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District Data Warehouse: Proposal Process

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

In part one of this series, I shared some of the scenarios for recognizing a data warehouse. In part two, please allow me to share a sample proposal. The proposal follows the model outlined in this blog entry, Solving Wicked Problems: When Details Matter (Part 3). Before seeking a data warehouse, it’s important that a school district take stock and organize itself.

Challenges to Overcome

Before starting down the road, district staff need to have a realistic understanding of how data flows. Administrators looking for a procedure document may find one here. That flow varies from district to district. Below, you will find the diagram that captured the flow of data in my district. Before I created it, few had a clear idea of how data moved from one place to another. In fact, it might as well have happened via magical means. This process needs to be mapped for each data file that will be tapped as a source for student data in the data warehouse.

warehouse

Process for Automated Upload of Student/Staff Data to an External Vendor System

  1. Given a need, a technology-based intervention or assessment tool is desired that requires student/staff data imports on a regular basis
  2. Project contact and technology department contact meet with vendor to identify the data file elements needed and complete the  Data Request Form
  3. Once the Data Request form is complete, it is submitted to the Student Information System (SIS) contact
  4. When data files are received and tested successfully, the technology department contact will ensure the file gets to the vendor nightly via an automated, secure file transfer process
  5. The process is complete when data is flowing nightly into the external vendor system

Example of Process in Action

  1. Need for providing an instructional intervention for students in grades 3-8 to facilitate differentiation
  2. Curriculum director contacts technology director and a joint meeting takes place. After speaking with the vendor, a comma-delimited file needs to be created nightly that contains students’ firstname, lastname, campus, student ID#, TSDS#, district username, and password. A tentative start date is set for when this is needed.
  3. A Data Request form is prepared mapping SIS data element names to what the vendor needs an item to be called, then submittted to the student information system (SIS) partner
  4. Once the SIS vendor partner has finished creating the student data file, they save it to a secure FTP server. Technology staff sets up an automated process to transfer the file to the vendor so it can be processed nightly (e.g. 2:05am)
  5. Curriculum director and end users (e.g. teachers in grades 3-8) verify that information in the vendor system is up to date.

This data file creation process is offered as an example. The intent of sharing this is to help you review your own processes for data file creation.

The Proposal

The purpose of this proposal is to 1) facilitate easy, safe, and appropriate access to data that campus and district staff need to accomplish essential job functions, and 2) eliminate time staff currently waste in data hunting and gathering, sifting, and organizing that consumes more time than the data analysis component requires. The end result is a more informed leadership and better decision-making in the service of students and staff.

Achievement of the tenets of this proposal enable staff to have tiered levels of access to generate reports derived from data critical to their job functions via a web-based interface to a data warehouse of content.

  1. A data warehouse – This component serves as a district-controlled repository of all data–a local copy regardless of the source–on students and employees from a variety of data sources including, but not limited to, student assessments, student and parent lists, employee data from internal (e.g. Eduphoria, special education, Scholastic programs) and external sources of data (e.g. STAAR, iStation, iTCCS, TxGradebook, eSPED).
  2. A web dataportal – This component provides as a browser-based, easy to use interface to the data warehouse that enables campus and district staff to have point-n-click query-creation abilities to generate a variety of reports that juxtapose data from a variety of internal and external data sources.

Need

The district has a clear and urgent need to institute a data warehouse that is easily accessible by district/campus level staff. Some examples:

  • Assessment Office: The district lacks a locally-controlled, central repository of all–Eduphoria Aware only provides some access–student/staff data, making it a time-consuming (e.g. hours to weeks) chore to correlate data from multiple sources (e.g. SMI/SRI and STAAR).
  • Bilingual/ESL: TPRI/TejasLee staff and student data exports have to be obtained via a single district person, and this can involve wait time.
  • Curriculum Department: Lack of a customizable data aggregation and reporting functions that are automated and easy to produce force reliance on a single person to generate reports for various locations.
  • Campus Level: Staff spend hours per day, even weeks, tracking and sifting through data to create end of course (EOC) student lists that could be generated with a custom query that had access to all data sources. Furthermore, staff must keep track of alternative measures using Excel spreadsheets, which they assert is time-consuming and error-prone.
  • iTCCS Access: The district currently has to provide ALL or nothing access via Open DataBase Compliant (ODBC) connection to staff, making it difficult to grant general users access to a subset of sensitive, confidential data they need to work.
  • Special Education: Both district and campus staff have to correlate data between the student information system (SIS) and vendor systems–whose disparate systems are unable to “talk to each other”–to get the results needed to serve special populations.
  • Technology Operations: The technology department must manually manage and try to create student/staff listing for an increasing variety of vendors. This involves manual updates that must be done daily, requiring a full-time, dedicated staff member simply to ensure account management is handled.

Note: Videos of stakeholders are available to provide specific details.

Process

A diagram (presented in part one of this blog entry) of how this would work appears in this section. It is modeled on how other districts’ data warehouses operate. Beginning at the top, end-users, whether at the campus or district level, would be able to interface via their web browser to a local repository of data. End users would be able to generate a variety of custom reports that juxtapose data they need to provide student level interventions (e.g. EOC, dropout, alternative measures, SMI/SRI to STAAR correlations, projections based on existing data to state/national standards). End users would not require an ODBC connection to the student information system (SIS) or administrative level access, instead running reports that give them access to data customized for their job function (e.g. principal vs. teacher) and location (e.g. campus staff can only see their data).

This data is composed of information gleaned programmatically and updated nightly via automated connections. Data flows from the SIS and other external data sources into the data warehouse. These automated connections–operating as many as two times per day–synchronize the data available in the Data Warehouse.

Cost

The approximate cost of establishing a web dataportal and data warehouse will require the following:

  • $85K – $95K: DataBase Administrator (DBA) – Job description attached.
    Description: This is an individual who will create the following:

    • A local repository of databases and tables (e.g. MySQL/MariaDB, MS-SQL)  that mirror internal and external data sources that is updated two times per 24-hour period.
    • A secure (HTTPS) web data portal that enables end users to have tiered-level access to data via queries that interface with the data warehouse and generate reports in HTML, PDF, and XLS formats for easy viewing and manipulation.
  • $30K: Servers and Software to Create Data Warehouse and Web Data Portal
    Description: Specialized software and servers will be needed to create the data warehouse and web data portal. This cost is not anticipated to impact until year 2 after the DBA is hired.
  • $30K: Identity Automation and Account Management
    Description: The identity automation component–which can be independent of a data warehouse–enables automation of 95% of current account creation/login management, elimination of work, and systems integration. The $30K is an initial cost that will drop to approximately 10% after year 1 launch.

Timeline

Pre-Development

  • Hire database administrator
  • Purchase identity automation system

Phase 1

  • Construct data warehouse
  • Develop data join queries that merge data from multiple sources of data.
  • Map out data queries  to obtain desired reports (e.g. EOC tracking, dropout reports, correlations, and projections).

Phase 2

  • Create tiered access matching staff member’s right to data access.
  • Create district web portal that presents desired reports.
  • Enable access for district and campus staff.

Phase 3

  • Enable drill-down data mining for teachers to student level.
  • Enable teacher/parent/student web portal views and reports.

Assessing Success

Success is defined by achieving all phases defined above.

Closing Thoughts

As you begin the process of putting in place a data warehouse, you may be tempted to seek out a vendor partner who can help you bridge the gap from where you are to where you need to be to see student data in a usable way. Be careful that before you involve a vendor, you are prepared to change how you work. Perhaps even more important, make sure that you have top level support to change the workflows for others in your organization. In part three of this series, we will take a look at finding a vendor partner.

 

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CTO/CIOLeadership

District Data Warehouse: Recognizing the Need

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Can your district recognize patterns in student achievement data and then craft appropriate instructional interventions? Many districts have a clear and urgent need to do so. The problem is that they don’t know it. Achieving the technical reality can be difficult to grasp for top leadership. In this blog entry, we’ll explore some of the reasons why a data warehouse can be helpful.

Web Portal with Data Warehouse

When I first proposed the need for a data warehouse, the district I served thought what they had was sufficient (e.g. Eduphoria Aware). One reason was that they didn’t know how many systems needed to interact with each other. For each system, a manual process was involved. The image below captures some of the various data systems that needed to interact with each other. See if this looks familiar to you.

warehouse

Conversations with school leadership staff soon revealed that they spent weeks combining various data sources (e.g. assessments) into spreadsheets. Unfortunately, these spreadsheets were prone to errors and seldom resulted in swift instructional interventions that impacted teaching and learning. Worse, district leadership didn’t know what they did not know. They did know that digging up, reviewing, and crafting data reports manually took time. They didn’t realize that campus staff spent weeks doing it.

One of the challenges was identifying the steps to go forward. The initial journey was imagined to take about six months. However, the process took a full year with constant interventions. The main obstacles? Getting the district’s internal systems exporting the data to match the required schema, as well as getting the various vendors to work together (e.g. Student Information System (SIS)).

warehouse

Once district leaders understood the potential of a data warehouse with a web-based data dashboard, they decided to move the project forward. One way of helping them understand involved collecting scenarios from various stakeholders.

Scenarios

Here are a few scenarios that illustrate why a data warehouse is needed:

  • Due to ELA Reading and Writing scores being combined, campuses will need to know if a student met minimum composite scores and ascertain minimum section scores. To effectively track students for End of Course retesting, we need to know two collections of data:
    • Student information (e.g.ID#, first year enrolled in high school, first year in a Texas high school, and testing results (three tests per year per subject). This data is combined with…
    • Combined ELA Reading and Writing scores. This spring, the ELA tests will be combined. The district will need to know if the student met a minimum composite score and a minimum score for each section. This information is then compiled to determine who needs retesting.
  • A need exists to evaluate special education services. Six components of information that need compilation and juxtaposition include the following: level of inclusion, modifications, accommodations, nine weeks test scores, and STAAR results, all listed by teacher.
  • A teacher needs to complete a report about AVID at his school. He needs to know student performance in AVID as compared to other students. One piece of information he needs is the percent of students that drop Pre-AP classes.
  • List of students to test for gifted and talented. The campus staff person begins with a basic list from SMI/SRI scores. Then the staff person goes into Aware to look at quarterly assessment scores, STAAR scores, and then into Texas Gradebook to look at grades. The campus staff person has to look at 45 different students to gather the data. The process is repeated each time a list of students needs to be tested for gifted and talented. It can also involve greater numbers of students.
  • When beginning the RTI process, teachers must complete a Review of Student Records form. Teachers must pull attendance data, previous intervention data, screening data, and possibly others as well like grades. In the past, many teachers have even called in sick so that they could complete these forms. In most cases, it took several hours to gather the data prior to even compiling it on the forms.
  • A need exists to pull data from the following: iStation, SAM, ALEKS, Think Through Math, Tango, AIMs Web, and Eduphoria. Current practices involve going into each program individually and then extracting data from each to compile.

Even More Scenarios

Wondering about some other possible reasons for a data warehouse from a special programs perspective?

  • Bilingual/ESL Office: TPRI/TejasLee staff and student data exports have to be obtained via a single district person and this can involve wait time.
  • Special Education: Both district and campus staff have to correlate data between iTCCS and vendor systems–whose disparate systems are unable to “talk to each other”–to get the results needed to serve special populations.
  • Technology: To assess the implementation of digital devices and their impact on instruction, it would be wonderful  to query and generate reports. Data needed includes student attendance (comparing one classroom to others), individual attendance reporting, student achievement across grade levels, individual performance, and discipline referrals.

If these scenarios are familiar to you, a data warehouse may be the solution to your problem.

Data Warehouse Next Steps

The goals of establishing a data warehouse include the following:

  • Facilitate easy, safe, and appropriate access to data that campus and district staff need to accomplish essential job functions, and
  • Eliminate time that the staff currently waste in data hunting-and-gathering, sifting, and organizing that consume more time than the data analysis component requires.
  • Enable staff to have tiered levels of access to generate reports derived from data critical to their job functions via a web-based interface to a data warehouse of content.

The end result is a more informed leadership and better decision-making in service of students and staff. To achieve that, your district will need to make a plan. In part two of this blog entry, we will explore a sample plan you can customize for your own district.

 

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Seeking a Data Solution That Works

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Seeking a data solution that works for your district team can be difficult, no matter the size of your district. In previous blog entries, we’ve discussed various aspects of this process. Let’s take a quick look at the challenges districts face.

A Clear and Urgent Need

School districts have a clear and urgent need for a comprehensive data solution. In his article for ASCD’s Educational Leadership, veteran technology director Doug Johnson writes:

Schools are awash in data. Everything from 3rd grade reading test scores to payroll data to an inventory of each iPad purchased with Title I dollars is now stored in databases somewhere in your district.

Demographic data; attendance data; academic data (including an increasing number of test scores); and even teacher performance data are proliferating. Finance systems, transportation databases, helpdesks, and application and credentialing systems used by human resources departments are among the managerial databases used in most districts. To get an idea of some of the different data systems a typical school district may use to gather, store, and view information on students, see the sample flowchart (source: Power Up! Navigating the Seas of Data, ASCD’s Educational Leadership).

School districts often seek a data solution that meets various criteria. Those criteria include:

  • Easy to access solution that district/campus staff can interface with
  • Tiered levels of access to student data
  • Data that is accessible, filtered, and disaggregated
  • Improves strategic decision-making
  • Saves time and money

Let’s dig in a bit more.

Why You May Need a Data Warehouse

School districts collect a wide variety of data. As Doug Johnson points out above, your district may have plenty of unusable data. Collected with positive intent, the data is seldom used to analyze student needs. Quality of instruction based on the use of data to form strategic plans or policy goes unanalyzed. What’s more, the data can often resides in scattered, antiquated infrastructure. This means multiple source systems exist in data silos that are inaccessible and not useful or available when needed.

Worse, district gatekeepers lock up the data and only provide the data via requests from key personnel. These key personnel may not be the people who need the data most. Worse, the timing of the requests can delay access for the people who need the data to make quick decisions.

Finding a solution that addresses these concerns can be tough. Here are some steps you can follow.

Three Steps to Dynamic Empowerment

Ready to empower your organization to change? It can be a bit of a daunting process. Let’s explore three steps that can make change possible.

Step 1 – Identify your current practices and what to change

In this step, you need to meet with stakeholders. The grittier your appreciation and grasp of the problem, the better. This step has three slow things you can do. They are slow steps because you will want to spend time on these. Don’t rush the insights that will flow from them. You will have to assist stakeholders in the field uncover the uncomfortable problem.

Here are the three slow steps:

  • Discuss current needs and challenges. For a data solution, this can often involve identifying wasted time. Time, data aggregation errors, and tracking interventions are some of the problems encountered.
  • Gain insight. Do this with in-depth interviews with staff in classrooms, campuses, and departments. What insights can you glean from the data problems they are trying to solve?
  • Listen, listen, listen. Be sure to practice reflective listening, taking notes as stakeholders share their insights. Look for patterns in the stories they tell. Patterns about data problems can provide you with what you need to develop a solution. These solutions must adapt to the specific needs of stakeholders. Get the details on what those needs are.

One powerful way to capture these insights involves video recording. You won’t need to record everyone. That said, don’t forget to analyze current processes. Meet with staff at all levels, documenting the processes they use. Process diagrams are a great way to help identify improvement opportunities. Hunt inefficient or ineffective approaches down.

Here is an example of an ineffective approach in my previous school district. Counselors were not entering codes for a particular course. This meant that sorting students in the data solution did not work as well as it could. A quick training helped the counselors understand what they needed to do.

Other ineffective approaches can be more difficult to resolve. They may involve working with vendor partners, getting them to adjust their processes. Are there any points of failure in how data flows? Make sure to identify source systems and corresponding data.

Step 2 – Make data analysis easy, effective, and insightful

Finding the right solution partner can be daunting. These types of solutions are difficult to build in-house and can cost districts hundreds of thousands of dollars. Worse, many school district personnel may not know how to parse data for import/export. What your district needs is a data solution that serves as a repository. Even with all the data in one place, a data analytics portal may be missing.

“We are thrilled with the way data from our disparate source systems comes together in one place. The dashboards, scorecards and watch lists provide insights into student performance that otherwise would take much longer to realize or run the risk of going unnoticed. These visualizations accelerate our teachers’ and leaders’ ability to make data-driven decisions that help our students succeed.” (source: Jonathan Hulbert, East Central ISD as cited in Press Release by Certica and K-12 Dynamics)

“A data analytics portal provides insights into your school district data,” says Traci Clarke. “It assists in supporting decisions and alignment of strategies with organizational goals.” In our conversations, she mentioned that a data analytics portal needs to do at least four things:

  • Integrate data from many source systems
  • Ease strategic planning and monitoring of key performance indicators
  • Make it easier to identify trends in district, teacher, and student performance
  • Serve as a single solution with district-wide, role-based dynamic reporting

It’s important to find a data solution provider that has several major components. Let’s explore those.

Data Solution Elements

Key elements to a data solution include the following:

  • Integrated data warehouse with dashboards, scorecards, watchlists, key performance indicators, and more
  • Reporting with advanced analytics and disaggregation
  • Role-based access and privacy controls
  • Flexible enough to enable adding any data source, both old and new
  • Scaleable enough to grow with the district
  • Hosted, compatible with newer technologies, and mobile

This type of solution should work with data from several tiers of information. For example, consider these tiers of compatibility, listed in order of priority:

Tier 1: Student and Staff

  • Student Information System (SIS) including enrollment, class schedules, attendance, discipline, and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)
  • Classroom, state, and district assessments
  • Digital gradebook
  • CollegeBoard (e.g. SAT, ACT)

Tier 2: Enterprise Resource Planning

  • Finance, human resources, and payroll
  • Time keeping, staff development tracking, and health management
  • Inventory control

Tier 3_: Transportation and Food Services

  • Bus routes
  • Food services (e.g. student/employee meals)

(Adapted from source: Conference Presentation by Miguel Guhlin, Traci Clarke, K-12 Dynamics, and Virgil Kirk)

Step 3 – Build partnerships

Finding the right data solution provider is an adventure all its own. My recommendation for finding one? Shop around. Ask other school districts what they are using for a data warehouse. You can easily do this by joining TEC-SIG and posting your question to hundreds of other tech directors in the TCEA Community. At worst, you will get a list of possible solution providers. At best, you may find a well-priced solution. Another suggestion involves checking out conventions like TASBO and TASA. These conventions cater to enterprise resource planning (ERP) staff in school districts. In fact, that’s where my assistant superintendent first met K-12 Dynamics’ Traci Clarke. My district formed a partnership with K-12 Dynamics that took time to form.

In the end, building a strong partnership with one company paid dividends for my district. The journey was long, hard, and requires constant maintenance. Without a strong commitment, your effort to seek and install a data solution that works will fail.

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CTO/CIOLeadership

Becoming a Technology Director

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Are you ready to make your next career move? Want to know how you can achieve escape velocity and get into the tech director orbit? Every other week, someone will ask me, “How do I begin my journey to becoming a technology director?” When I left the classroom, my goal was not to become a technology director. Rather, it was to learn what I needed to know. Every time I thought I knew enough, I would find out I did not. Then, I realized that I needed the authority and responsibility to advance teaching, learning and leading with technology. Why couldn’t the current technology director get the job done? Why did students and staff have to wait on time-sensitive solutions? These all motivated me to keep learning.

Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

If you are on a similar journey, you may find the following tips useful. After reflecting on my journey, I’d like to share those insights. In this short blog entry, I’ll share some of what I’ve learned. The rest, you may need to discover on your own.

Did You Know?

Sign up for one of our Google Certified Educator certifications. You’ll learn about more than Google Meet, as well as earn 12 CPE hours per course. Use these courses to get Google Educator certified. Find out more online.

Planning for Success

You can divide the steps to success in myriad ways. Here are the steps as I see them:

  • Achieve escape velocity
  • Prepare well
  • Distinguish between management and leadership

Let’s take a moment to review what each of these mean.

achieve

#1 – Achieve Escape Velocity

Are you familiar with the term, “escape velocity?” It popped into my head one sunny afternoon. A technology applications teacher was sitting in my air-conditioned portable building quizzing me. She asked, “How did you get to where you are?” The question took me back in time. I realized that my journey was completely different than what her’s. That said, it had some similarities. The first is that she would have to achieve escape velocity:

In physics, escape velocity is the least speed needed for an object to escape. Escape from what? Escape from the gravitational influence of a massive body. The escape velocity from Earth is about 11.186 km/s (6.951 mi/s; 40,270 km/h; 25,020 mph) at the surface.

When your boss, your organization thinks they know you so well that you have little more to offer, how do you escape? How do you achieve escape velocity? The truth is, you will have to leave. Instead of claiming the comfort and shelter of a familiar space, you will need to embark on a journey. And, as Bilbo Baggins told Frodo in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings:

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

That’s the truth. If you’re OK with that, then follow these steps:

Consider this self-assessment for chief technology officers and staff. How do you measure up?

achieve

#2 – Prepare Well

Ready to go to your first interview? Before you say “Yes,” ask yourself about the following:

  • Is there a roadmap to success that identifies best path, common roadblocks and detours?
  • Do you have an eportfolio? That is, a digital portfolio that highlights your strengths? That identifies areas of growth? Each illustrated with real life examples from your experience?
  • Have you aligned your skills, certifications, and experiences to the job announcement expectations? Do you know YOUR stuff?

This can be the challenge. You are going to spend a lot of time preparing for the job. While some people “luck into” the job because of the relationships they have, you will need to know your stuff. And, there is no quicker way to find out what you lack in experience than real-world situations. Get the experience before you start a new job.

Here are the ABCs of preparing well:

A- Build Your PLN

One way to start is to build your professional learning network (PLN). The toughest challenge isn’t keeping up with the technology. Rather, it is understanding how to leverage it for your organization. In the past, we faced limits. Now, learning isn’t restricted to a special event bound by time and place.

Our learning takes us beyond a meeting, or a conference or from 8:00 to 3:30 PM when school is in session. Today, we tap into a flow of conversation, a web-based learning ecology, that we can learn from 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

B- Seek Insight

Leaders often face a blind spot. Ask yourself how much you know about the real story compared to what your current leader does. Chances are, you have some operational details they would love to have but no one wants to tell them. You may want to read First Things First: A Technology Leader’s First Steps blog entry.

When you can’t gain insight, try to learn as much as you can. Refer to Wakelet collection for links to resources.

C- Learn All You Can, Then Practice It

Get free professional learning or low-cost online via YouTube and other sources. Some websites and resources include:

achieve

TCEA Certification Courses

TCEA PD Events

Technical Resources

#3 – Management vs Leadership

The questions you start with determine where you end up. For example, you could ask the following:

  • How do you bring about change in an organization that doesn’t want to change?
  • How do you start and put in place projects to achieve success?
  • How do you change policies and procedures, or work around them?

Or, you might ask, “How can I build relationships with everyone to increase the trust factor? How will othes perceive me when I deliver on my word and get things done in a strategic way? How can I have crucial conversations that build mutual purpose and respect?” These are all powerful questions to ask. You may end up answering all.

One of my favorite fables for leadership is Kotter’s Our Iceberg is Melting. Here’s a quick video overview:

achieve

Watch video

This is an amazing fable with profound implications. Be sure to read the book.

Here’s a tip. When you have to exert top down authority that your organization has granted you, you’re done. Time to reflect on your mistakes, and begin again elsewhere.

You will need relationship smarts to navigate any number of roadblocks and challenges. If challenges were dances, your dance card would be full up. You must learn to dance with change and love it even when you get stepped on, kicked, or worse.

achieve

Some of my favorite topics include:

And this list only scratches the surface. What do you do when principals complain about tardy equipment deliveries? How do you tell the superintendent it’s the warehouse’s fault, not your technicians? It’s all about emotional intelligence, trust, and relationships. Management of complex projects is one thing. Leadership is another.

Ready to start?

Still motivated to pursue a technology director position? Your journey may be only beginning. Keep hold of your tenacity, determination, and lifelong learning ambition. You’ll need them.

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CTO/CIOLeadership

Technology Audit: Planning for Growth

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“I’m ready to jump start teaching, learning, and leading with technology!” say district leaders. “We’re ready to go BYOD!” But are you really? A careful review before such announcements can help prevent embarrassment and a failed initiative. Are you ready to find out if you can embark on an ambitious use of technology in your school district? Then set your district technology program on the path to success with a technology audit. Audits provide a variety of benefits to school districts. In this blog entry, we’ll explore several critical areas in a technology audit.

Did You Know? A team of highly trained educational and infrastructure professionals is available to perform a technology audit of your school district. Whatever size your  district is, our auditors can help. They will provide insights that can help you grow. And because TCEA is a non-profit association, the cost of the audit will be significantly less than if a commercial entity did it for you. The team of TCEA Technology Auditors is ready to assist you. Make contact now.

Before we jump into critical areas of an audit, let’s review the benefits of a technology audit.

Benefits

Why do leaders reach for a technology audit? One reason can be to find a problem rising to the surface. Take the chance now to audit your technology infrastructure and practices. Don’t wait for disaster to strike. A few benefits of audits include:

  • Define status quo. Recent changes in technology department staffing often leave superintendents wondering what they have. Experienced technology auditors are able to do a deep dive on current practices. At a glance, auditors can see areas of complacency and where best practices are not being followed.
  • Baseline for future growth. After a baseline is set, auditors offer custom recommendations. Growth, essential for any organization, involves improving policies, procedures, and infrastructure resources. Specific training opportunities may become necessary.
  • Ease change process. Practices need changing, technology needs upgrading, yet no one wants to make waves. An audit provides the opportunity to bring about change at no personal cost to the technology director or his credibility.

These three benefits often get the job done for most leaders.

Outline of a Technology Audit

“You don’t have a visitor management system?” I asked after walking into his small urban district. A missing visitor management system suggested other problems that I might expect to find.  That said, here are some conversation starters for district leaders.

Infrastructure

Below, find a list of common items important to check for in a school district.

  • Age of Equipment and Infrastructure: What replacement plan do you have in place? Some more questions include:
    • What is the ratio of physical to virtualized servers?
    • What is the upgrade plan for your storage area network (SAN)? Do you have a secondary site? Is that site aligned to disaster recovery and business continuity needs and best practices?
    • What network infrastructure is in place? How many network drops are standard in various locations?
    • How are MDFs/IDFs secured and managed?
  • District Information Systems (a.k.a. Data Systems): This can include various external systems. Too many can be overwhelming; too few mean you may not see patterns in data.
    • Data warehouse dashboard
    • High stakes assessment or benchmark assessment tool
    • Attendance analysis tool
  • Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: When was the last time you updated the plan?
  • System Support Tools: These can include a wide variety of systems. Does the district rely on systems like these? Is that reliance as effective and efficient as it could be? A common list of systems includes:
    • Account management and single sign-on (SSO)
    • Antivirus/anti-malware/anti-ransomware
    • Bandwidth throttling/management
    • Content filters
    • Content management system for websites
    • Digital document management and archival
    • Email archiving
    • Intrusion prevention
    • Inventory control
    • Mobile device management (MDM)
    • Printer job management
    • Visitor management system
    • Security system
    • Special education video surveillance

This excerpt from the technology audit checklist offers some insights into district operations. The checklist shown above fails to measure two other important areas. Those areas are instruction and staff.

Instruction

“How are these technology-based instructional interventions aligned to the DIP and CIP(s)?” This is a question technology auditors often ask. Districts have many technologies to use. Leaders must measure the alignment gap between goals and technology intervention. The wider the gap, the greater the waste of resources.

Staff

“Other duties as assigned” covers a multitude of misaligned tasks. Some common misalignments include:

  • Misuse of instructional technology staff as technical support staff. They may also be tasked with an iPad/Chromebook deployment.
  • Reliance on untrained staff. A network engineer may start out as a technician. The staff member is “promoted” to positions of increased responsibility without receiving the necessary training. This results in network design problems that increase in severity over time.

There are positive practices that may be uncovered. A technology audit may find successful, customer service oriented teaming. Staff may hand off tough tasks, self-identifying areas of expertise. In some situations, staff may cross-train each other to ensure that the organization doesn’t become “one person deep” on any critical initiative.

Not a Game of “Gotcha!”

The purpose of a technology audit isn’t to play “Gotcha!” with staff. An audit takes the guesswork out of knowing how and where to invest resources. The very detailed report you will receive after the audit will include commendations and recommendations that will take your district well into the future. If you’re ready to grow, check with TCEA. Our team of auditors can provide valuable insights and highlight growth opportunities. The goal for us is to maximize student and staff learning through the use of technology. Isn’t that goal worth asking the hard questions?

 

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CTO/CIO

How to Plan for Technology Equipment Replacement

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“We need more storage on the server?” asked the district’s network engineer. He reached into a cardboard box. It contained the second-hand hard drives. These donations had come from the nearby Air Force base in years past. Appalled, I did my best to not scoff at his approach to upgrades. He smiled, an apology in his voice. “I haven’t been given much of an equipment budget.” At that moment, I knew what I needed to do to ensure success in my district: I would need to focus on the equipment replacement plan. Many districts put it aside until it’s a budget-devouring behemoth. Let’s take a look at one approach I took as a technology director to ensure campuses had needed technology that avoided upgrading from donated equipment.

Note: For the purposes of this article, I have changed the name of the school district to “Ardent ISD.”

“Desperation sometimes drives innovation.”

Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber

Step 1: Complete an Inventory Check

If you’ve ever had to walk every classroom and academic space to conduct inventory, you know it’s not fun. That’s why it’s essential to establish a baseline, campus by campus, space by space. To do that, you have to mobilize your team, both district and campus staff, to conduct the assessment.

Inventory check goals are simple but critical to future growth. They include questions such as:

  • Is the unit obsolete?
  • What is the age of the device?
  • When was the device purchased?
  • Will this device get replaced?
  • What’s the cost of replacement?

In my 10,000-student school district, I found the following relevant to computers:

  • Obsolete Windows Units: 1,129
  • Obsolete Mac Units: 991
  • Total Units: 3042

What did these numbers mean? This meant that 65.58% of the fleet of computers district-wide were obsolete. To replace them for $631.14 each (the cost of Dell CPU at the time), the district would have to pay $1.3 million. But this wasn’t the only upgrade needed. After the inventory, it was found that all needed upgrades would cost $1.9 million. By putting off upgrades for years, the district had set itself up.

Device Investment Chart listing the cost for equipment replacement of various district devices.
This graph shows the needed investment by device.

There was no way that any one budget year could result in a complete upgrade. And cobbled together technology started to fail. These equipment failures due to old age (> 7 years) harmed critical areas.

Step 2: Identify Critical Areas and Solutions

A list of critical areas to consider for my district included the following. I’ve summarized the solution implemented to address each area of concern.

Area 1 – Campus Labs

Problem: Principal turnover affects every aspect of equipment replacement. My past school district had a hodge podge of technology at each campus. According to the superintendent, campus principals were tasked with upgrading computer labs. That aside, implementation varied from campus to campus and year to year. The reason? There was too much campus autonomy and principal turnover. This left equipment replacement plans in disarray, broken up to provide a few more computers to classrooms or offices, and campus labs were inadequate. Worse, many devices did not meet the State’s high-stakes digital testing requirements.

Solution: To address this, the Technology Department (with approval from the Curriculum Department) standardized technology. It formed Campus Assessment Centers. Each Center calculated the total enrollment, max class size, and total labs needed. You can see a sample proposal here.

  • All campuses had a requisite number of updated computers.
  • Technicians and campus technology representatives tagged obsolete equipment on campus for removal.
  • The principal designated a room or two for high-stakes assessments.
  • Then, technicians created computer labs over the summer.

Area 2 – Wireless Access Points

Problem: The school had six network ports in every space for people to connect. It only had two hallway wireless access points. iPad carts, laptops, and visiting parent devices requiring WiFi all failed. The problem wasn’t the network but the lack of WiFi access points.

Solution: A systemic plan to put wireless access points in place had to be developed and funded. The network engineer assessed the best placement for wireless access points (WAPs). WAP deployment targeted all common spaces (e.g., gyms, libraries, offices) and classrooms. This was important due to the increased number of mobile devices deployed. That included laptops, iPads, and Chromebooks.

Wireless Access Point Planning Document
An example of the Wireless Access Point planning and tracking document.

Area 3 – Classroom Devices

Problem: “I can’t access the electronic gradebook and attendance system,” said one teacher. “The computers won’t print, either.” A litany of issues with classroom technology, most of it six to seven years obsolete. Some campuses wanted iPads for every teacher. Others wanted Chromebooks. Pushing out updates to classroom devices is expensive in staff time and systems. Worse, it’s almost impossible, requiring a technician to visit and fix it. How could devices be centrally managed and provide campuses with device choice?

Solution: The Technology Department formulated a classroom technology guide. Principals and their leadership teams could select from that guide. Then, they reflected on their choices. In this way, rogue technology purchases were minimized. All new purchases had to align with the Campus Improvement Plans (CIPs). The CIPs outlined how technology would support specific goals and objectives. The Office of Curriculum and Instruction had to approve the CIP’s goals. In this way, the Technology Department avoided dictating to campuses. Campus leadership could decide what technology they wanted to spend precious funds on.

Other critical areas we identified included:

  • Area 4 – Nurses
  • Area 5 – Clerical
  • Area 6 – Leaders
  • Area 7 – Admin (CO)
  • Area 8 – Network Support
The Cost of Obsolescence

As you might imagine, each area costs money. These costs all hit simultaneously since the district waited to upgrade all devices. Consider the costs (approximately $1.9M total) outlined below:

  • Area 1 – Lab: $336K
  • Area 2 – Wireless: $337K
  • Area 3 – Classroom: $1.3M
  • Area 4 – Nurses: $0.00
  • Area 5 – Clerical: $18K
  • Area 6 – Leaders: $17K
  • Area 7 – Admin (CO): $0.00
  • Area 8 – Network Support

With all the costs hitting simultaneously, you need to spread the costs around. To do that, put an equipment replacement plan in place. It allows you to spread costs out over multiple years.

Equipment Life Cycle Planning graphic showing the stages for planning.

Step 3: Craft a Proposal

Once you know the stakes, you’re ready to craft an equipment replacement plan. After gathering all the data, you can make more intelligent decisions.

Sample Equipment Replacement Proposal

View or Get a Copy of the Sample Proposal

You can see what the proposal encompasses with a quick look at the table of contents:

Sample Equipment Replacement Proposal Table of Contents

A key provision of this proposal? Securing recurring funding:

This proposal recommends the use of $500,000 set aside for expansion. Funding addresses identified, critical areas of need that need technology enhancement.

The background of the proposal clarifies the need:

This proposal is the result of a comprehensive needs assessment. District and campus staff collaborated to conduct exhaustive campus visits and extensive interviews. Meetings took place with campus principals and campus technology coordinators. A proposed equipment replacement plan (Appendix 6) appears. The equipment replacement plans came about through consultations with Texas school districts.

There are two top priority areas of need. The Superintendent’s Cabinet has identified these as critical. Those areas include:

1) campus technology assessment centers (e.g. labs) and

2) wireless access at the Ardent ISD’s campuses

Confronted with detailed needs, the Superintendent’s Cabinet chose to accept the proposal. This secured funding to address critical systems. The funding was in addition to the technology department’s budget.

The proposal also outlined a way to redirect obsolete technology to students who needed it since lack of home access to technology was a significant problem.

“We want to turn our inventory faster than our people.”

James Sinegal

Step 4: Revisit and Report on Progress

Although only a part of a district budget, the expenditure for equipment can be significant. It is imperative to share success stories of what has been done and deploy new equipment as quickly as possible. This may mean fine-tuning warehouse-to-end-user deliveries. Ensure that everyone is current on who will do what and by when. Then verify it so you’re aware of the progress and what’s still pending.

Leadership means taking a transcendent view of what’s going on in the trenches while keeping your eye on the details. How will each step now get the district closer to achieving long-term objectives? It can be easy to focus on what’s in front of you and the budget for today’s expenses, especially when days are full. But, to ensure success, plan for the short-term and the long-term, with each reinforcing the other.

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Leadership

Enhance Instructional Leadership with Digital Tools

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

What digital tools are available to help the school principal or administrator be more effective? After decades of research, we know what the principal’s primary role is to practice instructional leadership. That has the greatest effect on student learning. In this blog entry, we’ll explore digital tools that make that job easier.

Before we do that, let’s review some of the research.

What the Research Says: Instructional vs Transformational Leaders

The climate and culture of school mediate the principal’s impact on learning (Source). We know that different kinds of leadership are more effective than others. For example, Hattie’s research points out that transformational leadership differs from instructional leadership.

Reminder: John Hattie says that any instructional strategy has an impact on learning. The average impact on learning of any strategy is 0.40.  Anything greater than a 0.40 effect size accelerates student growth in a calendar year.

What are the effect sizes for these two types of leadership? Transformational leadership has an effect size of 0.11. Instructional leadership has an effect size of 0.42.

Activities associated with instructional leadership had a greater impact than those associated with transformational leadership” (Source).

What activities do researchers associate with instructional leadership?

  • Engaging in classroom observations
  • Interpreting test scores with teachers
  • Focusing on instructional issues
  • Ensuring a coordinated instructional program
  • Being highly visible
  • Communicating high academic standards
  • Ensuring class atmospheres are conducive to learning

Paul Bambrick-Santoyo has some specific suggestions as well in his book, Leverage Leadership. He offers seven levers that allow for consistent growth. We’ll explore some of his points in the next section below.

If a principal can adopt these behaviors that speed student growth, shouldn’t he? Researchers and reformers say, “Yes.” Many principals ask another question:

Are there digital tools that enhance these activities?

The answer to that question is also an affirmative.

Digital Tools Enhance Instructional Leadership

Let’s examine each of the activities. There have been a variety of digital tools shared that make these activities easier. I’m going to adjust Hattie’s wording a little to make it clearer, then share a potential digital tool. If you know of others, please drop them in the comments. That invitation is open to solution providers, as well.

Did You Know?

Sign up for one of our Google Certified Educator certifications. You’ll learn about more than Google Meet, as well as earn 12 CPE hours per course. Use these courses to get Google Educator certified. Find out more online.

While some educators are using Google or Microsoft Forms, there are others. Some of the problems with “home-made” solutions may include:

  • Tough to aggregate data across the school with a data dashboard solution (e.g. Domo, Google Data Studio)
  • Hard to get data in and out of the spreadsheet Forms saves data in for feedback purposes
  • Permissions and account management can be a problem when trying to keep data private

To that end, finding a dedicated solution is necessary. Let’s examine three activities of an instructional leader.

Activity #1: Engaging in Classroom Observations

Engaging in classroom observations can be stressful and tough. When done in the wrong way, it can engender resentment among teachers. This is often due to a lack of transparency in communications. There may be  a gap between expectation of what the teacher should do and what they actually do. That can result in stress for both the teacher and principal. While coaching for results can address this, the principal plays a critical role.

The principal can reduce resentment and confusion by conducting regular walkthroughs and adding more communication. (Note that classroom observations are not the same thing as appraisal walkthroughs.)

A few digital tools appear below. These can ease confidential communications while gathering critical data for campus-wide analysis. Two tools include:

  • Bullseye for Schools. This tool works to capture observations aligned to rubrics. It also allows you to capture videos and take notes on what is observed.
  • iWalkthrough Classroom Observation tool. This is a tool that works on your device of choice via a web browser. It allows you to collect three to five minutes of observation data, then analyze it. You can analyze a teacher’s work or aggregate across the campus, district, or nation.

Activity #2: Interpreting Test Scores with Teachers

“Do you have a data wall in your school?” This question is often asked among principals. Data walls in teacher planning areas focus staff on potential growth areas. These days, data walls are often electronic and appear in data dashboards. These dashboards have the potential to identify areas of growth. But, data walls may reflect interim assessments and may have a negative effect on students and staff. In fact, a Harvard study found that teachers often do not understand the underlying problems that block student growth. For example, in response to math problems, teachers “often proposed non-mathematical reasons for students’ failure” (Source). Then, teachers moved on. This suggests that the teachers studied lacked the depth in mathematics to understand collected data.

Focus on patterns in the data that suggest long-term strategy changes. Some tips:

  • Work through data together with a content expert (especially in dense content areas like math, science, reading)
  • Explore what implications it has for instruction
  • Ask what systematic checks for understanding could you put in place to ensure long-term student support
  • What’s the next student outcome you can support students in reaching? The next after that? Plan lessons to support that.

A big part of analysis is crafting a shared system of norms and strategies. You can use coaching and microteaching to encourage reflection needed. In Leverage Leadership, the author suggests the following:

  1. Share video clips of master teachers.
  2.  Have teachers discuss what they have seen in small groups before sharing with whole group.
  3.  Develop a specific set of norms or system that every teacher in every classroom will commit to implementing.
  4.  Teachers rehearse the system in pairs.
  5.  Teachers engage in a dress rehearsal, offering critiques for that work, with teachers acting as students.
  6.  By the time students arrive, every teacher knows exactly where s/he is supposed to be and exactly what he or she is supposed to be doing at all times.

Displaying a data dashboard may be more effective for big picture results. Learn more about data dashboards and warehouses in this blog entry.

Activity #3: Focusing on Instructional Issues

Focusing on instructional issues may best done with coaching tools. One way to focus on instruction in the classroom could involve micro-teaching. Micro-teaching enjoys an effect size of 0.88, making it quite effective. The Visible Learning Meta X database defines it in this way (edited):

A technique in which a teacher delivers a short, video-recorded lesson. The teacher and/or others analyze the lesson for improvement purposes.

There are many digital tools available to record teachers in action. Associating the video with a teacher’s record could involve a specific tool (e.g. Bullseye). To get the full effect Hattie references, you will have to do more than record a classroom. Fisher and Frey (2019) suggest the following:

  • Each video clip must be fuel discussion between a teacher and a colleague (observer).
  • The video must encourage the teacher, not the observer, to notice what they do and how what the teacher does impacts students’ learning.
  • The observer asks reflective question without stating what s/he thinks of the lesson. The observer’s job is to think with the teacher about what is in the video clip.

You can see an example via this link. What I notice is how reflective the teacher is about her teaching and student learning.

The best part of microteaching (see toolkit) involves giving and receiving constructive feedback. Participants do so with an open mind and align their comments to academic goals. Done right, it improves the teacher’s self-confidence in a safe space of mutual respect.

This confidence can inspire students to rely on the teacher more. This student-teacher relationship leads to greater teacher credibility. And, as you may know, teacher credibility has an effect size of 1.09. When all teachers become credible, you achieve collective teacher efficacy (1.39).

Collective Teacher Efficacy (1.39): The shared belief by a group of teachers that they have the skills necessary. And the belief that they can use these skills to have a positive impact on student outcomes.

In this blog entry, we took a look at three activities instructional leaders engage in. I hope each examination of an activity assisted your thinking about what it takes to be a leader who impacts student learning.

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SketchUp Pro
Special NeedsSTEM/STEAM

Redesign That: SketchUp in Schools

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“We’re going to redesign our Spot’s dog house this holiday break!”
“What do you have so far?” I asked. My colleague held out a legal pad, crude drawings marring the perfect yellow pages. If you’re going to be re-arranging a dog house or your living room to fit a Christmas tree, take a look at SketchUp Make and SketchUp Pro, available for free to K-12 public schools.

Get SketchUp

With a Google account, you can do the interior design work using the newly-released My.SketchUp.com. And if you want the full power of SketchUp Pro (a $695 value), fill out a short form through TCEA. Private schools can obtain SketchUp Pro EDU licenses for as low as $15 per seat per year.

Use SketchUp on Chromebooks, Windows, and Mac

Available for Mac and Windows computers, SketchUp Pro now comes as a web version usable on Chromebooks. What’s more, SketchUp Mobile Viewer ($13.99) allows SketchUp models to be viewed on the iPad.

As my colleague put it, “Google SketchUp is 3D modeling software that lets you create anything you can imagine. It’s powerful enough to build complex projects, yet is easy to learn and use.” Their work appears in SketchUp’s 3D Warehouse, which houses millions of models. Simple enough to use that grade 3 through adult learners rely on SketchUp for a variety of tasks. SketchUp can be integrated into different classes.

Make Creative TEKS Connections

Classes such as, art, science, history, geography, and math are just some of the perfect venues for learning with this free software. Some ideas of how you might want to use it in your classroom are available at TCEA’s SketchUp Resources. Curriculum projects can align to the Technology Applications:TEKS in Grade 6, such as defined below:

Creativity and Innovation: The student uses creative thinking and innovative processes to construct knowledge, generate new ideas, and create products. The student is expected to…
(C) explore complex systems or issues using models, simulations, and new technologies to make predictions, modify input, and review results

You can find teacher guides that provide specific models.

Explore More Features

For children with autism, Project Spectrum shares powerful examples of student creativity made possible. SketchUp Pro can also be used for 3D modeling and printing. Students can create designs in SketchUp, then save them as OBJ files. These can then be opened in your 3D printer’s software (e.g. Makerbot) and printed. Talk about authentic learning!

SketchUp Pro also supports design templates for 3D printing, making it a simple matter to create to scale. You can also export designs in 3D Warehouse to STL file format for 3D printing. Doing so helps clean up your design before beginning to print. Another neat feature involves interacting with holograms. Visualize design data and collaborate with others using SketchUp Pro with Microsoft Hololens.

Conclusion

SketchUp makes creating models for sharing, and printing. Prepare your children for the future and introduce them to it today!

Special thanks to Taylor and Brian Wright for sharing their use of SketchUp to create real structures via their blog.

 

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SketchUp Pro
Educational TrendsFunding

Free 3D Design Software for Texas Public School Students

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written by

One of the many new skill sets today’s graduates need is 3D design. Unfortunately, this can sometimes be an expensive concept for schools to teach, as it requires costly software. But TCEA can help.

TCEA has been granted the exclusive rights in the state of Texas to provide FREE licenses of SketchUp Pro to all K-12 public school educators and students for school-owned computers. This 3D modeling software, normally priced at $495 per license, is easy and intuitive to use, allowing anyone to model in 3D quickly and accurately.

SketchUp Pro is like a pencil with superpowers. Start by drawing simple lines and shapes. Push and pull surfaces to turn them into 3D forms. Stretch, copy, rotate, and paint to make anything you like, from a copy of the classroom to a model of the entire town to a diagram of how the heart works. For more advanced students, start modeling from CAD and terrain data, photographs, or even hand sketches. Build models with custom behaviors and attributes. SketchUp Pro is as simple and as powerful as you want it to be.

If students need help brainstorming ideas of what to draw, they can turn to the 3D Warehouse, where individuals from all around the world who are using SketchUp Pro share their models. And to take the product even further, there is an Extension Warehouse with more than 200 different add-ons for SketchUp Pro available.

The free SketchUp Pro licenses from TCEA are good for one year and may be renewed each year thereafter. To receive a free license of SketchUp Pro 2015, please complete this form. You will then be emailed information within 48 hours on how to download and install the software.

For private schools, Trimble offers deep-discounted SketchUp Pro EDU licenses for as little as $15 per seat per year. Please see their licensing information page. Or you can download the free program SketchUpMake for your students to use.

Take a look at your upcoming classroom projects and see how 3D drawing can enhance them. You won’t be sorry!

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