Vulcan sp. z o.o. is a Polish software company founded in 1988. Its main activities include

digital transformation Digital transformation (DT) is the process of adoption and implementation of digital technology by an organization in order to create new or modify existing products, services and operations by the means of translating business processes into a d ...

of education. It is one of the most popular

electronic grade book An electronic grade book is a teacher's online record of their students' lessons, assignments, progress, and grades. An electronic grade book interfaces with a student information system which houses a school district's student records including g ...

operators.

History

It was founded in 1988 by Feliks Sapiński and created education software, a graphics editor, a spreadsheet and a text editor, for the '' Elwro 800 Junior'' and the

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer developed and marketed by Sinclair Research. One of the most influential computers ever made and one of the all-time bestselling British computers, over five million units were sold. ...

, which it sold to the

Ministry of Education An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...

. In 1996, with cooperation with

PWN Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, or simply hacker speech, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via refle ...

, the company worked on a computer

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, which sold 40 thousand copies, and later created Vulcan Media as a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

with PWN. In 1999 Vulcan Media was entirely bought out by PWN and rebranded as ''pwn.pl''. In May 2006 Vulcan was bought out by Nowa Era.

Products

The company offers school management software. It develops the Vulcan electronic grade book system, which can be accessed with a mobile phone application called eduVulcan. The company decided to put certain features of the app behind a paywall, such as

Push notifications Push technology, also known as server Push, refers to a communication method, where the communication is initiated by a server rather than a client. This approach is different from the "pull" method where the communication is initiated by a client ...

, messaging and absence notes, which attracted criticism. The company also creates Prawo Optivum, which is collection of unified legal acts related to education.

eduVulcan

In September 2024, the company made changes to their school information system. Such as the option of creating a normal or an eduVulcan account. The normal account has a different login for every child, which is made out of letters and numbers not associated with the parent's e-mail address or name, it also requires a different URL for every school and cannot be changed. In comparison, the eduVulcan account has only one login, which could be changed and accessed from one site. A new mobile app has been released, which can only be used with an eduVulcan account. The mobile app includes "enhanced" features such as Push notifications, messaging and absence notes, which cost around 40PLN annually. These features were previously free. Users had problems with creating accounts and logging into the system. The company was met with criticism from parent and students for requiring payment for features. An online petition has been started in opposition to the changes. Politician

Adrian Zandberg Adrian Tadeusz Zandberg (; born 4 December 1979) is a Polish Left-wing politics, left-wing and Socialism, socialist politician, computer programmer, and doctor of history, who has served as member of the Sejm since 2019. He is a founding member ...

made an interpellation to the Minister of Education Barbara Nowacka, he said that the country has enough resources to deliver a free platform. Vice-minister of Education Izabela Ziętka stated, that the company is not breaking the law. When asked about a possible creation of a free platform for communication between parents and teachers, she said that "ideas are appearing" but that they would require "talks with the Ministry of Digital Affairs, Center of Education Informatics and – most importantly – the General Inspector of Protection of Personal Information".

References

{{Reflist Polish companies established in 1988 Software companies of Poland