Virginia-based non-profit, CodeVA, has partnered with Aluminati to deliver an online collaboration platform for teacher training and development.
CodeVA is a non-profit organisation, based in Richmond, Virginia, USA, that partners with schools, parents and communities to bring equitable access to computer science education to students across the state. It is founded on the principle that “anyone can code, and that every Virginia child has a fundamental right to computer science literacy”.
Why Aluminati?
CodeVA needed a more robust space for educators to collaborate and access materials during their annual training event. In addition, the company is currently working on a federally funded research project that consists of a cohort of rural school teachers from regions all across Virginia. CodeVA needed space for them all to collaborate and work together, receive training materials, and continue the discussion.
“We appreciated the Aluminate Community Builder’s ability to export data and content, its security with member logins and being COPPA Security Compliant (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act 1998), the ability to support multiple user types, the ability to allow for multiple types of engagement (forums, discussions, events), and the ability to host multimedia extensions and learning modules”. – Betsy Seymour – Project Lead, CodeVA.
Room for Growth
CodeVA is starting the platform with a small number of users, with plans to grow from there. They are also building the internal support required to nurture a robust and engaging community, hiring a web developer and training content coordinators etc. Betsy said, “We hope to slowly phase out some platforms such as our current online platform and CRM once we get a feel for everything that the Aluminate Community Builder can do”.
Having compared other platform providers, the Aluminate Community Builder was the only one that met all their requirements, price point and build time-line. “We appreciated that the platform has a dedicated development team for the project, full GDPR security policies in place and learning modules baked in”, said Betsy.
Betsy said that teachers who participate in training with CodeVA have requested more opportunities for engagement, collaboration and communication, as well as more access to resources. The vision for their platform is to extend training to all of their cohorts to allow for more authentic and consistent online engagement.
We will be checking back in with CodeVA once their platform is launched.
