Jacques Houdoin is the director of the primary school of the Tokyo International French School. He has been using Azendoo for the past year along with 1,200 teachers present in the Asia-Pacific region to facilitate the dissemination of information and collaboration between the French school staff (teachers and non-teachers)
Hello Jacques, can you describe your role?
Hi, I'm the director of the French school in Tokyo. I am also involved in the coordination and implementation of digital tools to promote exchanges between all French institutions in the Asia-Pacific region. These facilities represent more than 1,200 collaborators, and it is therefore essential for us to share information and projects.
How were things organized before using Azendoo?
We mostly used emails, including mailing lists. We also had a website, with all the shortcomings that come with that: many users but very few contributors, many rights to manage and so on. In short it was absolutely not collaborative and ultimately the site wasn’t consulted very much.
What needs did you identify?
We had two specific needs. First off, reducing the number of emails - we had too many mailing lists, it was very complicated to archive or search. The other problem with the mailing lists is that it creates too much information and is difficult to treat it all and prioritize.
Then as part of continuing education we need more monitoring. When we prepare a course we need information to flow between all the institutions and to the right people. To summarize, we needed a tool for communication and the sharing of information.
Why Azendoo?
My predecessor had already tested the application. So when I took the baton I looked at Azendoo and found that it met many of our expectations: no need for maintenance, cross platform, easy to use, accessible and available in French and in Asia.
On the other hand, the support offered by Azendoo is a real plus. For example, if my colleagues have problems with the application they do not have to go through me to get answers. They can directly contact the Azendoo team and get a response. This really encourages individual autonomy, which is a crucial point for us.
Can you describe your typical use of Azendoo?
We have created a workspace and several discipline areas by theme. For example, for every course we create a Subject with the title of the course, and we invite all the teachers who will speak during this course and they share documents and information.
We use Google Drive and Dropbox to store our documents. Their integration with Azendoo really facilitates information sharing.
We also have Subjects for graduation exams, in which teachers collaborate on the creation of those tests.
What is your favorite feature?
The integrations with Google Drive and Dropbox are really practical. But my favorite is the document search feature in Subjects. I can find any document in a few clicks and it saves us valuable time!
How do you see the evolution of Azendoo within your organization?
Azendoo allowed us to reduce our email volume by 50-60%, so I want to keep that momentum going!
We are 1,200 collaborators so it takes time to get everyone involved. The simplicity of Azendoo helps gradually grow the number of teacher that are using it daily, although it will take some time before all teachers of the Asia-Pacific region are using the app.
Eventually I really want to make Azendoo our everyday tool and finally abandon our remaining mailing lists.