Many schools use a single device for specific classrooms or for the entire school. There are a few different ways schools can go about sharing devices in a way that still allows teachers to accurately track what is happening within their rooms and be able to report on which teachers logged which actions.
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Individual Staff Accounts
Regardless of if your teachers and staff are sharing devices or not, all staff members should be added to your staff list. This allows schools to track in and out times for each teacher, the actor posting specific activities on student feeds, and view live ratios.
You can learn more about staff accounts and permissions settings here. The main concern we want to address here, is individual staff access.
Any teacher or staff added to brightwheel with an email address will be invited to create a brightwheel account. They will be able to log in and use the app depending on how the admin has set up their profile.
That said, many schools may prefer that staff do not have access to individual accounts. In this case, administrators can add staff without an email address. This will add staff to your list, but not allow them to log in. Setups like this work great with our Room Device Mode.
Room Device Mode
brightwheel's Room Device Mode is a great option for schools that do not have devices for each staff member and do not want them to be using their personal devices. This feature allows:
Administrators to lock the device by room, allowing multiple staff members to use the same device.
Teachers assigned to a specific classroom will be able to check kids in and post activities without having to log into their own accounts.
When interacting with the app, staff are able to select the specific teacher sending the message or logging the activity in Room Device Mode.
This is the most secure and convenient way for schools to use shared devices.
Risky Setups
There are a few ways that we at brightwheel have seen schools set up staff accounts and access that result in headaches down the road. Below are some practices that brightwheel strongly discourages:
Shared Login Credentials - Multiple staff using the same email and password to log into brightwheel can put your school at risk of data tampering and inappropriate behavior. If a staff member is terminated, it can be very difficult to lock them out of your account if they are sharing login information with other active users. It also makes it very difficult to hold teachers accountable to their activity in brightwheel.
Recycled Credentials - Record keeping is very important to you and us! By recycling login credentials, there is no way to retroactively pull time cards for past employees, or know for sure which person posted an activity or sent a specific message. It's important that each staff member have their own unique log in credentials.
Dummy Email Addresses - Fake email addresses being used as login credentials make it impossible to reset passwords if the staff member ever gets locked out of brightwheel. This can result in a single staff member having multiple records throughout their employment, making it very difficult to properly report on in the future.
Duplicate Check-in Codes - If staff members and/or parents have check-in codes that match another user's at your school, they will be required to enter the last four digits of their phone number. While we have mitigated risk for this type of situation, it is best that each person have a unique code.