Box Builds Ecosystem to Modernize Collaboration in Education

LOS ALTOS, Calif., Aug. 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Box today unveiled a new ecosystem for collaboration in education, with industry partners across the web, mobile and channel. The company also announced that more than 100 universities and hundreds of K-12 institutions use Box to facilitate better sharing and to create more modern classrooms.

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In the past year, Box's sales in the education industry more than doubled. Universities worldwide including Georgetown, University of Maryland, University of Mississippi, Stanford, Temple University and Tufts have moved millions of students, faculty and administrators to Box. The company has also seen impressive traction among K-12 institutions, like Atlas Preparatory School, Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School, KIPP D.C., St. David's School, The Whitby School Inc. and West Lafayette Community School Corporation, who are adopting Box to create cutting-edge classroom experiences, often times in conjunction with tablet use.

"Future success for students and educators will be dependent on how well we integrate technology into our modern learning environments," said Whitney Bouck, senior vice president and general manager of enterprise at Box. "Box helps schools to teach, conduct research, and run their operations more creatively and effectively, while also giving students new ways to connect and learn. With our growing network of education partners, we are enabling students and teachers to take ownership of education."

Beautiful content experiences on the web: Crocodoc and Box Embed partnerships

With Box's recent acquisition of Crocodoc, the company brings market-leading HTML5 document collaboration tools to its education partners. Crocodoc technology enables learning management systems (LMS) and education apps to redefine teacher and student workflows with seamless, beautiful document viewing and annotation experiences. Leading education applications using this technology include:

• Blackboard Learn – LMS that incorporates learning tools, including course management, social learning, student engagement and mobile features
• Deltak - online learning tools and administration, a subsidiary of John Wiley & Sons
• Edmodo – K-12 social learning platform that allows teachers and students to collaborate, share content, and use educational apps
• Haiku Learning - suite of cloud-based tools designed to get students and educators up and running with digital learning in minutes
• MediaCore – a cloud based video education platform that is used by institutions to transform teaching and learning through online video
• ShowMyHomework - UK's number one product for tracking and monitoring homework

Box is also announcing a new relationship with Canvas by Instructure, a native cloud learning management system. The new partnership leverages Box Embed, a robust HTML5 framework that embeds Box's entire suite of collaboration and management features directly within Canvas. Now students and teachers can upload, access and collaborate on all their content within Canvas and the content remains centrally managed and secured in Box. Canvas also leverages Crocodoc's preview and annotation technology to allow teachers to review and grade assignments within the application.

"Our native integration with Box's open platform aligns perfectly with our mission to modernize the education system," said Brian Whitmer, co-founder and chief product officer at Instructure. "Together with Box, we are making it easy and secure for educators and students to access and collaborate on course material from a central location in the cloud."

Building more mobile classrooms: Box OneCloud partners

Box's new education-focused OneCloud app partners offer innovative ways for education communities to easily create learning materials, manage classrooms and facilitate communication between students, instructors and parents, while keeping all the content in a secure, central location within Box. New app partners include:

• Engrade - grading app improves teachers' workflow and parent/student engagement
• Nearpod - enables teachers to easily create and share interactive lessons
• Celly - group texting service for schools and universities
• Fluid Notes - simple note taking and handwriting app
• UX Write - word processor for the iPad for large documents like theses
• 9Slides - lets educators build presentations with video for the classroom

Reaching higher education institutions worldwide: channel partners

Box has partnered with three of the world's leading research and education networks, SURF, NORDUnet and Internet2, to extend Box's reach into higher education institutions in the Netherlands, the Nordic and U.S. The partnership with Internet2 provides U.S. universities with an easy way to deploy Box campus-wide. Since the launch of the Internet2 NET+ Box program in April 2012, more than 1.5 million Box accounts have been purchased across 49 universities. Box also recently joined Internet2's InCommon, which provides a number of trust services for the research and higher education community.

Availability

The BoxEmbed integration with Canvas will be available in Q1 of 2014. Box OneCloud apps: Fluid Notes, Nearpod, Celly, UXWrite and 9Slides are accessible via the Box Apps Marketplace and Engrade will be available in September 2013. For more information on today's announcement, please visit the Box blog.

To learn more about Box for education, join our upcoming customer conference at www.box.com/boxworks.

About Box

Founded in 2005, Box provides a secure content sharing platform that both users and IT love and adopt. Content on Box can be shared internally and externally, accessed through iPad, iPhone, Android and Windows Phone applications, among others, and extended to partner applications such as Google Apps, NetSuite and Salesforce. Headquartered in Los Altos, CA, Box is a privately held company and is backed by venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Emergence Capital Partners, General Atlantic, Meritech Capital Partners, NEA, Scale Venture Partners, and U.S. Venture Partners, and strategic investors salesforce.com and SAP. To learn more about Box, visit www.box.com.

Contacts:
Devin Knighton, Director of Public Relations
(801) 722-8187  |  [email protected]
Twitter: @devinknighton  |  www.instructure.com

SOURCE Box; Instructure