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How École Boulle Improved Collaborative Work with Talkspirit
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How do you streamline collaborative work and information sharing in a school environment, while ensuring the institution’s data security’? That’s the challenge tackled by École Boulle using Talkspirit!Located in the 12th arrondissement of Paris,
École Boulle is a public educational institution that trains young people aged 14 to 26 in the arts and design trades. The school has around thirty different departments, welcoming students at vocational, secondary, bachelor’s and master’s levels.Key figures:
1,100 students
- 150 teachers
- 650 users on Talkspirit
- Frédéric Poussin, Deputy Director for Training (DDF), is responsible for coordinating the school’s digital projects, including the rollout of new tools. In this interview, he explains what drove him to choose
Talkspirit, and how teachers and students use the platform today.The Search for an All-in-One Collaboration Tool
end HubSpot Call-to-Action Code “Before Talkspirit,
we were using a wide range of collaborative tools, because every department had different needs. Some only wanted storage or video conferencing, while others needed more collaboration features. The result: we were using three or four different tools just for video conferencing!”, says Frédéric Poussin.Since most of these tools were free and US-based, they also raised
data security concerns for the school, as they fell under the Cloud Act*. To address these issues, École Boulle wanted to
deploy an all-in-one collaboration tool that would allow staff to share information and documents, communicate with students, and hold video conferences — all in a secure environment.“Our goal was to avoid relying on free collaborative suites like Google’s or Microsoft’s. Because as everyone knows:
when something is free, you are the product!”, says the Deputy Director for Training.Security and Scalability: Key Decision Criteria
Talkspirit quickly emerged as the solution best suited to the school’s needs — both in terms of security and scalability.
“We could see that Talkspirit was hosted in France on OVHcloud servers, which was an essential guarantee for us in terms of data security. And
we felt that the features offered by the platform were constantly evolving.This flexibility was very important for us, because as a school we had
somewhatatypical needs. For example, we needed a platform that let students collaborate on documents, but also upload and download files in bulk to the drive.” A feature that Talkspirit developed in response to requests from the school and other clients.Beyond these key criteria, “we also appreciated the
responsiveness of the team, and being able to communicate in French with a dedicated contact”, adds Frédéric Poussin.A Phased RolloutGiven the large number of users, the school decided to
roll out Talkspirit in phases
. “We started with a few departments. Then, gradually, we opened the tool to more and more students and teachers. The goal was to bring in all post-secondary programmes — roughly two thirds of our student body.” A goal that has been achieved:
the platform now has 650 users!During this rollout phase, “I organised
in-person training sessions to show my colleagues how to use Talkspirit. I also made video tutorials available directly on the platform”, explains Frédéric Poussin. Read also: [Webinar] 6 key steps to boost adoption of your collaboration software
Varied Uses Today,
the school primarily uses the drive and
groups to store and share documents (including 2D and 3D files), and foster collaborative work between teachers and students.Read also: The Collaborative Work Guide on TalkspiritThat said, usage varies widely depending on the user.
“Most students use Talkspirit to submit assignments and access course materials, while teachers are more focused on collaboration and information sharing
. For example, they create posts to share information about workshops and material orders, and sometimes use the OfficeNow suite to co-edit documents collaboratively”
, says the Deputy Director for Training.Groups: A Real Asset for the SchoolGroups are one of the most widely used features among both teachers and students. A genuine asset for the school, they allow each department to share information in the right place with the right people
.
“What I appreciate most is being able to create groups with different privacy levels, which are very easy to manage from an administrative standpoint.”
Read also: The Different Types of Groups on Talkspirit“Most of the groups we create are
cross-department groups when organising events, workshops or intensive courses that typically bring together around a hundred students. Students are responsible for managing their own groups, while teachers take more of a supervisory role: they share and retrieve information but let students work independently.”
In addition to these open groups, “we created private groups for recruitment purposes
, where we invite teachers and external jury members. This lets us keep all candidate files in one place, which is very convenient.”Standardising Ways of Working“Today, all post-secondary departments use Talkspirit to communicate and collaborate on a daily basis. This has allowed us to both standardise our
ways of working
and evolve our practices. For example, those who initially only wanted a document storage tool now use Talkspirit for video conferencing or team collaboration”, which clearly demonstrates the platform’s value.“Since we set up the tool, I also save a lot of time every day
. As soon as a substitute teacher arrives, I automatically create a Talkspirit account for them, letting them communicate directly with students and access resources from previous lessons. Similarly, when a colleague has a question, I just point them to the platform.”
No more time wasted answering the same questions over and over.Talkspirit’s Take on École BoulleThanks to its rich feature set,
Talkspirit is just as effective for schools as it is for businesses. And École Boulle is living proof of that!
Whether it’s sharing documents with teachers, supporting student collaboration, or encouraging cross-department exchanges, Talkspirit adapts to every user’s needs — making it a go-to tool for the school.
One of the school’s next challenges? “Convincing users to make greater use of Talkspirit […] and expanding adoption of the tool
across the school.”
To get there, Frédéric Poussin plans to allocate more time to training — both to deepen his own mastery of the platform’s features and to train colleagues on a regular basis.ConclusionWant to learn more about the value Talkspirit can bring to your school
? Contact us or book a demo with our team:
Contact us
Book a demo *Cloud Act: a 2018 US federal law that allows the Department of Justice
to order any American service provider to hand over data stored on its servers, whether located in the United States or abroad. Contactez-nous
*Cloud Act : loi fédérale américaine de 2018 qui permet au Department of Justice d’ordonner à tout fournisseur de services américain de lui donner accès aux données stockées sur ses serveurs, qu’elles soient situées aux États-Unis ou à l’étranger.
