Messmer Catholic Schools and Pearson, global leader in educational technology, announce a partnership that will extend Messmer’s existing classroom tools and technologies to engage students, foster communication and drive achievement. Messmer will be piloting PowerSchool® - Fronter® Edition, a new offering that creates a virtual learning environment accessible to students and teachers at any time from any Internet connection.

Messmer’s Technology Director, Mike Bartels, believes the technology will lead to students learning over smartphones and other mobile Internet tools. 

The partnership with Pearson is the first in the country. Bartels intends that PowerSchool - Fronter be up and running in Messmer’s three campuses this fall.

A group of Messmer teachers, guidance counselors and librarians will begin training on PowerSchool – Fronter this summer.

Bartels said the PowerSchool - Fronter learning system by Pearson will not only cut education’s classroom tether but also will make collaboration among parents, teachers and students as routine as the final exam.

“Our kids are very connected these days,” Bartels said. “By taking our classrooms online and giving them devices like this, hopefully they will become more engaged and we’ll see better performance.”

With PowerSchool - Fronter, a teacher can organize students into a virtual room representing a class in history, for instance. The teacher can post history assignments, articles on the battle of Waterloo, even interactive games and videos in that room for her class.

Students log in to PowerSchool - Fronter, go to their virtual room and get everything they need. They can do their schoolwork online and put it into an electronic drop box any time they finish it. And e-mail that links everyone in the room makes it easy for students and the teacher to discuss the lesson together. 

Messmer can put almost anything it wants into Fronter’s virtual rooms and can adjust the degree of difficulty, so even kindergarten students who cannot read can use a Fronter page designed for that age group.

“They will be able to see pictures of their classmates and click on a picture to record an audio message or draw a picture,” Bartels said. “That’s a wonderful tool for them to be able to communicate with their classmates.”

Teachers and other staff are already planning ways to use PowerSchool - Fronter. “The librarians want to put their book clubs into this online format,” Bartels said, “and we will have a guidance room where counselors chat and share problems and help each other.”

Bartels expects professional development to take off because of the e-mail groups associated with each room. Teachers will have a teaching room so they can brainstorm in real time from home, for instance, and share links to class resources and education information. They could watch teaching tutorials over the Internet from the comfort of their living rooms.

Created in Norway in 1998, Fronter is the leading K-12 learning platform in Europe, where more than 8 million children and adults in 10,000 schools use it. Pearson, the world’s largest education company, purchased Fronter in 2001.

Pearson combined Fronter’s communication and intuitive learning tools with its PowerSchool web-based student information system for PowerSchool - Fronter Edition. Messmer has been using a basic version of PowerSchool for eight years to keep records of student and family contacts, immunizations, discipline and grades online at a secure Internet site that only authorized administrators, teachers, parents and students can see. 

Like most children in America, nearly all Messmer students have access to the Internet, even if they do not have computers at home, Bartels said. Many of Messmer’s students are low income and most are minority—10 percent of them Hispanic, 84 percent African-American. Many of Messmer’s students are able to attend the Catholic school through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, which allows low-income families to enroll their children in private schools and provides money to support their education. In addition, Bartels said, a generous Messmer donor network maintains a scholarship fund.

The PowerSchool - Fronter partnership is just the birth of Bartel’s dream for Messmer. His effort to gain funding for mobile devices students can use in and out of class has already begun.

PowerSchool – Fronter’s ability to integrate teaching that now occurs in Messmer’s three campuses will improve education, Bartels said. And because it is so easy with Fronter for everyone to communicate, there will be more collaboration to ensure that every Messmer student gets the best education possible, he said.

“The whole point is to give them the tools they need to succeed wherever they are—whether they’re at home, they’re sick, they’re on a vacation or whatever the case may be,” Bartels said.

“They all use this technology now. Why not embrace it and use it in school?”

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Pearson (NYSE:PSO), the global leader in education services, education technology and school solutions, provides innovative print and digital education materials for preK through college, student information systems and learning management systems, teacher professional development, career certification programs, and testing and assessment products that set the standard for the industry. Pearson's other primary businesses include the Financial Times Group and the Penguin Group.