Kenston Local Schools

Andreas saw a lot of his faculty still using outdated versions of Microsoft Publisher and Word for page layout assignments.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 Lucidpress and quickly saw it as the 'missing link in Google Drive' for his district. With the Lucidpress 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 Lucidpress eliminate the need for emailing files back and forth, making groupwork seamless. 

Thanks to the intuitive design of Lucidpress, adoption at Kenston Local Schools was quick and easy. "Anyone I show Lucidpress 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 Lucidpress 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 Lucidpress allows students to spend less time navigating complex menus and more time creating content.

In many Kenston classrooms, Lucidpress has helped redefine old projects. Instead of the standard tri-fold poster common in science fairs, students are using Lucidpress 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 Lucidpress.”