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