Recently, Blind Brook has made the decision to discontinue the use of Edline, a website the district has been using for online communication between students, parents, teachers, and administrators for the past decade. In replacement, teachers in both the middle and high school have each created their own Google Sites page for the classes they teach.
As said in the Blind Brook Notice email to the community on October 9th, “These sites are maintained by the teacher of the course and include information such as the course syllabus and course resources.” These sites were created as a replacement for Edline, which has been discontinued. These new sites are located under “Resources” in both the middle and high school sites. “The move away from Edline had to occur because the company that owns it is shutting it down,” said Mr. Horowitz, now the assistant principal of Blind Brook Middle School.
The decision to discontinue the use of Edline was one that students should have seen coming. It has been over four years since the release of Google Classroom, and this year’s juniors were the first class to receive Google Chromebooks back in 2014. Today, all students in grades 7-12 bring Chromebooks or their own personal devices daily. It’s notable that Edline was outdated in comparison with its modern competitors. The combined use of Google Drive, Google Classroom, and Google Sites work together, providing students an easier access to their files, unlike Edline.
Mr. Horowitz shared his opinion the switch after years of teaching with both Google Sites and Edline. “As a teacher, I had used Google Sites with my students for many years and much preferred it to Edline. Google Sites offers many more features and gives the user much more control in terms of layout, design, and ease of use. From a student perspective, this equates to ‘one-stop shopping’ where everything that is needed can be accessed from one place.” Edline was launched on May 15, 1997.