A San Francisco start-up called Clever is solidifying its place as an educational tool in classrooms across the country thanks to its ability to make students' and teachers' lives easier when its comes to managing data.

Put simply, "'Clever does two things...It helps apps integrate with student information systems and gives students and teachers a single sign-on for all of them,'" said Clever's co-founder and CEO Tyler Bosmeny to NPR.

In other words, Clever allows teachers and administrators to keep track of what applications are being used in one easy-to-access spot, and getting rid of the annoyance of having multiple log-ins for each one.

Clever announced this week that 44,000 schools, or one third of the nation's public and private schools, are using the tool.

Another big reason behind the widespread support and use of the tool is because it reduces concerns over student data. As learning becomes an increasingly digital task, many parents are concerned about the security of their child's data.

"'I think they're setting up a tool that's really useful for school districts...They're sitting in between school districts and vendors and they're handling aspects of the data handoff, so they're enabling the districts to have a better handle on what data is going to their vendors and how it's getting there,'" said student privacy advocate Joel Reidenberg to NPR.

On the flip side, because Clever focuses on security and privacy concerns, the tool works with just about 200 applications out of the pool of many more educational apps out there.

Though it might not be perfect, NPR says that "[w]hat the startup does represent is a broader emerging trend. Increasingly, teachers and schools are seeking an alternative to a classroom technology model that looks more like the old paper textbook market, where a company like Pearson or McGraw-Hill lands a huge contract to provide all things digital to all classrooms in a district."

Read the full article here and comment with your thoughts below.

Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

08/28/2015