape offer a robust, secure platform for educational communities eager to share, collaborate, and organize tools for learning, but it provides an excellent repository for school materials across learning environments, supplementary education, and academic institutions.
In addition to education documents, transcripts, diploma work, school applications and other materials, Kinscape also lets you add notes with explanations as needed—for instance if a transcript is incomplete or letter of recommendation need categorizing.
Learning management system features
To understand the LMS features available in Kinscape, we spoke with Lynne Rey, busy Mom, artist, writer, power-boater, homeschool coach, small business owner, and parent of three who’s been using Kinscape to keep track and store her children’s important academic records and achievements.
“I use Kinscape a lot for family events, sharing, and other things, but one of the most valuable uses has been keep track of my children’s educational lives and digitize student records,” Lynne says. “We travel quite a bit and my children often need their school records, so I needed a place where I can instantly share the right document. I’ve set up a community for each child and separated each one into preschool, pre-K to 4th grade, 5th to 8th grade, high school, college, and beyond. When my daughter was attending graduate school in London, she needed to access her transcripts. Despite being separated by an ocean, I could easily share her documents safely stored in Kinscape. Within minutes, she had what she needed. It’s so easy and practical.”
Building an online learning community
Another feature that Lynne particularly appreciates is the ability to build community and control who has access to the information in that community. While most parents wouldn’t want to share out the majority of the personal education information in Kinscape, being able to give the student, educators, counselors, and other education advisors easy access to the information is a definite advantage.
“It’s not just another cloud storage drive because it’s editable, easy to organize, and incredibly secure,” Lynne adds. “Kinscape’s attention to security and privacy mean our most sensitive information is kept safe. That gives us important peace of mind, as well as being handy to have all this information in one place.”
Communication and collaboration for educators and students
To help ease communication between educators, parents, and students, Admin rights make it possible to share information as needed, and then change teacher or educator access when the student moves on to the next grade or another school.
“Kinscape’s flexibility and ease of use has made it an essential tool for storing my kids’ records, diplomas, and more,” Lynne concludes.