“I can’t remember my password!” Does this sound familiar? As more learning activities move online, teachers are often required to set up new accounts for every student before they can access web-based educational content.

On a daily basis, a student’s online learning experience can be interrupted with forgotten passwords. These programs and websites often demand users create complex passwords to ensure students’ access is secure. Remembering these passwords and having to update them all the time can be cumbersome and finicky for most people.

Children beginning school today are likely to use hundreds of online applications throughout their time at school. With the average New Zealand class size being 25-plus students, it can quickly add up to a real administrative burden for teachers.

This is where Tahi comes in

Imagine a world where a student can log in to all of their favourite online education apps with the click of a button, without having to remember their passwords and usernames each time.

If every student and teacher had a single online identity that could be used to authorise their access to online programs, this could relieve a lot of administrative headaches.

Of course this online identity would need to work with a school’s Student Management System (SMS) and would need to be recognised by the company providing the educational content.

Tahi allows students and school staff to access multiple online apps using their one Tahi identity, reducing the need to manage thousands of logins and passwords. Working with a school’s SMS, a Tahi identity stays with their users throughout their school career, even when they change schools.

Educators recognise the need for Tahi

Pete Hall, Principal of Taupaki School, sees the benefits of schools signing up to use Tahi: “Tahi does two bodies of work at once: It makes the organisation and management of apps intuitive for teachers, but it also makes online content easy for students to use every day. It’s an experience teachers have always wanted for students; a seamless connection to the resources students need”.

N4L Education Sector Specialist Paula Hay, herself a former teacher, agrees: “An ideal world is one where all of the technology we use in the classroom just works, where teachers don’t need to spend time managing hundreds of passwords and students don’t waste time trying to remember which password they used for the site”.

Tahi will be used to sign into a growing number of educational apps. Apps to look out for include; Hail, DB Primary, Careers New Zealand, Clickview, Dreamcatcher and more. They join N4L’s Pond and web filtering in the catalogue of apps supporting Tahi.

Compiled by the N4L team. To learn more about Tahi go to n4l.co.nz/tahi/schools/