Upgrade your Student Information System

Virginia is holding a School Division Grant Competition to help school division's upgrade their data collection/integration. Here's a snippet from the CIT site:

As part of this grant VDOE will allocate funding to Virginia school divisions that may be pursing their own development and data integration projects. The purpose of the Division LDS Competition is to encourage and to finance data projects at the division level which will advance both the goals of the Statewide Longitudinal Database System program, as well as the four federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) specific goals:

* Making progress toward rigorous college- and career-ready standards and high-quality assessments that are valid and reliable for all students.
* Establishing pre-K to college and career data systems that track progress and foster continuous improvement.
* Making improvements in teacher effectiveness and in the equitable distribution of qualified teachers for all students.
* Providing intensive support and effective interventions for the lowest-performing schools.

http://www.cit.org/programs/cit-connect/vdoe-dc

If you're interested in learning more about how some divisions are collaborating to win their share of the multi-million dollar grant, email me.

The Golden Age that we've been waiting for?

I did a presentation at the Virginia Education Technology and Leadership Conference entitled "10 “Reasonable” demands to make to turn your SIS into a SAS, a Student Achievement System".

In the presentation I posited that we might be entering into a "Golden Age" for educators in terms of integrating our student information systems with content and teaching.

Email me if you're interested in getting a copy of the presentation.

Interview with Ken Potter, Conference Chairman for the Educational Technology Leadership Conference

Last week, I had the chance to talk with Ken Potter, the Conference Chairman for the Educational Technology Leadership Conference, coming up Nov. 30th to Dec. 2nd in Roanoke, VA. Here's a sneak peek at what to expect in Roanoke:



NOTE: I will be presenting at the Conference on the following topic:

“The top 10 ways your district’s Student Information System can DO MORE to support and accelerate students learning, teachers teaching, and parents participating”

Please stop by the Follett Software/Aspen booth at the conference and join me for my presentation. If you CAN'T make it but would like an audio/video of the presentation, please email or call me (703.679.8239) and I'll make that your early Christmas gift!

Educational Technology Leadership Conference November 30 - December 2, 2010

The 16th annual Educational Technology Leadership Conference will take place at the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center in Roanoke, Virginia. Virginia's Educational Technology Leadership Conference once again brings technology leaders to an event that inspires, informs, and provokes discussion. The Educational Technology Leadership Conference is designed to provide a forum for individuals who are responsible for the planning, coordination, and implementation of educational media and technology programs. Coordinators of instructional technology, library media, distance learning, instructional television, and instructional computing applications continue to find this event a valuable source of information and innovative ideas. Division superintendents, curriculum coordinators, staff development specialists, administrative computing specialists, university teacher education professionals, and telecommunication professionals benefit from the program and contact with colleagues from across the Commonwealth. The 2010 conference continues to provide a wealth of presentations designed to align with and explore the goals and objectives of the five major components of Virginia's 2010 - 2015 educational technology plan: environment, engagement, application, tools, and results. Added to the program are special sessions that focus on successful approaches to virtual learning and the technologies that make virtual learning work. These sessions will assist school divisions as they consider safe and productive uses of virtual learning technologies while developing policies to ensure educationally sound uses of these technologies. Virginia's Educational Technology Leadership Conference promises opportunities to explore new technologies, establish new contacts, and review trends and issues related to the effective integration of technology in Virginia's classroom. This key event will be an invaluable experience for technology leaders charged with planning and implementing technology in Virginia's schools. The Educational Technology Leadership Conference is sponsored by Virginia Tech's Center for Instructional Technology Solutions in Industry and Education.

Dr. Curt Bonk Dr. Tim Tyson

"Let's keep it clean, gentlemen" - How to use your SIS to validate user-entered data

I was on an Aspen demo yesterday with a couple of local Virginia school districts and one of the attendees was curious how the Aspen SIS could support the tech departments goal of getting uniformity and standardization of data.

Well, ensuring data cleanliness with multiple (and distributed) users entering data is like herding cats -- if you don't create a narrow, defined passage for those feline wanderers to pass through, you're going to lose your herd! (Not sure what the penalty for losing a herd of cats is, but let's just assume for the sake of the metaphor that it is SEVERE!)

So how to create that herd-controlling narrow and defined passage way?

Make sure that you dig in to find out what kind of "pre-input" data validation tools your SIS provides you with. The effective use of these will keep you from tearing your hair out because users "do what they do" when entering data...which is whatever the system allows them to do. The more structure you (are able to) provide, the less time that you'll have to spend cleaning up the mess (or rounding up the herd).

Aspen's robust and extensible data dictionary, for example, allows administrators to create controls for all user input fields - whether those are the "standard" fields or the over 250 user defined fields that can be placed anywhere on any template in Aspen. What that means is that you are completely in control of what data your users are able to input.

Want it to be a 3 character numeric field? Done.

Want a 17 option drop down menu? Your wish is Aspen's command.

Want a 3 month mediterranean cruise as a surprise bonus as a reward for your amazing job as your district's CTO? Absolu....Hey...wait a minute!

The takeaway here is to fight to ensure that you understand the tools that your system has available to support you.

The tools in your system may or may not be as robust and flexible as those in Aspen but that doesn't mean that they - as they are - can't help you in your cat herding endeavors!

Peel Back the Onion - How to Think About Total Cost of Ownership

Yesterday, I interviewed Follett Software's Mark Lamont about how school business officials should think about Total Cost of Ownership when evaluating their current student information systems or thinking about looking for a new SIS.





Some of what we covered:

• The three layers of Total Cost of Ownership evaluation
  
• Questions to ask to suss out potentially "hidden costs" of ownership
• a guide for non-CIOs about how cloud computing can benefit schools

Want a written summary of this conversation? Email me at Frazier@SISsuccess.com

"Trust but Verify" - When it's time to take a Road Trip

On Friday, I interviewed Chuck Muller, the Manager of School Support Systems for the
Information Technology Department of Baltimore City Schools, and in his "Words of Wisdom" section, he talked about the importance during the SIS search process of digging in to documentation and going on the road to visit the actual users of the systems that you're evaluating:



Chuck also talked about the importance of getting the user community involved in the search and evaluation from the beginning:

"SIS isn't a technology department project; it's a district wide project with a technology backbone"

Had two great interviews on Tuesday from two very different Virginia school divisions (Fairfax and Gloucester) which will be included in the guide.

Some of the upshots:
1) Fairfax (Largest School District in the area - 160,000+ students):
Maribeth Luftglass, CIO, stressed the importance of not seeing this as a technology project that you just bring other departments into, but rather ensuring that there is "buy in" and whole district involvement from the start (and throughout the process. - "This shouldn't be seen as a technology project but rather a district wide project with a technology backbone.")

Also, during their exhaustive search for an SIS, one of the most important "due diligence" actions Fairfax took was a scripted (and penetrating) investigation of references. Maribeth said that some real eye opening revelations (about response to change requests and other support issues) came out of their interviews of the current clients of several of their "finalists".

Maribeth's advice: Call references, and not just the ones that the SIS providers give you (dig deep). Have a script for the interview - ask about costs, migration, support.

2) Gloucester:

Most important issues to explore during the RFP process - "hidden costs" and data migration process. (These are the issues that you really have to grill the sales people about (but even then won't get answers) so you HAVE to talk to existing/past clients and ask the tough question.

Thanks to all of the CIOs/CTOs/SIS managers who have been responding and scheduling interviews...looking forward to adding insights and experiences on Friday and early next week!