Andreas, Director of Technology Integration, needed to roll out an alternative design software for 3,000+ students but struggled to find a realistic option.
Kenston Local Schools is a 3,000 student public K-12 district in Chagrin Falls outside Cleveland, Ohio.
Whether at school or home, students, and teachers can design projects anywhere. No need for licensing, updating, or patching.
Students with a range of skills can easily use Marq' drag-and-drop interface. More time creating content, less time formatting and navigating complex menus.
Immediate authentication, seamless file sharing and collaboration.
Andreas saw a lot of his faculty still using outdated versions of Microsoft Publisher and Word for page layout assignments. In some elementary classrooms, students were making newsletters on a weekly basis and spending significant time formatting in Word to do so. Andreas needed to roll out an alternative design software but struggled to find an option. Adobe InDesign was far beyond his district's needs and too pricey. Apple Pages couldn't be used in the high school's PC labs. He didn't want to sink time and money into Publisher. "We wanted something that lives on the web but Google Drive didn't have an equivalent," he said.
After hitting several dead-ends, Andreas was excited to learn about Marq and quickly saw it as the 'missing link in Google Drive' for his district. With the Marq EDU Premium account, teachers can assign and grade projects directly through Google Classroom. Regardless of where students access their work from — on a Chromebook at school or on a Mac at home — Andreas can be assured they are using the same version. Collaboration tools in Marq eliminate the need for emailing files back and forth, making groupwork seamless.
Thanks to the intuitive design of Marq, adoption at Kenston Local Schools was quick and easy. "Anyone I show Marq to just gets it immediately," he said.
Three years after their rollout, Andreas’ technology team is happy to spend their time focused on facilitating technology-rich lessons rather than constantly updating and patching desktop software. As a result, Kenston’s technology team has been able to specialize in training and supporting one tool as opposed to many different tools.
For younger students lacking experience in design, the templates in Marq allow them to create professional-looking work in a short amount of time. Comparatively to feature-heavy software like InDesign, the simple drag-and-drop interface of Marq allows students to spend less time navigating complex menus and more time creating content.
In many Kenston classrooms, Marq has helped redefine old projects. Instead of the standard tri-fold poster common in science fairs, students are using Marq to make digital posters and displaying interactive presentations. “We don’t design for print anymore,” he said. “We just design for digital and publish straight from Marq.”
