What is ECC?

ECC is a simple web authoring and viewing application. We built it so that teachers could give parents and children easy access to important classroom information over the Internet. Communication between parent and teacher is often difficult; ECC makes this process easier by presenting important and current information about various classes over the Internet. From this parents can learn about upcoming events and keep track of student assignments.

How does it work? When a school district decides to start using ECC, an administrator at the district is trained to establish campus level ECC accounts for all participating teachers. Once an account is established, a teacher can customize his or her page with a welcome message and/or a picture. At that point, the teacher can then use the ECC authoring tool to enter important dates (such as a field trip, or special lecture or lab) in the classroom calendar section. The teacher can also enter classroom and homework assignments in the classroom assignments section. External files also can be attached (an outside reading assignment, or lesson notes, for example).

Each event or assignment the teacher enters can be made time-sensitive. The teacher can "program" the date on which the event or assignment is to appear on the class web page, as well as the date that event or assignment is to stop appearing on the page. There's no need for "manual clean-up" by either the teacher or a web page developer!

Additionally, a teacher can list websites of interest to the class, and these are linked on the teacher's page.

How does ECC help a parent or student? As ECC is intended to be part of a District's web presence, a parent needs only to navigate to the ECC link from the District website. Once there, the parent selects the school, teacher, and class of his/her child, selects that link, and is taken to the page that has been authored by the teacher, where the calendar and assignment information can be copied, printed, or downloaded.

What will we add in the next version of ECC? The current version of ECC is just the beginning. Future versions of ECC will include such features as:

Detailed links to curriculum materials
Extended district-level information and calendar pages
Synchronization capability with personal digital assistants
Access to streaming video and other multimedia capabilities
Other features that teachers and parents request

ECC is a simple solution to a simple problem: keeping parents and teachers connected in a busy, information-packed world. It's easy to use, and easy to learn. Welcome to ECC!