Clever (YC S12) Lands $3M, Now In 2000 Schools
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
The idea is that School's can integrate their SIS system with Clever's network once, and then have "seamless" integrations with whatever tools operate on that network. This is "free of charge" to the schools.
However, the apps/tools that integrate with Clever must pay them.
It should be noted that Clever's data and API aren't based on any existing or proposed industry standard.
Schools are baited with the idea of a "free" integration. They'll end up paying for it in the long run, though, because those costs will be passed on for every application they use.
What's worse, they'll all be locked into this proprietary standard.
On the surface, this all sounds like a "Great Idea". At the end of the day, it's an attempt at a land grab to try and control the market for student data. Is that even a market that should exist in the first place? Are schools making the right long-term choice when they integrate with a tool such as Clever and LearnSprout, it if means being locked into a proprietary standard down the road?
This sounds exactly like what has happened with the "centralized network" problem we have with Twitter, FB, etc.--and it is.
Yes, the existing toolset in K12 is abysmal. Schools and their vendors should be looking to implement standards such as those offered by IMS in Higher Ed, rather than just adding another proprietary mouth in the trough--especially one that doesn't offer any actual learning tools.
If Clever and LearnSprout issued their data formats under an open license through a standards body, I'd be way more interested. That said, I'm glad to see any kind of shake-up in the Ed space.
The cost savings for developers is also very real. Instead of having to hire full-time integrators to manage each account with variants for each SIS, developers can plug into an API that works with all SISs once and be done.
Finally, we should remember that having access to an API that is not regulated by SIS companies allows for the development of a new generation of edtech that until now, was not possible due to the fact that much of the data is purposely locked away in the SIS. Would Pearson really want parents using something like Edmodo in lieu of their own portal? In the attention economy, it's not in Pearson's interest to enable these types of solutions.
You don't necessarily have to submit them to a standards body like ECMA or IMS. You can just publish them under an open license that is free to use by everyone involved.
You'd still be able to provide your service and charge for it accordingly.
Pearson already offers an open-standards based integration solutions. Yes, it's convoluted and difficult to implement. But it's out there and it's used by almost all of the real SIS providers. The idea that FTP and CSV are the only options available to schools is false. See http://sifinfo.org for an example.
All you are doing is changing which fox is in the hen house. It's a good game, business-wise, but is it really the right move for the K-12 providers and their customers?
From the perspective of a software company, something like SIF adds needless additional costs. Want to plug into SIF? Get certified: http://www.sifinfo.org/us/sif-certification.asp. API docs? Support? Good luck finding that.
The reality is that most of the standards you're talking about are free money for high-priced consultants.
Many of the SIS providers have failed to make these solutions easy to implement and they've allowed these standards to become overly complex. I've kinda said that in each of my posts.
But that's besides the point. I'm not arguing that Clever and LearnSprout aren't adding some kind of value. Of course they are.
But they are merely letting schools trade out one piece of vendor lock-in for another. And as we see play out in this industry, over and over again, is that vendor-lockin comes back to bite everyone involved.
So, instead of changing the conversation, why not address my question: why not offer the specs for your API and data formats under a free and open copyright regime? Let the market decide what format is best and what providers are best, but let the data be free and open.
With that, you'd even be beating SIF at their own game.
If a web app had a secure API to include all of my class lists automatically, I'd be much more likely to use it.
Ours is ugly but functional.
edit: Apparently I misunderstood what I read. Sorry.
Clever actually isn't an SIS, though--we provide an API/integration layer that sits on top of the SIS.
We think SISes are great at a lot of things (state reporting, for example). Providing a nice interface for developers is not one of those things.
Everyone with an API take note: examples in your favorite language of each API request with a demo API key already set up is how you get developers playing with your API. There was almost zero barrier to entry for me to get data from their API into a language I knew how to manipulate JSON objects with and muck around to my heart's content.
Note to Clever: perhaps go all the way to converting the response body to a JSON object in each language?
Edit: also, the "show/hide, collapse, expand" buttons are confusing. You only need two buttons that change their action depending on the current state ("collapse" becomes "expand" if the content is collapsed), and "show/hide" should be up by the `h2`s.
This is a world of change for school software development.
Of course, many existing SIS integration tools provide such capabilities, it's just that they are overly cumbersome to implement and use and so very often aren't.
Schools and enterprise businesses have a lot more in common than you'd think...
http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/covereden...
They must have a pretty good vision to attract the capital