Box spins Embed, OneCloud for educational use at K-12 schools, universities
Box is targeting the education sector with its latest industry partnerships and product announcements just in time for back-to-school season soon.
The Los Altos, Calif.-based company is introducing what it described as "a new ecosystem for collaboration in education."
In Thursday's announcement, Box boasted that "more than 100 universities and hundreds of K-12 institutions" are already using its cloud storage and apps platform within classrooms and for educational use.
That ecosystem is essentially comprised of three parts: one based on its recent acquisition of HTML5 document viewing platform Crocodoc, an integration between the Box Embed HTML5 framework with Canvas by Instructure, and more mobile app partners for OneCloud.
Starting with the first pillar, Crocodoc is being set up to function with learning management systems (LMS) and other education apps for viewing and editing documents stored in Box.
LMS examples include ShowMyHomework for tracking and monitoring homework and Blackboard Learn, a platform with tools for course management, social learning, student engagement and mobile features.
To recall, Box announced its acquisition of Crocodoc back in May. Founded in 2007 with an initial focus on Flash, Crocodoc has already been embedded on apps made by SAP, Yammer, LinkedIn, and (notable Box competitor) Dropbox.
Along with HTML5, some of the key features to Crocodoc include full mobile support and an API for third-party developer support.
Moving on to Box Embed, the framework will be used to embed Box's entire collaboration suite within the Canvas cloud-based learning management system. Thus, students and teachers alike should be able to upload, access, collaborate, and share work within Canvas but while stored and secured on Box.
Box Embed first debuted last fall with the likes of Oracle, NetSuite and SugarCRM, among others, signed on at launch time.
Salesforce.com also recently joined the list of tech giants supporting Box Embed, Box's HTML5-embeddable framework merging its suite of collaboration features and cloud-stored content with third-party applications.
Finally, the OneCloud apps ecosystem is getting stuffed with the following additional options: Engrade, Fluid Notes, Nearpod, Celly, UXWrite and 9Slides. Use cases range from grading, building presentations with video, and group texting for schools and universities.
The additional Box OneCloud apps are now accessible via the Box Apps Marketplace, except Engrade, which will follow in September.
The BoxEmbed integration with Canvas will roll out during the first quarter of 2014.
Images via Box