Integration of Academic Data Systems
An Enhancing Education Through Technology funded project
Project Summary
The Iditarod Area School District (IASD) lies in the heart of Interior Alaska. With eight geographically isolated sites in an area slightly larger than the State of Ohio and a statewide correspondence program, our projects focus is to improve academic achievement by integrating data systems . With nearly half of Alaska’s school districts owning PowerSchool, a statewide consortia sharing developed software modules, reports and methods could save thousands of state dollars in replicated expenditures. Our project goals are to customize and integrate our SIS data system and to provide a web based forum to disseminate State report templates, instructional aids for professional development and SIF compliant software modules .
Projects goals:
First years projects accomplishments;
In preparation to accomplish the four goals set out in Iditarod Area school districts E2T2 project, all of Iditarod’s remote sites independent LAN’s have all been connected via WAN with enough bandwidth to allow Video Teleconferencing. This spring VTC equipment has been installed and tested in each of the districts eight sites.
During the past Y06 school year all middle and high school students were brought together for two weeks of Voc-ed training, in McGrath; to help ascertain which students might be willing and capable on-site technicians.
IASD teachers have had their first in-service using Moodle as the content manager of their in-service, teachers have been encouraged to explore moodle as a content manager for their classes as well as a source for training modules as they are developed for PowerSchool.
Contact has been made with selected school districts to help determine the structure and format of individual growth plans [IGP] and PowerSchool training needs. IASD is using MOODLE as a content server for accessing and training new teachers in PowerSchool.
Year One Professional Development activities:
In this first year, Iditarod Area School district has used the E2T2 funds to develop the infrastructure it needs to deliver and maintain a sustainable avenue for providing professional development across the interior of Alaska. It is cost ineffective to bring personnel together in one spot more then once a year. Travel and charter cost are astronomical not to mention that weather in the interior becomes a factor in travel plans as the temperature drops below 35 below. A portion of the E2T2 funds leveraged with E-Rate funds helped bring Video Teleconferencing to each site. VTC will provide a real time media that has been used to give access to board meetings and will be used for delivery of professional development activities. Not only for the thirty or more teachers and administrators, but for the 40 or more supporting staff, from maintenance workers, janitors, aids to community members assisting in school activities.
E2T2 funds have been used to purchase materials and content for professional development training in power school. E2T2 fund have been spent on support personal to develop the online courses that will assist new teachers this fall and every subsequent fall to prepare for teaching in Alaska.
Evaluation Plan:
During the week of August 14 – 18, 2006 will be the first use of the modified MOODLE survey to help assess IASD teachers skills and needs for teachers using Power School. A follow up survey after each training module provides a formative evaluation of each module. Modifications to each of the training modules stored in MOODLE will be addressed using the follow up survey.
YKSD will be having an in-service on October 12-13, during this in-service the MOODLE survey and training modules will tested on YKSD teachers, the follow up survey will provide both formative and summative evaluation data. After modifications from YKSD survey feed back have been addressed the MOODLE server and training modules will be made available to all districts using powerschool. The MOODLE server will track usage and survey results providing summative and formative data for this Objective of IASD E2T2 project, for details on evaluating the other E2T2 projects objectives please follow the evaluation plan link.