I admit, I got a bit behind with my posts here, but I plead that I published two the last time I wrote! I suspect I'll be doing the same again today. Work was insane last week....
Anyway, last week, besides being insane, some of my fellow EDTEC classmates and I attended a presentation on K12 Datamine, a software application created by MISi located in Indianapolis, IN. This powerful application is a data warehouse with a wonderful user-friendly portal for schools to manage their day-to-day administrative "stuff" as well as all those reporting requirements that various governmental bodies have imposed on schools these days due to things like NCLB at the federal level, all the way down to reports the local school board wants to see.
Everyone
knows that teachers need to be spending their time teaching and not sorting through piles of papers to gather statistics to meet some kind of reporting requirements, right? If teachers wanted to be gathering statistics, they would have studied that instead of whatever subject they elected to learn to teach (with the possible exception of math teachers). So, when teachers complain, they probably have some basis for being grumpy. And, when you get right down to it, those same statistics show that when teachers spend more time teaching, the students do better. A dilemma....
K12 Datamine to the rescue! (I've added some screen shots so you can see what I'm talking about.)
The first thing I noticed at the top of the launch page was the DOE Reports section. The template for every report is automatically included in this application. Find the data, plug it into the template, and voila, your report is finished. Being a technical writer, I love templates -- they really speed up the work, and when it is just a matter of letting a computer application fill in all the blanks, even better. I want one for my job (just kidding -- I might find myself out of a job!).
At the other end is another reports section, Report Writer. This is for all those non-standardized reports that someone somewhere decides they absolutely have to have. Need attendance statistics for last semester? This place can create it, and save it for the next time someone wants that report. Need to know how many students got kicked off the bus this year for something? You can create a report for that, too. Good management is usually about getting the kind of information you need quickly. This application will do that.
So, ok, you're the vice principal in charge of discipline. Mrs. Jones calls in the middle of basketball practice and wants to know why Suzy Smith got detention because Suzy never gets into trouble. You haven't a clue what Mrs. Jones has to do with Suzy Smith...until you open up your K12 Datamine application and search by guardian. Not only is Mrs. Jones Suzy's guardian, she is a foster parent for a couple other children, as well as having her own child in the school.
Now, you're the teacher, and you really suspect that Jack Helpful is much brighter than his grades would indicate, and you wonder if there is any way to find out. Aha! If you could see his ISTEP scores compared with his grades over a specific period of time, like the last 2 or 3 years, maybe that would give you a clue. You pull out trusty K12 Datamine, and look at the comparison chart with grades and ISTEP scores. Just as you thought! He is passing English ISTEP with flying colors, and almost failing your class. Now that you have the answer, maybe you can come up with some ideas on how to motivate Jack in class.
So, what's the bottom line here? The president of MISi said $50,000 to $500,000 depending on the size of your school district. That sounds pricey...but I ran some numbers (making some assumptions, because I don't know how your school works, but you can compare your numbers with mine and tell me if my assumptions are any good).
These are my assumptions:
Each teacher spends (on average) 1 hour a day doing administrative stuff -- grading, taking attendance, handling discipline -- the data gathering types of activities K12 Datamine addresses.
That teacher is paid $37,500 per year. The same teacher works 5 days a week, 40 weeks a year. That is 200 days, and 1600 hours per year (at an 8 hour day). So, you are paying that teacher $23.45 a day to spend time on administrative stuff. Multiply that by the number of teachers in your school district. My daughters' school district had 72 FTE teachers last year. That is $1687.50 on administrative stuff PER DAY. Multiply that by the number of days in a school year (remember that number, 200, above?) = $337,500 per school year. Ouch! That makes K12 Datamine seem cheap!
I'm not suggesting you run right out and buy this product, but it seems to me it would save schools time and money that could better be spent on teaching.
You do the math, and tell me what you come up with for your school district.
Meanwhile, if you want a great analysis of it from the development perspective, here's what Becky Hammons had to say about it: k-12 data mining/MISi review
Resource:
Management Information Solutions, Inc., 11611 North Meridian Street, Suite 705, Carmel, IN 46032. http://www.misi.com/. 800-464-6191.
Contact John Hayden, and tell him Ball State's EDTEC 685 class sent you.
Labels: administrative, Data mining, data warehouse, MISi, teaching