Maximizing Information Capacity

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Maximizing Information Capacity

• Systems that provide increased knowledge in your
  school district

Tracy Lindsay Jenine Wech
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In this presentation

• Discuss some of the technologies being developed
  to provide information to educators
• Discuss use case for teacher consumption of
  district, school, classroom data
• Applications involved in providing information to
  teachers
• What Regional Information Centers (RICs) are
  putting in place
• What can I do in my district

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Technologies well discuss

• Web Applications
• CIO management of district source systems
• Data Warehouses
• Federated Identity management
• Data collection efficiencies - SIF
• Portal projects
• LDAPs

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Use Case Teacher Classroom Analysis
ReportNet classroom report Robert Smith Period 3

• Teacher
• Uses DataMentor to view School results
• Runs Reportnet report for classroom information
• Views instructional resources from AccelerateU
• Develops Quizmaker test to help reinforce weaker
  areas

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Challenges to meet this use case

• Collection and maintenance of the data needed for
  classroom analysis
• Identity management Do I have a login to the
  applications?
• Equal authorizations in applications - Do I have
  the correct rights?

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Collecting Classroom-Level data

• Classroom level data grouping students with
  teachers so a teacher can view his/her class
  performance
• Source of data Course Enrollment in student
  management systems
• Destination of data RIC data warehouses in the
  CourseEnrollment templates (escholar)
• What it provides
• StudentID, TeacherID, Course, Section,
  SubjectArea

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Challenges of Classroom Level data collection

• Handling elementary students, who arent
  scheduled changing teachers for math, science,
  SS, etc.
• Duplicate teacher IDs within a district (e.g.
  teacher123 in HS is different than teacher123 in
  ES)
• Frequent loads of large volumes of data
• Matching up TeacherID with Login ID !!

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Classroom Level Data the Flow
Student Management Systems

• Students
• Assessments
• Classes
• Teachers

RIC Data Warehouse
DataMentor Reportnet Quizmaker
Identity Source

• User IDs

RIC LDAP
TeacherIDs matched up UserIDs !!

• LAN user account
• HR System
• Email system

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What can Districts do?

• Make sure TeacherIDs are unique within a district
  only one staffID123
• Analyze staff activation procedures Wheres
  person first entered? Who maintains users
  (hire/fire)? Are email addresses used?
• Got SIF?

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Authorizations in Applications

• Important that teacher has equal authorizations
  within each application
• Each applications must know the credentials of
  the teacher
• A class of students in Reportnet is the same
  class in Quizmaker
• Federation of Identities across applications

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Identity Federation

• Federation Identity Providers (IDP) create and
  maintain IDs and Service Providers rely on those
  user IDs to deliver applications to those users

Logins
DataMentor
Districts
ID Vault
Reportnet
Quizmaker
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Why Federation

• Single Sign On (SSO)
• Districts act as IDPs - Applications rely on
  IDPs (Identity Providers) to deliver user
  specific content so, districts can deliver
  applications to users much more easily
• Single point of user maintenance
• Centralized authoritative data e.g. user is
  in BEDS Code430300 and is TeacherID1234

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Federation Nuts and Bolts

• RICs developing regional LDAPs
• Applications exploring/implementing Federation
  (e.g. DataMentor, AccelerateU, Quizmaker, RIC
  Portals, Reportnet)
• RICs exploring technologies to populate LDAPs
  (e.g. SIF, CPSI)

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Challenges of Populating Systems

• All of this data is in separate applications
• Applications dont talk to other apps
• Data may not be collected at all
• User is identified by different UserIDs across
  systems
• Very labor-intensive
• Duplicative procedures

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Data Collection Efficiencies

• SIF School Interoperability Framework moving
  data warehouse and identity data
• CPSI Application that automates the extraction,
  mapping, and loading of data both horizontally
  (within district) and vertically (to data
  warehouse)
• Level 0 Application right now used for
  collection of state data elements potential for
  more widespread usage

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Accessing Applications

• Users must be aware of all applications available
  to them
• Applications must be aware of other applications
  and provide access to users

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Portal Example
Some RICs exploring portals that will leverage
LDAPs to provide user specific content. To the
left is a screenshot from WNYRICs eBOCES
portal. DataMentor and Reportnet will eventually
be Federated with it.
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Cross-Application Sharing DataMentor to
Reportnet
In this example, DataMentor is aware that user
has reports available to him/her in RICs
Reportnet provide context sensitive access to
that application.
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Cross-Application Sharing Reportnet to
DataMentor
In this example, Reportnet can leverage
DataMentor resources by providing context
sensitive links in reports.
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Thanks!!

• Tracy Lindsay
• Data Warehouse Coordinator
• GV/WFL BOCES EduTech
• tlindsay_at_edutech.org
• Jenine Wech
• Manager Web Development
• GV/WFL BOCES EduTech
• jwech_at_edutech.org