Winter SIS Update

The following are updates and information for all of you to peruse in regards to the most recent developments in our Infinite Campus implementation process.

**********

On January 15-16, a team of Infinite Campus representatives will be coming to meet with various people across all four campuses for a series of Data meetings and Discovery meetings.

The goal of their meetings is primarily to gain information and get into the weeds of details in everything from bell schedules, grading periods, student number formats, attendance processes, report cards and transcript formats, integration with any and all other systems and so, so much more. In addition, they'll be introducing the LID team to their pre-made training materials, and beginning their work with ITSS and the data migration process.

If you see Infinite Campus representatives on your campus next Tuesday, January 15, please give them a warm welcome, but also recognize that we are on a very tight schedule and if you do see them, chances are that they are scurrying from one meeting to another.

On January 16, the team will be mostly at the Saratoga Campus.

***********

You should also know that effective August 2019, if you are a MS or US Teacher, you will be using Schoology for all assignments and grading.

The syncing of those scores will happen automatically with Infinite Campus.

The only reasons you will need to go into Infinite Campus will be to 1) take attendance and 2) to align the imported scores to categories that you have created.

• At the start of the year, you will be shown how to create categories in Infinite Campus (often called "Campus" for short).
• Then, you create an assignment in Schoology, assign it to students, and grade it as you usually would.
• On a regular basis, you will go into Infinite Campus and see a list of assignments that need alignment to a category. This process is as simple as clicking two checkboxes (an assignment checkbox and a category checkbox) and then clicking save.

When we have the materials to show you this process, we'll provide those, but for now, I'm hoping my simplistic text-based description is sufficient enough to whet your whistle. Gone are the days of entering all assignment descriptions and grade information in two places. Yay!

***********

The tentative plan for training and the migration of data is as follows, but please remember it is very tentative and much will rest on additional information we'll be given next week and further:

Spring 2019: 

• The LID Team will begin offering Schoology and General Infinite Campus trainings - a schedule will be announced and trainings will be offered at all campuses and also periodically recorded and offered via video conference to accommodate travel needs and viewing afterwards, as desired
• Meanwhile, ITSS will be working diligently to do 1-2 practice runs of data migration, copying data from PCR and placing it into a "fake" Infinite Campus site / instance to ensure that it's accurate, functional and works for us.
• When the school year ends, our data can then be officially ported into our realInfinite Campus instance.

Summer 2019:

• July - The official data migration will take place. This is a two-week process wherein for Week One, all data will be copied from PCR. For Week Two, all of that copied information will be ported into Infinite Campus.
• The process of data migration in the summer will not be the first time this occurs, as indicated above. 
• In lieu of LID Innovation Grants for the last two weeks of July and first week of August, the LID Team will be providing trainings, using our live site. More detailed information about both LID Innovation Grants and Infinite Campus Trainings will be provided as we near this time.
• Finally, everyone will receive training, as usual, during Returning Teacher week. However, this will not be the first time you are offered training.
• In addition, the LID Team will be creating a website that will include all training materials for Schoology and Infinite Campus, in addition to the plethora of training materials in a variety of formats directly from Infinite Campus. Our training website will include text-based materials, guided practice, as well as videos to address all learning preferences.

After the meetings, I'll be able to provide an additional follow-up post and email. Thank you for reading, staying informed and as always, for your support and patience.