The School Finder module in the Blackboard MCA is designed to help community members identify the schools associated with a specific geographic location in a school district. This is accomplished by comparing either a user defined address or the GPS location on the user’s mobile device against a series of layered maps with detailed school boundaries to then list the corresponding elementary, middle, and high school. This is ideal for districts with 15+ schools.

Client Production Requirements 

Each school to be included in the School Finder module needs to be classified into one of three school types: 

• Elementary School 
• Junior High / Middle School 
• High School

Geographic Information System (GIS) – Data Driven Mapping 

This will be the preferred method for mapping districts of 15+ schools. Each organization will need to have its own unique shape file. Meaning, each elementary, middle, and high school should have a unique shape file. The identification of feeder shape files to indicate a new organization’s boundaries is not currently supported. Blackboard currently supports GIS (.SHP) files to complete School Finder.

GIS (.SHP) 

To import SHP files, we require the file to include: 

1. Organization ID
2. Somewhere within the shape, the ID of the organization that matches the ID in Blackboard must exist

* Organization ID’s in the GIS file must match the organization ID in the Org File