December Update Emailed to All Harker

Good Afternoon and Happy Holidays!

Back in September, I sent everyone a message letting you know that we would be evaluating and considering our current use of our Student Information System (SIS), which is currently PCR, and I would be soliciting feedback from various user groups.

Now that the first phase of this process (having Focused Feedback meetings) is complete, we’ll move to the next phase, which is the preliminary meetings with different SISs. This next phase will take place in the January and February months and by March, I will be having meeting with the user groups again to do two things:

1. Report back on the criteria and information from SISs, and
2. Solicit interest to participate on a longer-term SIS Success Team
1. This SIS Success Team will meet on a regular basis
2. We will meet with 2-3 of the final SIS representatives to get a longer demo, and
3. We will be making a decision about which SIS is a best fit for Harker

                                                              i.      That decision will likely be made by late Spring

I deeply appreciate everyone’s feedback, emails, and support during this process. I’m hopeful about the future and excited to help all of us find a system that is as good as we can get. ☺

If you were unable to, or chose not to participate in the Focused Feedback Sessions, and still want to provide some feedback, I have two requests of you:

1. PLEASE review our blog, these slides (which are embedded within the blog), and this spreadsheet of criteria (which is embedded in the slides)
1. Note: The criteria spreadsheet is also listed within the blog, so if you prefer to read the criteria using the blog format, don’t do double-work and skip the spreadsheet
2. If you have any feedback that is not already listed ANYWHERE on the blog or spreadsheet, please send me an email ASAP with that feedback

If you DID participate in a Focused Feedback Session, I have one request:

1. Please read the blog and refresh your memory and see what other user groups have expressed as wishes and wonders

As always, please reach out with any questions along the way.

Happy Holidays!

ITSS

I had the opportunity to meet with the ITSS Team to learn about how they use the Student Information System, and to discover their needs that they may have in the kind of data reports that they might need to pull from a potential system.

As with each of these sessions, I presented them with this slidedeck:



And here was their wish list and particular items of note:

• Reports - Stock & Custom ease of creation
• Scheduled / automated reports of students
• Open API
• Want to do own tests /benchmarking of tracing data center path during testing phase
• Benchmark data use
• LDAP 
• Bad connection tolerance
• Offline mode? Notification of such
• Test with specific users
• Scheduled backups and restoration process
• Email - through their relay or ours
• Cached version of user credentials Search features and usability
• Emails - personal library of groups
• Create your own groups
• Integration with GSuite or O365
• Mass notification 
• Voice recognition
• Readily available support
• Contractors available?
• Mapping path for custom reports
• Common naming structures
• Support - Use of Content Delivery Network (CDN) or through own
• Providing names and IP addresses to get through filters
• Notifications when changes are made (like IP addresses, etc.)

Teachers - Upper, Middle, Preschool and Some of Lower

I had the opportunity to meet with interested teachers from the following divisions over the last two weeks: I ultimately heard from 15 Upper School Teachers, 10 Middle School Teachers, 8 Preschool Teachers and I've spoken to 3 Lower School Teachers (as well as Kristen and Sarah) to learn about how they use the Student Information System, and to discover their needs that they may have in the kind of data reports that they might need to pull from a potential system.

As with each of these sessions, I presented them with this slidedeck:



And here was their wish list and particular items of note:

• Upper School Feedback
• Email read receipts; access history
• Grade history
• Absences and tardies history
• Ease of data entry for assignments
• Copy/paste/ data integrity in assignment descriptions
• Yearly rollovers of assignments
• Mapping year-to-year days, rather than dates for assignments
• Summer school issues with non-Harker households; uses Moodle instead of Schoology
• Collaboration with other teachers; seeing planning guides, etc.
• Who teaches what when; master schedule
• Calendar view options; ease of input of calendars (.csv upload?)
• Test calendar - who put in what when Inputting tests -editing entries doesn't change priority 
• Grades - user-friendly and flexibility 
• Multiple pathways clarity
• Access to archived courses
• User guides, professional development, YouTube Channel - self-help
• Development Schedule - updates well-communicated
• Multiple methods by which to create assignments (incalendar, assessment list, etc.)
• Multiple gradebooks open simultaneously
• Enter multiple grades for same assessment across periods/sections
• Drag and Drop Functions
• User Friendliness
• Avoid User Antagonism
• Planning tool potential?
• Linking sections Impersonating students
• What's Happening Calendar integrated
• Bulk grade email for individual grade within context (or other options) to students w/personalization feature/option
• Real-time access to zeros and blanks for students Calendar sorting; departmental calendars
• Conflict resolution for multiple activities, sports, etc.
• Ease of group creation for non-academic
• Stock reports v. custom reports; sending individual reports v. having to export a full class
• Ability to change category percentages mid-semester
• Viewing grading options (percentages, weights, whole point, etc.)
• Attendance ease
• Household Salutation
• Preschool Feedback
• Printing emergency contacts easily
• Alerts for changes to contact info or other
• Directory - easily organized by cottage
• Interoperability with Kinderlime and Group Spaces
• Signatures in SIS emails
• Auto-fill email addresses
• Middle School Feedback
• Interoperability - open API
• Training plan
• UX
• Latency rates
• Printing class lists ease
• Stock and Custom Reports - what currently exists?
• Smart search (v. dumb search)
• Split screen or multitasking ability
• Email - reply-all function
• Ease of finding sent emails
• Ease of group creation
• Data integrity and control
• Gradebook - multiple assignment creation with multiple dates
• Responsive theme
• Data parameters - score highlights in gradebook, health concerns, other special circumstances
• Multiple grading views
• Easy quick access for student details
• Notifications for missing assignments
• Student notes
• Email read receipts and which email is actually used
• Searching - ability to search for students across divisions; ease of making groups
• User friendliness - efficiency - direct navigation