AllofE Solutions

K-12 Challenges Related to Data Mining and Reporting

2012-01-30T09:20:00.002-06:00

It is no secret that school districts are facing challenges from every which direction these days. It is also no secret that before a problem can be solved, one must know exactly what the problem is. So in this blog I want to focus on what exactly the problems are that school districts are having with data mining and reporting. These are important areas to focus on because schools look at data in order to make informed decisions on how to best educate their students. If school districts are having trouble accessing and understanding data, then how can they begin to improve their teaching methods and curricula?

The problems that most school districts are struggling with can be classified into three categories: Data Aggregation, Usefulness, and Resources.

Data Aggregation

No matter the size of the school district, data that schools collect can be overwhelming, especially if the data isn’t uniform in nature. Being able to see aggregated data allows the user to catch possible errors and better understand how the figure was produced.

It is very difficult for school districts to aggregate data from multiple sources, including state assessments, MAP, EOC, Acuity, AIMSweb, ACT, Plan, Explore, and more.

Data that is derived from multiple sources comes in different formats and structures, which means it can take hours to get the data from just one assessment into a format that is actually usable.

Once data is aggregated, it is often hard to read and understand. Districts generally have to have a data administrator who can make sense of it all.

Data is often not clean.

If it is clean, administrators and teachers will often not even get to see it themselves. Generally reports only show what the final calculations have produced – perhaps a score, an average, or a graph – not the data that was used in the calculation.

Usefulness

Data only has value if it can be turned into information and knowledge, then action.

Typically, districts end up with either very simplistic reports that don't meet their needs or the reports are so complex that it requires their staff to commit to months of training, and the reports still never get used.

In a lot of cases districts end up with just one year’s worth of data that is tied to only a student. There is no correlation of that student’s score to the teacher, class, other students in the class, other assessments the student took, previous year’s assessment scores, demographics, grade level, etc. Looking at data in the context of several other related data sets can significantly affect the outcome of a decision.

It is difficult to relate performance back to the state learning standards. How do districts know which standards need more attention when the resulting reports do not make clear which questions were associated to which standards?

Data is used to determine teacher and student performance levels, but districts often only have the resources to take into account state-wide assessment data. The best way to indicate a student or teacher’s performance level is holistically and to do that many other data sets would need to come into play.

Even when data and reports provide value, it is difficult to effectively share that information with each faculty member so that they know on a regular basis what their students’ performance levels are and where they need to improve.

Resources

Implementing a system that creates a greater strain in other areas may not provide the greatest value in the end.

For districts that are able to make multiple correlations between data sets (i.e. student’s current score to their last test score, or the class’s average, gender’s average), it is an EXTREMELY time consuming process and requires someone that has a very good understanding of the data structure in their SIS as well as the technical ability to write queries to retrieve such data.

Training staff and faculty to be able to use, read, and understand the resulting reports can take a long time and require constant support.

Enterprise level systems typically come with an astronomical cost - making it very cost prohibitive, especially for smaller school districts, to take advantage.

Deciding to integrate a data mining system into a school district can require a huge investment from everyone involved.

These challenges often result in district personnel spending a lot of internal resources (personnel, time, money) to just make sense of the basic data and then to try to use that data to build meaningful reports. Correlating this data back to the classroom and curriculum is almost impossible.

Yet, that is what is needed for the advancement of students.

And isn’t that the overall goal of our education system?

Top 11 AllofE Events of 2011

2011-12-30T09:34:00.002-06:00

In honor of the last business day of the year, we would like to reflect on AllofE’s top 11 events of 2011. This year has been by far the most exciting yet and it looks like next year will be even better. Please take a look at some of our greatest highlights of the year!

#11 – New Additions to AllofE’s Extended Family: 2011 blessed us with three weddings, one engagement, and one birth. We welcome the new spouses, soon to be spouses, and the baby.

#10 - Community Support: AllofE Solutions became a sponsor to the Basehor-Linwood Education Foundation’s 8^th Annual Golf Classic this year. We also volunteered at the local Jubilee Café to feed those in need and adopted a family for Christmas through the Adopt-a-Family Program.

#9 - ContentM and SMASHUP implementations: Massachusetts Secondary School Administrators Association (www.MSSAA.org), Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletics Association (www.MIAA.net), University of New Haven (http://social.newhaven.edu), Kent State University (http://social.kentstate.edu), House of Apparel (www.houseofapparel.com), and Derrick Thomas Academy (www.derrickthomasacademy.org) – just to name a few… all using our new panel and social media apps.

#8 - UMKC Charter Schools Organization partnership to implement eCurriculum for member schools: AllofE is working very closely with Kansas City area charter schools to integrate technology into their curriculum management processes. The system is configured on a per school basis and allows the school to manage the what, when, and how of classroom instruction as well as map the curriculum to Missouri GLE’s, Show-Me Standards, and Common Core Standards.

#7 - Released version 2.0 and 2.1 of Interactive Campus Mapping System for nuCloud: AllofE Solutions is pleased to announce a new strategic partnership with nuCloud, LLC for the development of the second version of the nuCloud Interactive Campus Tour mapping platform, which was released in early Q1. The new version features a completely redesigned back-end that leverages AllofE’s robust development framework. It moves away from the previous Flash environment and takes advantage of the latest Google Maps API to provide customers with an unparalleled ability to easily create unique, content rich, affordable virtual tours and maps in a familiar interface.

#6 –Members Only System for Massachusetts Secondary School Associations: We are working closely with MIAA and MSSAA to build a new Members Only system, which allows schools to manage facilities scheduling, forms, rosters, schedules and athletic events. This project is slated to go live in spring 2012 and will be used in almost every secondary school in Massachusetts.

#5 – Blew bubblesheets out of the water with new version of ExamN: ExamN now supports scanner-independent bubblesheet processing, common assessment management, and alignment to the Common Core and ACT College Readiness Standards. Some of us now eat, sleep, and dream about better ways to process bubblesheets. Yes, we are nerds at heart.

#4 - eCurriculum for Higher Education: As part of the eCurriculum HE product launch, we partnered with 5 Health Science programs at the University of Bridgeport and the Physician Assistant Program at the University of Colorado, Denver. The system is geared towards accredited programs in the Health Science area to help them map curriculum to the standards and competencies required for the accreditation process.

#3 - CatalogM: This year, we launched an online catalog management system that allows universities to easily update and structure an online course catalog, without compromising the print catalog. Pittsburg State University launched their catalog this year, and we have recently started projects with a few universities whose catalogs are slated to go live for the next academic year.

#2 - Brandbase goes International: With the acquisition of Image Impact in early 2011, Repucom America consolidated two of the sports industry’s leading media and brand valuation measurement companies. Brandbase, the system that had been envisioned, designed and developed by AllofE, was a key part of Image Impact's success and dominance of the U.S. market. It was selected to become the world-wide delivery platform for sponsorship data and intelligence. Brandbase International was launched in a matter of months and is currently used by practically all of the world's major networks, sports leagues and sponsors. This includes organizations such as MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL, NASCAR, UFC, PGA Tour, LPGA, Bristish Premier League, NBC, CBS, ESPN, Univision, and more.

# 1 - Matrix: This year, we launched Matrix, the premier data warehousing and dashboard system for K-12 school districts. With the product launch, we have implemented the system for the Affton, Blue Springs, Independence, and Parkhill school districts in Missouri; Basehor-Linwood in Kansas; and Waukegan in Illinois. Yes, data is exciting to us and sometimes people just don’t get data so we wanted to invent something that will truly revolutionize the level of data intelligence and decision making abilities for K-12 districts.

Thanks for the great year everyone! As they say in German, “Einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr!” which is me wishing you “a good slide into the new year!” I hope that everyone celebrates my birthday…er…New Years Eve, safely and happily!

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-23T16:49:00.004-06:00

I still can’t believe Christmas is this weekend!

Please enjoy some photos from our office holiday party. From the delicious food and drinks to Pictionary and Just Dance, I’d definitely say it was a success! I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday weekend!

Meet Brandy Groff!

2011-12-16T12:34:00.005-06:00

All week long the kitchen has been filling up with party supplies and the fridge has been getting stuffed full of food. Tomorrow it will all be gone though because tonight is our office holiday party! Tracy and Stacy arranged and rearranged the basement until they found just the perfect placing for all of the tables and decorations (and it looks awesome! - I'll share pictures later). There will be lots of yummy food, gift giving and games! It should be great fun!

So today I’m going to tell you a little bit about myself. As you probably know, my name is Brandy Groff and I’m from Iola, KS. I graduated from KU with a BA in German Language & Literature and also in Global & International Studies, plus a minor in Business. I am an Administrative Assistant, but my work extends far past secretarial duties. I work with social media, community outreach, website redesign and much more. I’m currently helping my manager do research related to getting our non-profit foundation started! What I like the most about AllofE is having so many different things to do, being able to learn new things and being able to work with such lovely people. In order to be fair on the next part, I randomly selected questions from each former employee highlight questionnaire and answered them myself. Continue reading if you are interested in seeing how I answered them!

What are some of your hobbies and interests? Traveling! (meeting new people, trying new foods, learning new things - just everything that goes along with it!), reading, writing, scrapbooking, playing tennis, spending time with friends & family, and volunteering.
Pepsi or Coke: Neither, I pretty much only like Diet Dr. Pepper, but I need to stop drinking so much of it!
Ninja or Pirate: Pirate for sure.
What is your favorite music genre? I really like several different kinds of music. Depending on my mood, I can jam out to pop, country, rap, jazz, classic rock, etc but my favorites are probably alternative rock, indie rock and hip hop.
Night Owl or Early Bird: I can be both, but I prefer to be an early bird.
Would you rather be on Dancing with the Stars or X-Factor ? I absolutely hate singing because I know how awful I am at it and I wish I could dance, so Dancing with the Stars.
If you had to trade lives with an animal for a day, which animal would you choose and why? Well...the first thing that comes to mind is a squirrel. They can climb anywhere and do crazy acrobatic tricks lol. I once saw a squirrel lounging on a narrow horizontal rail with his whole tail, belly and head resting on the rail and his legs dangling off each side. He was just sleeping like that! It was the cutest thing ever. I ran to get my camera and when I came back he had scurried away.
What are your top 3 favorite smells? Fresh cut grass on a cool spring day, fresh air after it rains or in the mountains, and coffee in the morning.
What was one food you hated as a child, but love now? Oh I have three big ones...onions, mushrooms, and spinach! I eat them all so much now.
Take a bath in a tub full of jelly fish or sun bath at a bee farm with a sweet scented tanning lotion? Bee Farm for sure...I’m not sure I could survive in a tub full of jelly fish and if I did, I would not want to have to get peed on by all my friends and/or family. That would just be awful and awkward.
Eat snails or eels? I don’t think I could eat either and if I tried, I’d immediately throw them back up.
What do you think of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zljRWsJ6c2o ? “Ahhhhhhhhhh!” I hate how they support and encourage unhealthy eating by giving free meals to people over 350 lbs. I wish that the names of the burgers, like “Triple Bypass” would deter people from eating them instead of encourage them. Of course I understand how people have a craving for unhealthy fast food from time to time, but I don’t think it should be a regular meal choice or that people should think of their health as something they don’t need to care about because there are medicines and surgeries out there that may provide a “quick fix.”
What is your favorite restaurant in Lawrence and why? I have more than one! Rudy’s Pizzeria, India Palace, Zen Zero, Panera and Chipotle.
Mac or PC? PC, but I could probably learn to like a Mac too if I had one.

Meet Katie Bradshaw!

2011-12-09T12:39:00.013-06:00

Despite the cold weather, we haven’t seen our first real snow yet and that is fine by me! Last week we put up and decorated the company Christmas tree. It pretty much took fourteen people, a plastic pole and 50 branches. Despite having only three strands of lights, we had an overload of ornaments and ribbon to compensate; the beast turned into a beauty. Afterwards we headed to Buffalo Wild Wings to enjoy cheap wings and each other’s company. It was also a dinner that concluded the end of our winter volleyball season, which – needless to say – we were the number one worst team. So we drank a beer to forget. Next season, we’ll aim for three wins; it is important to try to improve your score each season.

Then the next day, Bryce and Morgan treated us to a wonderful Indian-themed lunch as a part of the monthly Cooking with Culture event that we have recently brought into the office. We were all salivating at our desks while the aroma filled the office and hung enticingly in the air for hours…or so it seemed. It tasted as yummy as it smelled! I can’t wait to see which culture will be represented next.

In true blogging tradition, I’d like you to get to know another coworker, but you probably already know a little bit about her if you’ve been reading our blogs for a while. Her name is Katie Bradshaw, formerly known as Katie Brosious. It was her recent marriage and not any obsession with Carrie Bradshaw that led to the name change. Katie is from Keller, Texas, but went to college at KU where she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Journalism and Master of Business Administration. Katie is a Marketing Analyst and Social Media Director at AllofE. When asked what she likes most about working here, she says, “I have a lot of freedom to do different things and work in different areas – and I get to work on things where my strengths are put to good use.” Katie is currently working on marketing and implementing CatalogM, the MIAA/MSSAA Members Only project, SMASHUP and recruitment. Check out how Katie answered the following questions to get to know her better.

What are some of your hobbies and interests?

I like athletic things that don’t require any hand-eye coordination (since I have none), like swimming, running and biking. I ran my first triathlon in March and plan to do another one next year, and/or a half marathon.

I love traveling and wish I had more time (and money) to do it – so I mostly road trip it up with my husband and Golden Retriever, Murphy, I love spending time with them and visiting our family which is completely scattered across the country from coast to coast, border to border.

What is one thing you wish you had right now?

I wish I had bring your dog to work day every day.

Do you like summer or winter better?

I would say fall if it was an option, but I’ll pick summer over winter.

If you were going to be a musician, what genre of music would you play?

Country (Specifically Texas country. Yeah, I said it.)

What is one of your biggest pet peeves?

When people smack their mouths while chewing gum, or chewing anything for that matter.

If you saw this spider in the corner of your bedroom, what would you do immediately upon seeing it, then how would you get rid of it?

I would go into panic mode, then suck it up with a vacuum, or make my husband get it (more than likely the second option).

What is your least favorite kind of food and why?

I’m a bit of a foodie and like most different things…but maybe Russian or slavic? It’s the least appetizing to me.

Would you rather vacation in South Africa or Vietnam?

South Africa

Eat caramelized maggots or chocolate covered June bugs?

Chocolate Covered June Bugs

What are some of the top things you want to accomplish before you die?

Travel-related: I want to visit every state in the U.S., and go to Ireland, Italy, France, Germany, England, Switzerland, Brussels and Monaco.

Other: I’d like to run a marathon (at least a half), and maybe do an Ironman triathlon someday if I work up the guts and discipline to train for it.

Would you rather live in space or in the ocean (provided that there are living facilities in both locations)?

Ocean, without a doubt.

If you had to choose one restaurant to eat at for a year, which restaurant would you choose?

715 Restaurant in Downtown Lawrence

What is your favorite thing about Lawrence?

I love downtown and the dog park – Lawrence summers when all the students are gone and there’s stuff going on all the time downtown are the best. Also, KU basketball, duh.

Mac or PC?

I prefer Macs at home, but PCs at work.

Thank you, Katie! For those AllofE employees and other locals that will be participating in the Lawrence Jingle Bell Run, good luck and stay warm! Have a great weekend everyone!

Kent State University Launches SMASHUP

2011-12-01T11:56:00.006-06:00

Check it out here: http://social.kent.edu/

KSU will be featuring a monthly account on the homepage - this month, they're featuring the Fashion school, which is one of the top in the U.S.! Also be sure to check out their social media directory - they have more than 100 social media accounts, and are constantly adding more. This is definitely a social media friendly school - and we have loved working on this project with them.

What do you think?

Leave us feedback in the comments - we love reading them!

Meet Morgan Bojorquez!

2011-11-30T09:37:00.002-06:00

And so it begins: frosty windshields, naked trees and breaths hanging in the air. The 28° and colder mornings are becoming a norm. Kansas winter sits in a crouching position just around the corner. Today is the last day of November in 2011.

Here at the office, the shopping for our adopted family continues and the planning for our holiday party is underway. This Friday will be Day 2 of our Cooking with Culture event in which Morgan and Bryce will be preparing a lunch for us with India as their inspiration!

Let’s get to know Morgan a little bit better, shall we? Morgan Bojorquez is 24 years old and from Manhattan, KS. She graduated from Kansas State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Public Relations. She has been at AllofE for 4 months and is currently helping out with different implementations for eCurriculum and ExamN as well as other general office maintenance. When asked what she likes most about AllofE, she says, “I love the positive and fast-paced atmosphere of the company. I also enjoy getting to work with such intelligent and driven people, and being able to learn something new everyday, especially with technology.” Get to know Morgan even better by reading her answers to the following questions.

What are some of your hobbies and interests? Music is probably my number one interest; I can't really do anything without having something playing in the background. I also love watching KSU football, painting, hiking and being outside in general.

Do you believe in aliens? Too many strange, unexplained things happen to not believe in them.

Are you superstitious? If so, give an example. I am VERY superstitious! I try not to step on cracks, open umbrellas indoors, walk under ladders, etc. It's not normal...

If you had to guest star on Vampire Diaries or Gossip Girl, which would you choose? I don't really watch either of those shows, but I guess if I had to choose one I would pick Vampire Diaries.

If you were a fruit or vegetable, which would you be and why? Well, I guess I would be Broccoli, since I eat it all the time, and they say you are what you eat...

What do you think of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zljRWsJ6c2o ? How can anyone want to eat from there? I'm still in shock that it is still open for business.

What is your least favorite kind of music and why? Country Music, I can't really explain why I don't really like it... maybe the Twang factor?

What is something you did as a kid that was weird or share a childhood story? I'm sure I did a lot of weird things as a kid, but the most adventurous thing I did was probably getting my friend and I "lost" in a wooded area near our houses for a few hours. We were fine and everything, and to this day I still maintain that I knew where we were, but she definitely never wanted to go exploring with me much after that.

What was the funniest thing that you have ever experienced? I spent my Freshman and Sophomore year of college in Upstate New York, when my best friend came to visit, she brought along a video of me lip syncing to various boy band songs and dancing around like a fool ( I swear it was a dare), next thing I know my entire dorm floor was in my room watching it and laughing (at me). I don't think I've ever laughed/cried that much in my life...

What is your favorite restaurant in Lawrence and why? 23rd St. Brewery-- It has a great atmosphere, pretty good food and it is a great place to go to watch a football game.

Would you rather drink a smoothie made of only pureed bugs or eat a stew made of road kill remains? Pureed Bugs.

Would you rather have to sing everything you wanted to say or mime it? Mime, I always dreamed to live life as one big game of "Charades".

Do you have a dance move or saying that you’re known for? At Dance Camp during High School we would always do the "Peanut Butter/Jelly Time" dance, it is the most ridiculous dance ever, but I'm pretty darn good at it. I'm also pretty good at the "Running Man"...

Mac or PC? PC

Curriculum Mapping

2011-11-28T09:25:00.004-06:00

Do you understand curriculum mapping? Janet Hale does. In this blog we take a look at what curriculum mapping is and why it is important.

So, you have a curriculum that aligns to standards set by the state, your program, or your faculty and now it is time to make sure that everything is getting covered in the best way possible, is being understood by the students and is being taught within the allotted amount of time, a.k.a. curriculum mapping.

Curriculum mapping is the process of constantly reviewing and updating a district’s curriculum in order to reduce gaps and repetition and to ensure that the required standards and competencies are being covered and understood. Curriculum mapping helps a collective group of teachers teach in a much more efficient manner, but it also requires some work on their part.

Janet Hale explains: “The term mapping is a verb. It constitutes active engagement and collegial participation in on-going curriculum work. Curriculum mapping does not perceive education as a static environment since learning, and learning about learning, is in continual motion.”

We have all heard the famous quote from Isaac Newton – “Every object in a state of uniform motion remains in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.” This does not only have physical implications but also metaphysical implications. Teachers do not want to be that external force that stops the progression of learning for their students. In order to actively engage students, the curriculum must continuously evolve and build upon itself. Curriculum mapping guides and helps teachers to do just this.

Hale states, “Maps are designed to provide authentic evidence of what has happened or is being planned to happen in a school or throughout a district. Encouraging frequent individual and collaborative revisiting, reviewing, and renewing of available data (e.g., curriculum maps, student assessments/evaluations, teacher-to-teacher instruction observations, formal testing results) through curricular dialogues and collaborative decision making is at the heart of mapping. This mindset is a necessity to reach sustainability and have curriculum mapping become a natural way for conducting curriculum work that continually improves student learning.”

She defines 3 main foci for curriculum mapping: “Communication, Curricular Dialogue, and Coherency,” and we agree.

Communication is the key to effectively evolving a district’s curriculum.

Nowadays the most efficient form of communication is electronic. A lot of districts are embracing technology to centralize, share, and communicate their curriculum not only with teachers but also with parents and the community. Web-based curriculum management systems allow curriculum to be updated in real-time and accessed by peers in the same field of study. Teachers do not need to wait for a monthly meeting in order to adjust their curriculum.

It also facilitates collaboration. Teachers can work together to build a common curriculum or complementary curriculum. With curriculum mapping teachers must realize the significance of their course in combination with the courses of their peers and see their role from the perspective of the school and the district. By altering their focus to include other classes, they can increase communication, decrease redundancy and organize lectures in a meaningful and beneficial way for the student who is going through many of these classes at one time. This focus helps each school and ultimately each district graduate students with the right amount of knowledge and practice to take them to the next step in their lives.

Communication adds an element of transparency. Online curriculum mapping programs allow teachers to see the what, when, and how of the curriculum being taught by other teachers across the district.

More data = Better Curricular Dialogue = Better decision making

As Hale explains, an effective curriculum mapping process allows teachers to take ownership and get involved with the curriculum. Curriculum mapping puts the curriculum in front of them giving them the tools to “make data-based decisions about grade-level, cross-grade level, disciplinary, and cross-disciplinary curricula and instructional practices.”

Coherence - Is incoherent curriculum a problem for some school districts?

It most definitely is.

It is a common complaint of teachers that they are expected to teach too much in too little time and while that may be true, it may also be true that there are too many redundancies or miscommunications is the curriculum mapping process that are not being resolved and that are causing teachers to do more work than is necessary. While the initial endeavor of mapping out everything that is being taught in a classroom and aligning it to the required standards may seem daunting; over time with practice and better communication amongst peers as well as using technology to do it, this will become second nature and the benefits will greatly exceed the time and energy spent on mapping.

The efficiency in communication and teaching caused by continuous curriculum mapping translates into two important things. 1) Teachers are more in sync with one another and better prepared to make necessary changes and adjustments in their curriculum based on the level of knowledge that each group of students requires, and 2) Students have enough time to grasp all that they need to in order to feel confident in taking the next step onto whatever path they choose.

Curriculum mapping is a “let me help you help them” sort of system and it works if everyone does their part.

References

www.curriculummapping101.com

Meet Tyrian Phagan!

2011-11-23T11:44:00.003-06:00

Yipee! Thanksgiving is here at last and so is a mini-vacation! While there is a not-so-pleasant history and unhealthy gluttony associated with Thanksgiving, I choose to love the holiday regardless because it brings my family together and it is a perfect time to make them my guinea pigs for new vegan recipes ;) This year I’m making Sweet Potato Gratin and Green Bean Casserole, but I’m also bringing plenty of other vegan spreads, dips and munchies for them to try as well!

Last Friday was quite eventful in the office. The majority of our company came together bright and early in the morning to volunteer at the Jubilee Café, a service provided by the First Methodist Church for local citizens in need. We were all surprised to see a lot of volunteers up at 5AM and to find out that not only would we be cooks and cleaners but also waiters and waitresses instead of just servers behind a buffet bar. I thought the experience was really cool and I think the Jubilee Café is a wonderful program to have in Lawrence. I’m really glad that so many people from the company decided to get up so early just to help out. After that, David and I whipped up a delectable French breakfast with crepes, croissants, yogurt, bananas and a large assortment of yummy toppings for Day 1 of the Cooking with Culture event that we have recently brought into the office.

On top of all those events, we have all decided to come together to adopt a family for Christmas. This is the first time that I’ve ever adopted a whole family for the holidays, but I couldn’t be more excited. As we get into December, I’ll keep you updated on our charity mission. We’ve decided the best strategy at this point is to all pool in money, then let the girls go shopping J Don’t you think that is probably the best idea too?

Enough chatter, time to meet AllofE Software Developer, Tyrian Phagan! Tyrian is 29 years old and from our very own Lawrence, KS. He graduated from KU with a Bachelors and Masters of Science in Computer Science. He has been here for just under half a year and says the thing he enjoys most about working at AllofE is being able to work on a lot of different things. He is currently working on ExamN bubblesheets. When asked what one of his hobbies was, Tyrian said reading books, mostly science fiction. Get to know more about Tyrian by reading how he answered the following questions:

Be a rice farmer or cotton picker? Cotton picker

Go zip lining or white water rafting? Zip lining. I have already been white water rafting.

Own a python or an alligator? Python

Eat snails or eels? Eels

Complete Sushi Delight (#3) Challenge or the Jack-n-Grill Challenge (#13)? Check them out at this website: http://blog.couponsherpa.com/place-your-bets-40-gut-busing-restaurant-challenges-for-free-food/

Jack-n-Grill

Be on Fear Factor or Survivor? No

Take a bath in a tub full of jelly fish or sun bath at a bee farm with a sweet scented tanning lotion? Bee farm

What is your all time favorite food? Pizza

What do you usually do for Thanksgiving? I go to my best friend's mom's house

Do you have a dish you are looking forward to eating for Thanksgiving? Pecan Pie

What is one of your proudest accomplishments? Masters degree

What type of music really gets you energized? 80's rock

Mac or PC? PC

Thanks Tyrian! I wish everyone safe travels over the holiday break and lots of good eating!

Meet Alex Porter!

2011-11-11T11:49:00.005-06:00

Can we talk about coffee for a second? Only three people in our office drink coffee. Three! Why does that surprise me so much? I guess, I just expect more people to want a cup of Joe at 9 am. And now I’m wondering how Joe became synonymous with coffee? I have to look this up...

...The most popular theory according to the World Wide Web is that Admiral Josephus (Joe) Daniels outlawed alcohol on ships and consequentially made coffee the favorite beverage among naval crews. Afterwards, crew members started asking for a “cup of Joe.”

Meh, I’ll take that.

My junior year of college I drank more coffee than I had ever drank before and now I can hardly get through a full cup. There are a couple reasons for this. First, I was in Germany my junior year of college and let me tell you...it is coffee, not beer, that Germans drink the most. So, it just became normal to drink coffee like *20 times a day. *(Slight exaggeration). Second, I started drinking coffee black near the end of my year in Germany and therefore started drinking less because it tasted so much stronger. The transition to black coffee was hard at first because I grew up with a mom who loaded her coffee with creamer and sugar, but now I generally prefer it black; but I certainly can’t drink as much as I used to.

Quick factoid: the term Americano was created because when the American soldiers were in Europe during WWII, they didn’t like how strong the coffee (espresso) was and therefore had to add water to it in order to make it taste more like what they were used to. Speaking of servicemen and women, I’d like to give a shoutout to all of the vets today on this fine Veteran’s Day. The last decade has not been an easy one for millions of servicemen and woman and their families, but we hope to be welcoming many of them home soon.

Now onto our traditional employee highlight. I’d like to introduce a fellow classmate and friend, Alex Porter. Alex and I are from a small town in southeast Kansas called Iola. I think we were both equally surprised that we ended up working for the same company in Lawrence after college, but only because just a small handful of our graduating class actually left that corner of KS. Alex is 22 and graduated from KU with a Bachelors of Science in Engineering Physics (Electromechanical Control Systems). He is a developer here at AllofE and when asked what he enjoyed the most, he said, “the creative environment.” Alex is currently working on Matrix, our top of the line K-12 data analysis and warehousing program. When asked what some of his hobbies are, Alex replied, “trivia, going to the dog park, skydiving, scuba diving, traveling and drawing.” Get to know more about Alex by reading how he answered the following questions.

Who is your superhero alterego? Steve Jobs
Do you have any hidden talents? If so, what? Hmmm, I can juggle...
Vacation in the Swiss Alps or the Argentinean jungle? Definitely the jungle
Would you rather swim the English Channel or complete the Tour de France? 100% Tour de France
Complete Papa Bob’s Bar-B-Que Challenge or the Speck Bar & Grill Challenge?
Check them out under the KS section of this website: http ://blog .couponsherpa .com /place -your -bets -40-gut -busing -restaurant -challenges -for -free -food / Both at the same time
30 days of eating Taco Johns or 30 days of Taco Bell? Taco Bell doesn’t have potato oles...
6 months of complete darkness or 6 months of sunlight? Sunlight
Suck on a cockroach while it is still alive or let a tarantula crawl around underneath your shirt? Suck on a cockroach I suppose
Suffer from Sociophobia (Fear of society or people in general) or Autophobia (Fear of being alone or of oneself)? Autophobia, it’s difficult to be alone when the world’s population just surpassed 7 billion people
What are your top 3 favorite smells? Chipotle, fireworks, and Vicks Vaporub
What was one food you hated as a child, but love now? Green Beans
What 5 things would you do first if you won 2.5 million dollars? 1) Buy a Segway 2) Travel the world 3) Invest 4) Give to charity 5) Gamble in Las Vegas
Mac or PC? 1000% Mac  (<---you have to have a mac...)

Thanks Alex! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Stop Stressing, Start ExamNing.

2011-11-10T09:09:00.000-06:00

Online assessments. Are schools starting to get serious about this yet? Apparently, yes, because we have been working with a few of them, but the change for schools to support completely computerized assessments has been slow. There are only a few districts that have a 1:1 student:computer ratio; most are still resorting to bubblesheet-based assessments. When we built our online testing system, ExamN, in 2004, the landscape was completely different. After a lot of research and listening to what schools were looking for, we’ve developed something even better, something that can truly aid in the transition from paper-based testing to online testing.

Enter ExamN Version 5.

It works something like this:

As a teacher, I get to decide what kind of a test I would like to use.

Do I want to create my own?

Do I need to use a common assessment test that was created by district administrators?

Or did I find one in a text book or elsewhere that I would like to use?

And then how do I want to administer it? Online? Bubblesheets?

Classroom Assessments

If the teacher would like to create their own test it is as easy as one, two, three. One, they create test questions in a question bank in the any of most common question formats (true/false, multiple choice, short answer, etc). Two, they insert all the questions into the test in the order that they want and preview the test. Three, they schedule and launch the test for their students to take. They will get immediate results and many useful reports based on the students’ submissions.

Common Assessments

If the teacher needs to use a common assessment test they have two options. One, give the test just as it is or two, add their own questions, then give the test. The purpose of the common assessment test is for districts to see how well students in different schools across the district are doing in comparison to one another. The benefit of the teacher being able to add their own questions to a common assessment test is that the students only need to take one test and from that the teachers and administrators can both receive the information they need to know.

Automated Bubblesheet Grading

If a teacher finds a test outside of ExamN, they can still use that test, but grade the answers in ExamN. How this works is the teacher creates an answer key in ExamN and ExamN creates a bubble sheet for the teacher to print out and hand to his/her students to answer the questions on. The filled-in bubble sheet is scanned back into the system and quickly compared to the answer key resulting in fast grades and reports for each student and the class as a whole.

No more is there a need for expensive machines, paper or companies to grade bubble sheets for you. With ExamN you create, personalize and pre-populate them yourself. Pre-populating certain fields like student ID, teacher ID, Class ID and School Building avoids problems and saves time.

Online Assessments

And for those districts that do have capacity to administer computerized assessments, this makes the teacher’s job that much easier. No printing, no scanning, no grading. Period.

Performance Based Assessments

More and more districts are also moving towards performance based assessments as a more accurate picture of a student’s progress. Teachers are now able to build and use standards driven rubrics to aid in this process by adding some objectivity to a more subjective approach. Did the student meet the requirement or understand the objective? Check yes or no.

Reporting, reporting, and more reporting

After the tests are in and scores are given, you can guess what’s next – How can we generate some reports? With so many reporting options available, let’s just take a look at a few of them:

Question Summary Report: displays the results of each question and the frequency that each answer was chosen.

Common Assessment Report: displays the number and percentage of correctly and incorrectly answered common assessment questions, teacher-added questions and the total of both (assuming the teacher did add their own questions to the common assessment).

State, Common Core and College Readiness Standards Reporting: analyzes what standards have been assessed and how each student and classes as a whole performed based on the standards.

Get Results: Data Centralization, Automation…Time Saving

With all your old tests and all of your students’ test results in one easy-to-access location, giving tests and monitoring progress has never been so easy. You don’t need to shuffle through paper tests in order to discuss a student’s test results, you don’t need to try to read illegible writing, and you don’t need to take time calculating scores and figuring out the most commonly missed questions. You don’t even need to rewrite the same questions for final exams, just get the question you want out of any of your previously made question banks and apply it to a new test.

So if you are ready to let those things go, then stop stressing and start ExamNing.

Meet Stacy Cook!

2011-11-04T13:33:00.004-05:00

I am so excited about so many different things happening at AllofE that I don’t even know where this blog should begin. I guess I’ll start by telling you that we had a company meeting this morning. Sure, that may sound pretty common to you, but company meetings don’t really happen at AllofE. We focus on efficiency and therefore don’t believe we need to waste our time telling each other things we already know that are happening around the company, but there does come a time when you avoid having company meetings for so long that it becomes a necessity. I thought we were at the point of necessity and I guess our CEO thought so too. The meeting went great. Our CEO impressed upon us the importance of the stage we are at as a company, just how far we have come over the last year, what he wants us to focus on now and how each of our roles are important in driving us to the next level. I hope everyone else is pumped, because I am!

Before I get to the employee highlight, I’d like to update you guys on what has been going on. Halloween was a lot of fun; Bryce won the best Halloween costume (the gorilla in the middle) and was therefore awarded a beautiful pot of mums which he says shall remain at his desk until next Halloween (where I assume he plans to pass them off to the next winner? Haha, I hope he takes care of them so that they can last that long). We had a delicious baked potato bar and finally dwindled down our giant pile of sweet treats.

AllofE presented one of its newest and most popular products, Matrix, alongside Basehor-Linwood school district at the Kansas Department of Education’s annual conference in Wichita. There was a good turn out of people despite the other 14 sessions taking place simultaneously, so hopefully we’ll be able to partner with some of those attending districts soon.

Coming up, we will be volunteering at the Jubilee Café, a bright and early morning where we hope to give back to the Lawrence community. That same day we will be starting an exciting new “Cooking with Culture” event in the office where we partner up with a coworker and present a breakfast or lunch that is traditional in another culture. David and I are up first, but what we will be making is a surprise. I will tell you that it is a breakfast that is quite popular in America, but is not originally from here and has made its way around the globe. I think we will be educating people on the history of our breakfast and try to pull in traditional versions of it from the countries that it is popular in.

Well before I go overboard, let me introduce to you Stacy Cook, who used to be Stacy Schwind, but just recently got married! Stacy is 25 and from Lansing, Kansas. She graduated from KU with a Bachelor of Science in Strategic Communications and minors in Business and Sociology. Stacy has been a part of AllofE for three years now and has many different roles including Business Analyst, Office Manager, HR Coordinator and Snack Maker. When asked what Stacy liked the most about AllofE she said, “The ability to learn and grow. I started out on the marketing side and have transitioned to the technical side because of huge opportunity to learn new things from some very smart people and expand and strengthen my abilities.” Stacy is currently working on converting William Jewell College’s old ContentM to the “latest and greatest version of ContentM which includes the use of panel pages.” Get to know more about Stacy by reading through the following questions!

What are some of your hobbies and interests? Reading sappy, girly books; spoiling my dogs; working out; spending time with friends; and learning new technology, of course!

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? A Disney princess or a Zoologist – I had soooo many Zoobook magazines!

What is your favorite food item or meal? Mexican food

Who is a celebrity you would like to meet? Well, not exactly a celebrity, but Walt Disney - So smart, talented, and just a big kid at heart!

Would you rather cut off your own arm or have a friend cut off six of your toes? I would pass out immediately during either of those. The site of blood makes me so sick.

Complete the Gorilla (aka Wheat State) Challenge or the DonDon Challenge? Pizza please!

Drink 16 oz. of lake water or a spoonful of sewage? Lake water

Eat a pig’s tail or cow brains? Pig tail

Live in a high rise apartment in New York or a log cabin in Alaska? New York, New York!

Be the CEO of a Wall Street Company or a State Representative? State Rep

Be a famous artist or famous musician? Muscian

Complete a marathon or a triathlon? Triathlon

Be on Real World or Big Brother? Real World

Mac or PC? PC

Thanks, Stacy! Have a fun, warm weekend everyone!

Using Normal Curve Equivalents to Determine the Mean

2011-11-02T10:38:00.007-05:00

Introduction

Normal curve equivalents, commonly referred to as NCEs, are values associated with a test score that relate a student's performance on an exam to the mean in a normal distribution of scores. This value is actually an interpretation of the standard score (or z-score) on a larger scale (1-99). A z-score is simply the number of standard deviations a score is from the mean, and, therefore, represents a performance level associated with other scores in a distribution. Normal curve equivalents are favorable performance measures because the scale they are measured on is one of equal intervals. This attribute of NCEs makes direct averaging and comparing between two NCEs possible. Therefore, two previously unrelated test scores can be directly related, in terms of performance against the mean, on the NCE scale.

In this blog, I will explain how NCEs, along with their corresponding test scores, can be used to calculate the mean of the data from which the NCEs were determined. This calculation is important because it presents us with the ability to easily calculate mean state test scores given two NCE, test score pairs. Using the state average, any student that falls into the distribution from which the mean was calculated could then be associated with their own NCE for that test. Because NCEs can be directly related, performance from year to year (or content area to content area) can be viewed—this opens up an avenue for determining an accurate measure of growth within school districts.

Determining Z-Scores

NCEs were developed specifically for educational statistics as a way of making standard scores more convenient. Mathematically altering z-scores to be on a scale ranging from values 1 to 99 results in a performance score that can be quickly and more easily interpreted. With the end goal of calculating the mean of a distribution of student scores, the first logical step is to simplify the NCEs. Standard scores are the building blocks of NCEs and contain within them the standard deviation of the data. Therefore, dealing directly with z-scores will make this process easier. The equation to find a z-score from an NCE is

Using Z-Scores to Find Standard Deviation

Z-scores are the number of standard deviations a score is from the mean. As a result of this, two z-score, test score pairs can be used to calculate the standard deviation of the data from which these test scores came by finding what fraction of a z-score a change in test score corresponds to. The equation to do this is

Finding the Mean

After finding the standard deviation, only one variable remains unknown—the mean. Using one of the z-scores from the data, as well as the recently determined standard deviation, the mean can be found by using

Conclusion

When a minimum of two test score, NCE pairs are known for a set of data, the data's mean and standard deviation are easily calculable. In addition to this, the process is made more simple when the NCEs are first transformed into standard scores. Overall this process makes finding information about test score distributions fast and straightforward.

Meet Drew Manderfeld!

2011-10-28T11:15:00.003-05:00

I cannot believe that October is already coming to a close. The beautiful fall that we started with has suddenly slipped away and now heaters are turning on and winter coats coming out. We’ve been busy this week in the office with Halloween Treat Week and while in the past people have simply bought candy and the mound has grown to an enormous height by the end of the week, this year it seems people are branching out a bit more by baking cookies and muffins and buying cakes, pumpkin bread and cider. We’ve pretty much been on a sugar overload all week. Other office events include the info session we had last Wednesday at KU, from which we hope to gain some new talent to add to our growing company and the Halloween costume party and luncheon we will be having next Monday, which should be lots of fun.

As for now, it is time to meet our computer science intern from Overland Park, Drew Manderfeld. Drew will be graduating from KU this spring with a BS in Computer Science and after graduation Drew says he plans to go on full-time here at AllofE. When asked what Drew enjoyed the most about working at AllofE he said, “Being able to work alongside such talented and smart people. It is a huge advantage and keeps everyone striving to be at the top of their game.” Drew, like the rest of us, is involved in multiple projects, but his main focus is Matrix where he is translating assortments of student data into useful and readable information. Get to know Drew a bit better by how he answered the following questions:

What are some of your hobbies and interests?

I love soccer, but I rarely get to play anymore so instead I have season tickets to Sporting Kansas City. I enjoy other sports as well and am very disappointed I can’t play vAllOfEball this season due to class, but I think I’ll be back next season!

If you could do anything (your imagination is the limit) what would you do and why?

This might be a little out there but I believe there are multiple paths to happiness so I would love to be able to live two lives at once; one being my current life and another being a professional soccer player or something. There is always so much I want to do I feel like I need two lives.

What song would you choose to sing at a Karaoke bar if you had to sing something? I can’t sing well but I always end up singing and dancing to ‘When the Going Gets Tough’ by Billy Ocean.

Would you rather be on Dancing with the Stars or X-Factor (American Idol)?

I can’t dance or sing so I’d be better suited for Programming with the Stars or something.

If you had to trade lives with an animal for a day, which animal would you choose and why?

I think I’d go small like an ant or something. Stuff would be so amazing when you are so tiny. I’ve also always wanted to eat a giant Oatmeal Crème Pie like in Honey I Shrunk the Kids.

What is your favorite holiday?

Halloween with friends and Christmas with the family.

What is #1 on your Christmas wish list this year?

A long-sleeve Sporting KC home jersey.

Sky diving or bungee jumping?

I want to do both!

Extra pair of eyes or extra pair of ears?

Extra pair of eyes, my vision is horrible.

Eat 10 live worms or 20 dead flies?

10 live worms easy.

Naturally purple skin or naturally green skin?

Green I suppose.

Moped or Segway?

My girlfriend wants a moped so I’ll go with that, I’m happy with a car.

Mac or PC?

PC 100%

Thanks Drew! I hope everyone has a safe, fun and happy Halloween weekend!

Types of Student Growth Models

2011-10-26T09:34:00.009-05:00

Everyone involved in K-12 education has probably heard of the term Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). This is a report that determines the amount of positive influence (efficiency) of a school on a student. As student growth becomes more and more popular, AYPs have begun incorporating growth models in their calculations. Because these models differ from state to state, it is important to know what kinds of models your state is using to determine just how effective your school is.

Currently, there are three main categories of student growth models: growth-to-proficiency, transition-matrix, and projection models. Currently, Matrix clients include states that have adopted the growth-to-proficiency model. As Matrix’s user base grows, so too will the support for additional growth models including transition-matrix and projection.

All of these models use the idea of proficiency. Proficiency is a level of student achievement (on test scores) that illustrates appropriate student ability. Students are said to be sub-proficient if they are below this cutoff point. Some models make use of additional levels of student achievement, such as weak sub-proficiency (lowest level), low marginal sub-proficiency, high marginal sub-proficiency, proficient, and advanced (highest level), but the most important cutoff in these models is the proficient level.

The growth-to-proficiency or trajectory model asks that a student below proficiency will become proficient in some set amount of time. It compares current student achievement to recommended student achievement (e.g. the proficient cutoff) and asks that these two values meet in a few years (typically 3-4). This model awards AYP points if a student has met proficiency or is on track to proficiency. The problem with this model is that it expects sub-proficient students to make larger-than-typical gains every year to even be considered as “on track.”

As you can see, the sub-proficient student needs to make up quite a bit of additional ground each year to become proficient soon. This model thus presents a conundrum: if a teacher does just as well with their sub-proficient students as with their proficient students, they are actually punished for not achieving above-average growth results. Thus, this model may encourage teachers to create curricula that cater towards and pay disproportionate attention to sub-proficient students. Furthermore, because this model does not account for growth above the proficiency line, a teacher has no incentive to ensure a proficient or advanced student achieves any growth whatsoever. A teacher only has incentive to make sure they do not fall below proficiency.

The transition-matrix model uses a table of sub-proficiency levels and rewards students who grow from one achievement level to the next. Students who grow at least one level are considered “on track” for AYP purposes. Some versions of the transition-matrix model award full points to sub-proficient student growth, and some versions award some fraction of points to these students. Personally, a transition-matrix table that uses partial points, such as the Delaware model, misses the point of growth entirely -- that students should not be punished for starting at a low achievement level. A transition matrix table similar to the one used in Delaware’s model is shown below.

Transition-matrix models (at least, the ones that award full points for all growth) alleviate one of the problems of growth-to-proficiency models. Namely, that sub-proficient but normal growth is treated as the solid achievement that it is and does not punish a student for starting low.

One disadvantage to this model is similar to the growth-to-proficiency model in that proficient or higher students are not rewarded for growth at all. Again, this can cause teachers to pay less attention to these students.

Projection models are a more complicated, predictive analysis model. These models take into account cohort (previous classes) test scores, and compares them to this year’s class scores. This model properly takes into account growth regardless of the student achievement level (which reduces the ability to game the system), takes into account changes from one year to the next in the same subject area (for example, stunted growth in math across the board when students encounter algebra), and has the best predictive ability of all the models with upwards of 80% correct future proficiency prediction.

The s points represent the current student’s yearly scores, and the p points represent the proficiency cutoff for that year. The solid line takes the current student’s data (s points) along with some fancy regression analysis using the p points to determine where the student will land next year. As we can see, the student is currently in grade 5 and sub-proficient. However, this model will consider the student to be “on track”, since they are projected to achieve proficiency in grade 6.

The solid predictive power of projection models come at a large cost to complexity. While this graph may or may not be easily explainable to administrators, principals, and teachers, the regression analysis used in the background is not. This means that the model is now harder to explain and can make the model feel “less accountable” than a simple model. Furthermore, the projection in this model uses probability to determine the most likely outcome for a student. The fact that probability is involved means that there is uncertainty involved with the measurements. This means a student’s projection might be either too high or too low, which can place either too many or too few students in the “on track” category for AYP.

All three models have their upsides and downsides, and hopefully states new to student growth will choose a model that’s right for them.

Further Reading

Auty, William, et al. Implementor’s Guide to Growth Models. CCSSO: The Council of Chief State School Officers. June 2008. http://www.ccsso.org/Documents/2008/Implementers_Guide_to_Growth_2008.pdf

Hoffer, Thomas B., et. al. Final Report on the Evaluation of the Growth Model Pilot Project. U.S. Department of Education. January 2011. http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/disadv/growth-model-pilot/index.html

Meet Bryce Minter!

2011-10-20T10:32:00.003-05:00

Another week is about to come to a close and that just means that we are one week closer to Halloween. While, I unfortunately do not have an elaborate Halloween costume planned, I do have a small October to-do list to get through. What is on that list? Well, firstly, I want to eat as much pumpkin-flavored food items as possible. I’ve kind of had a slow start, but it is about to pick up. I made some pumpkin-squash-coconut soup last week. I just bought pumpkin-spiced bagels and I’ve collected all the necessary ingredients to make some delicious pumpkin waffles this weekend. Of course I’ll have to make a pumpkin pie and maybe some pumpkin bread or muffins too before the month ends. I highly recommend pumpkin ice cream for those ice cream lovers out there, it is probably my favorite. Next thing is to visit the pumpkin patch and the apple cider mill. Our very own Louisburg Cider Mill is supposedly ranked as one of the top ten in the nation. It has been over a decade since the last time I was there and I think it deserves another visit. Third on the list is going to Worlds of Fun during their Halloween Haunt season. I’ve never been, but I hear great things. Sounds like I’m going to be busy for this weekend and all of next week!

But enough about me and my plans! It is time to meet another one of my coworkers! Today we are highlighting our Computer Science Intern, Bryce Minter. Bryce is a KU student from Kings Mountain, North Carolina and has been interning with us for just over a year. When asked what Bryce liked the most about working at AllofE, he said, “The sheer amount of projects and code base to work on and the calm, relaxing atmosphere.” He says he works on a little bit of everything. If anyone needs something done, Bryce is willing to do it. Check out how Bryce answered some of my other questions:

• What are some of your hobbies and interests? In my free time I like to do programming, mainly game programming, but also enjoy doing parkour when I have time outside of school and work.

• If you could have any talent what would it be and why? A photographic mind to remember any date, any day perfectly upon recalling information.

• If you could create a new law for the U.S. what would it be and why? It wouldn't be passed if I proposed it anyways...

• What is your favorite sport and/or sports team? Don't really have a favorite but I hope that detroit does pretty well this year because I have the quarterback for my fantasy team!

• What is your biggest pet peeve? People who don't respond when they are in front of any type of screen, especially texting.

• Stuck in the freezing mountains or the hot desert? Depends on the situation I was left in, if I had the tools to survive in the freezing mountains then the freezing mountains but if I didn't have any tools then the hot desert.

• Mercedes Benz or Porsche? Im fine with the car I have now lots of money has gone into it.

• Cake or Pie? I shall answer your question with a question, Is boston cream pie considered a pie or cake?

• Extra pair of arms or extra pair of legs? Arms, I think it would take to long to get used to an extra pair of legs. Also theres no place for the legs to really go.

• Most famous person in the world or completely unknown by anyone but your mother? Why not shoot for the most famous person, nothing to lose, at worst I end up being completely unknown by anyone.

• World’s longest finger nails or world’s biggest ears? World's biggest ears the better to hear you with!

• Mac or PC? PC

• iPad or Laptop? Laptop. Can't program on a iPad.

Thanks Bryce!

Everyone in the office is starting to plan out their costume ideas because Halloween falls on a Monday this year and that means we get to come to work as whoever we want to be! We’ll definitely be posting some pictures of how that turns out. Then it is on to Thanksgiving festivities! Oh, how I love the holiday season.

On The Drilldown

2011-10-19T09:14:00.005-05:00

Introduction - History

At AllofE, we have clients in fields ranging from K-12 to higher education, from trucking to sports branding analysis. Every sector has its own challenges, and every project we complete gives us new perspectives on how to solve complex problems. The problem of aggregating massive amounts of data and displaying it in an understandable and intelligence-focused fashion is one of the hardest problems we've come across. After a lot of scrap pieces of paper, dried whiteboard markers, and long discussions, we came up with a solution that is easy to use, fast, and brings to light intelligence from data: the Drilldown. Although it was originally developed to solve a problem completely unrelated to student growth, the Drilldown is the best way to display a district's worth of information in an understandable and intuitive manner.

What the Drilldown Shows

Imagine a district's data as one giant table of raw data. Its columns would number in the hundreds, and its rows would number in the thousands. Because of the massive amount of data, extracting intelligence by looking at each and every piece of data is an impossible task. Different groups and cohorts of the data need to be displayed for the data to be truly understood.

The group people are most familiar with is the gender group. Matrix goes through every record in the data warehouse and places the record into one of two cohorts: male students or female students. The average scores for each type of test are then calculate across multiple years, and displayed for analysis. Being able to see the performance of males vs. females for an entire district, from clicking on the Drilldown to seeing the data, takes a matter of seconds. Matrix gives users access to all of their data, and allows them to understand all their data without having to wait hours or days.

The gender group is just one of many different groups the Drilldown uses. The ethnicity group breaks down data into even finer cohorts. Lets say a district administrator wants to know which ethnicity their teachers need to focus on more than others. By building a cohort for each ethnicity, Matrix can quickly show the performance for each ethnicity, and allow that administrator to quickly find which ethnicity teachers need to focus on.

The gender and ethnicity groups are two of the groups Matrix shows based on student demographics. Our data warehouse also connects together schedules and enrollments with students, and allows the Drilldown to show groups based on grade level and school. The district administrator from the ethnicity group may also want to know how much students are growing as they progress through the district. By looking at cohorts in the grade level group, they can see if there is positive growth through each grade level. They can also see the growth in each particular school to get an even deeper sense of how students are moving during their time in the district.

Combining Groups

Up to this point, the questions asked of the Drilldown have only been asked at a district level. Questions like "how well are we reaching 3rd grade males vs. 3rd grade females" or "which ethnicity is performing the best in an elementary schools" are questions that the Drilldown can also answer. Every cohort is clickable and allows you to zoom in or drilldown (where the name came from) to see a more focused picture of the district.

The first question, "how well are we reaching 3rd grade males vs. 3rd grade females," can be answered by one click of the mouse. By going to the grade level group and clicking on the 3rd grade cohort, the Drilldown refreshes itself to show data tied specifically to 3rd grades. Middle and High Schools will no longer show up under the school group, and 3rd grade will be the only entry in the grade level group. The data in the gender group shows performance of males and females in 3rd grade. In a manner of seconds, the Drilldown has answered a question some districts have spent days trying to answer. The Drilldown also allows for the performance of 4th grade males vs. 4th grade females to be answered in a similar manner.

Clicking on a cohort in the Drilldown allows the lens to be focused on specific parts of a district. It's easy to see that this method of filtering allows for finer and finer views of a district to be constructed and understood. Moving between cohorts like 3rd and 4th grade is also an easy process. Each filter is shown at the bottom of the Drilldown, and can be removed by clicking on it. The answer the previous question to about gender performance in 4th grade can be found by clicking on the existing 3rd grade filter, then filtering by the 4th grade cohort. The process of adding and removing filters allows users with any level of technical experience to understand student performance in their district in a manner of seconds.

Exports, Printing, and Detail Data

Matrix is an application that is accessible by anyone that has a computer and an Internet connection. It is also an application that recognizes the value of extracting data out of it. Being able to print a grid or save what's visible on the screen into a spreadsheet is possible throughout the system. The Drilldown takes the guesswork out of saving information for a presentation or for later analysis by offering both Export and Print buttons.

Along with printing and exporting, the Drilldown has the ability to display all of the underlying data used to create its filtered view. By clicking on the Detail Data button, users are shown the student level data used to create the Drilldown. Matrix makes it possible to move from a view of the entire district down to a set of 10 students within four or five clicks. The Detail Data is also exportable and printable, and can also display a student's entire history with just one click.

Conclusion - Answering Questions

The Drilldown was designed to answer questions a user may have about the performance in their district. Questions an administrator, principal, or teacher may have about student performance are answerable with a few clicks. Thanks to the Drilldown, the long, cumbersome process of answering one question at a time from a spreadsheet thousands of lines long is now fast, efficient, and possible for any user within a manner of seconds.

Matrix

2011-10-11T13:48:00.001-05:00

There is a lot of controversy out there about whether or not we should be even using standardized testing as the best means of understanding a student’s academic performance ability. I am not going to make an argument for or against it, but I will say that it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. So I’d like to tell school districts how they can better use the data that they receive from those standardized tests.

The answer is that we have to find a way to make that data become useful information. Often times schools collect this information but find it too overwhelming or costly to make use of. We cannot have administrators and principals making important decisions for our schools based solely on intuition.

Enter “Matrix.”

Matrix is a web-based software program that acts as a data warehouse and student data analysis tool. With Matrix, school districts will be able to have all of a student’s information in one centralized location. Data from the district’s Student Information System (SIS) is integrated into Matrix right alongside the students’ assessment test scores, so that Matrix can make correlations between and generate reports for these two important data sets.

What does that mean?

Well the demographic information, like gender, ethnicity and meal-plan status from the SIS are correlated to assessment test scores for each student and then presented in an easy-to-read and -understand format for school officials to examine. This helps school officials look into factors that occur outside of the classroom, which may be playing a role in how well the student performs. For example, there may be a correlation between the students who receive free or reduced cost meals and their below average test scores. Of course there is a significant difference between correlation and causation, which must be kept in mind. Just because two things are correlated does not mean that one caused the other to occur, but on the other hand it doesn’t necessarily mean that it didn’t either. Matrix at least presents this sort of information to the school districts and gives them the ability to examine and understand teacher and student performance at a much deeper level.

Consider how a teacher may receive a really bad score (which is just the average of all of her students). Does this mean that the teacher should be let go? No, it means that more information needs to be taken into consideration.

Why did he or she get such a low score?

First of all, Matrix allows all aggregated values to be viewed by their raw components. This allows teachers to see which students are doing well and which are not.

Second, Matrix shows not only test scores, but also growth. Perhaps the teacher teaches a large number of academically failing students, but he or she gets a majority of them to improve their scores throughout the year. Even though the ending score is still not proficient, there was great progress made.

Third, Matrix was designed to accumulate data over a long period of time. This means that school officials can examine information for a teacher over the past several years that he or she has taught; the same goes for students. It is never wise to make critical decisions based on a one-time occurrence. Matrix shows when students or teachers consistently perform at a certain level.

Fourth, Matrix allows higher-up school officials to see which cohort of teachers produces the best students or the worst students. This may point out some key areas that are in need of improvement. This also presents school officials with the opportunity to inquire about the teaching methods of those teachers who seem to consistently performing well and then share those methods with the under performing teachers.

Lastly, Matrix presents all of this information in such an easy-to-read and easy-to-understand format that school districts wouldn’t need to waste money on hiring a data maven or training teachers how to use the product. Also reports can be easily generated and printed in order to share the information with other school officials and/or parents.

The bottom line is that if we ever hope to improve the education of our students we have to know what areas need help and what some of the reasons for that may be. Matrix assists in this process in a cost-efficient, easy and fast way. We know that schools are facing increasing budget cuts as well as increased pressure from the State to meet assessment standards and that is why we developed a tool for educators to use to start understanding where improvements need to be made. Matrix gets that conversation going.

Meet Zach Gardner!

2011-10-11T11:51:00.005-05:00

As I was on my way to work this morning, I was catching up with my mother on the phone when all of the sudden a fat hairy spider fell onto my steering wheel. I freaked out a little; my mom asked if I was okay and at that moment the spider started to move so I hastily replied no and hung up in order to focus on how I was going to get him away from my hand. I ended up grabbing the white cardigan that I planned on wearing at work in order to kill him, because that was all I had around. I was at a stop light as I jabbed at the spider and ended up honking my horn really intensely. Then the light turned green and traffic started going, but I was distracted so I delayed a few seconds. When I did start to go I pressed too hard on the pedal in order to catch up with traffic and ended up screeching my tires. I’m pretty sure that everyone around me thought I was an unfit driver. When I got to work, I couldn’t find any spider remains on my cardigan or on the wheel. I did make it to work on time and as far as I can tell…I’m still an average human being. Guess it is going to be just another normal day…until I have to drive home again.

However, I want to shift the focus away from my arachnophobia and introduce you to another one of my co-workers, Zach Gardner. Zach was raised in Lawrence, Kansas and graduated from KU with a BS in Computer Science. He is a web developer at AllofE and is currently working on Matrix 5 (which means he will be my new partner in crime as Matrix is also my focus). When asked what he liked most about working at AllofE, he said, “The ability to create. Some people use paint, some use ink, some use steel, and some use food as their medium. I use computers.” When Zach is not working, he enjoys cooking and helping plan for his wedding which is coming up in June of 2012. Check out how Zach answered some of my other questions:

If you could have any superpower what would it be and why? Foresight. A power that could help me go 24 hours and make every correct decision is worth its weight in gold.

If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go and why? Boleyn Ground, London. I've been a fan of West Ham United, a soccer team in England, for the past 4 years, and I've never seen them in person.

What is one food that you could never live without? Pizza.

What is your favorite music genre? Hip-hop.

Night Owl or Early Bird? Early Bird.

Taco Bell or Burger King? Neither.

Christmas or Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving.

8 Babies or 12 Dogs? Dogs.

No Legs or No Arms? Legs.

No Taste or No Hearing? Taste.

Mac or PC? PC.

iPad or Laptop? Laptop.

I just want to point out how comical it is that Zach would choose between either having no legs vs. no arms and between no taste vs. no hearing, but he would not choose between Taco Bell or Burger King. Haha, anyway thanks Zach! Have a great week everyone!

Shopping for a Curriculum Management System

2011-10-10T16:11:00.001-05:00

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the need for curriculum management in higher education--specifically in programs with defined standards and competencies required for accreditation.

Since then, I’ve been considering how a program should shop for a curriculum management system. Choosing the right system is a heavy decision. You want to have a really good idea of what you’re getting into before you make the commitment. The system you choose will affect the lives of your faculty and your students daily.

Before you decide on a curriculum management system, I hope you will consider the following questions.

Does it do what your program needs it to do?
For the programs we’ve been working with, this means tracking the standards required for accreditation and simplifying the accreditation process. As we’ve been researching the current practices related to curriculum tracking and mapping within institutions of higher education, I’ve learned many institutions are spending amazing amounts of time tracking curriculum. Some programs meet every month, some meet every week (usually in addition to lengthy meetings at the beginning of each semester) to go over each course and ensure it has met the standards and competencies it was supposed to. Programs are also spending incredible amounts of time preparing for their accreditation reviews.

With the right system, much of this work can be eliminated. A lot can be automated; the rest can be made easier using a web-based system in which information is centralized, giving members of the faculty access to the curriculum information all the time. The right system will also simplify your accreditation review preparation with automated reports and other features to make your review much less daunting.

Can it be customized?
Every Physician Assistant program is different, as is every Dental Hygiene program and every Chiropractic program. Though each and every Physician Assistant program, for example, must meet the same standards to be accredited, each program finds unique ways to serve and educate. Your curriculum management system must recognize that. Customization should include more than changing the font or a title. You don’t want a cookie-cutter solution. You should not need to adapt to the system--the system should adapt to you.

Was it designed to be a curriculum management system?
A generic content management system cannot merely be tweaked to handle your curriculum. You need something designed specifically for the unique needs presented by curriculum management. A generic content management system will not generate reports. It will not consistently structure your information. You’re looking for something that will simplify your life, not complicate it.

Additionally, a system that tries to do everything (admissions, online assessments, demographics, delivering pizza...) misses the point. Because it tries to do everything, it risks not doing any of them well. A system with an all-in-one approach may lack the detail you need to efficiently manage your curriculum. Focus on the needs your program has. Do you need admissions, or does your school already have an admissions department? You know you need curriculum management. Find a system that handles your curriculum extremely well--not one that manages it ok but also has a million features you’ll never use.

This idea goes hand in hand with customization. Ideally, the company you choose to work with will have experience and expertise in a variety of areas--certainly in curriculum management, but also in content management, maybe online examinations or catalog management as well. The more experience the company has--the broader their range of expertise--the better that company will be able to ensure that the system does all you need. If you have an incredible system for tracking your demographic information, but need a little help with managing your curriculum alignment, an all-in-one system probably is not for you. Why would you trash what you’ve already got going for you? The company you choose should be willing to work with what you have, build on your strengths, and give your program a boost where it needs one.

Is the system easy for your faculty to learn and implement?
Your entire faculty will need to use the curriculum management system to some extent, so you need to be sure it’s easy to understand and to implement. Curriculum management should not require extensive technical knowledge nor extensive training--you have more important things to do than study a technical guide or attend countless training sessions. Check out your system before you buy it. Is it intuitive, or do you guess where to find the information you need? Learning the right system should be a natural, easy process.

Does the company know what it is doing?
The company you choose to work with should have experience in curriculum management. Having experience in the field is the only way the system they build will be able to do what you need it to do. A company that works only in general content management can’t know what educators need and will therefore either fall terribly short of those needs or will take forever to get it right.

Is the technology up to date?
Before buying a system, you should make sure you see a demonstration of how it works. In the demo, consider whether the technology seems modern. Does it look like something built in the early nineties? Is it direct, or does every action require a circuitous path? You should also study the company’s web site. If it is not presented well, if it is difficult to navigate, your system likely will be as well.

Welcome Abbey!

2011-09-27T09:22:00.005-05:00

Hey everyone! My name is Brandy Groff and from now on I’ll be helping with the AllofE blog. Soon you will be able to learn a bit more about who I am, but today I would like to showcase one of our newbies here at AllofE.

Please meet 22 year old Abbey Strusz. Abbey is from Republic, MO and graduated with a BA in English: creative writing and a BS in Journalism: News and Information. She is contributing to the Marketing Team as a Product Analyst. I asked Abbey the following string of fun questions so that we could get to know her a little bit better:

What do you like about AllofE the most of all so far?
I’m really excited to play vALLOFEball! But I also like that I get to do something new every day.

What project are you currently working on?
I am currently working on the product launch of eCurriculum for Higher Education. We are doing a research project related to managing curriculum for Physician’s Assistant Programs to aid in their accreditation process.

What are some of your hobbies and interests?
I like to read, write, tie-dye, play volleyball and watch “Bones” with my boyfriend.

If you could celebrate any holiday every day, what would it be and why?
Christmas! I love having a fire in the fireplace and the smell of a Christmas tree and winter is my favorite season.

If you could trade places with any celebrity for one day, who would it be and why?
JK Rowling, maybe. Or Emily Blunt because she’s married to John Krasinski.

What is one food that you could never live without?
Pasta!

Would you rather: Always HAVE to say everything on your mind or never speak
Never speak

Lose your keys or cell phone
Cell phone. I do that all the time anyway.

Buried Alive or Burned Alive
Ugh. Um. Burned, probably. Whichever one is faster.

Firefox or Internet Explorer:
Firefox

Harry Potter or Twilight
Is this really a question? Harry Potter. Obviously.

Beach or Mountains
Beach!

Mac or PC
PC

Pepsi or Coke
Coke

Ninja or Pirate
Pirate

Dogs or Cats
Dogs

Thanks Abbey and welcome to AllofE! Today is our first company volleyball game and I’m hoping that Abbey will help bring us to our first victory of the season! She says that she played in the KU Volleyball Club, which is far more recent then when I last played volleyball – middle school – so I’m expecting her to overcompensate for my lack of skill. ;) Haha, gooooo team!

Curriculum Management in Higher Education

2011-09-26T15:42:00.004-05:00

Earlier this year, Tracy posted a blog discussing research about curriculum mapping for higher education and some reasons why schools (especially programs with defined standards and competencies that the curriculum should meet) don’t already have curriculum mapping.

Since then, AllofE implemented eCurriculum HE for five different programs at Bridgeport University. Soon, Bridgeport’s Dental Hygienist, Naturopathic, Chiropractic, Nutrition, and Physician’s Assistant programs will all be using this curriculum mapping system.

And let me tell you: the administrators there are pumped. They are excited about the how easy it will be for them to manage, share and track their curriculum.

There is a real need in Higher Education for a curriculum mapping tool.

Recently a few of us here at AllofE have started a research project around current practices related to curriculum tracking and mapping within similar Higher Ed institutions.

The answers have a familiar tone to them yet I never fail to be surprised by the archaic methods used in most cases. Some schools are using spreadsheets. Some are still putting pencil to paper.

Let’s look back at those reasons Tracy listed that Higher Ed was doing without curriculum mapping:

They think their needs are more complex than the K-12 districts that have been using curriculum mapping successfully for years (and, if they are being honest, are maybe reluctant to follow the lead of K-12 schools)

Yeah, their needs are complicated. The Chiropractic program has over 250 competencies, as well as learning measures to track. The Physician’s Assistant program? More than 470 topics to track, as well as more than 50 ARC standards and countless labs and experiences every student needs.

Tracking their ability to hit these competencies, standards and labs—this is all part of the accreditation. They need these for their school to stay a school.

Yes, these could be tracked by hand. But tracking them by hand involves hours of work—work that most schools probably put in at the last second, with the accreditation date quickly approaching. At this point, they’ve either taught the skills or not. They may have taught the same competency several times, then run out of time to teach another vital skill.

And they wouldn’t know until it was too late.

eCurriculum is built to avoid these errors. It lets you plan your semester week by week, simply checking a box to include a competency in an instruction module. It also provides reports that let you know what you’re overteaching and what you’ve forgotten about. It helps you ensure everything is covered when it should be.

Schools have intense and exact customization needs — they can’t take a cookie-cutter solution, and the customization must be quick and cost-effective

eCurriculum is no cookie-cutter solution. While it comes preloaded with the standards needed for accreditation in each field (ARC Standards and NCCPA Competencies for the Physician’s Assistant programs, for example), the customization is anything but limited. Individual programs can insert their own curriculum needs—labs that are specific to their school, for example. Professors’ and student names are added, as well as class names.

eCurriculum also automatically generates a comprehensive curriculum web site from the entered curriculum information—a web site that matches the University’s overall branding and web site standards so that it provides a seamless experience for university web site visitors.

Finally, they think they are saving by doing it themselves.

As Tracy said, “Without going into all the details here, this often ends up not quite achieving the results intended. Rather than saving money, it ends up being ten times more expensive, takes forever to develop and creates something less robust than a high-end customizable product.”

I mentioned earlier that eCurriculum generates a web page showing all the curriculum information. This automatically generated web page shows students what they will be learning, and may bring more interest to your school. (I know when I applied for graduate programs, if I couldn’t navigate the web site, I didn’t apply.) It shows potential students and parents what they’re spending their money on.

Most importantly, with one easily shared link, the accreditation board has all the information they need. The presentation does not need to take hours, or be changed every year. eCurriculum will update the web page as changes are made, cutting hours from the accreditation process each year, let alone the time it takes to create the system in the first place.

BEFORE&AFTER: Pittsburg State University Catalog

2011-08-27T10:51:00.006-05:00

You probably already know that Pittsburg State University recently launched their new online course catalog, which is our first implementation of CatalogM.

What you probably don't know, unless you actually WENT to Pitt State recently, work on the Pitt State website, or you have a really weird affliction for course catalogs (which is another story for another day), is what the catalog used to look like and how that process was managed.

Well, my friends, you are in luck.

Click here to see before and after pictures we posted on our Facebook page.

While the previous PSU catalog didn't really look bad, it was incredibly difficult for the Registrar's Office to keep up with, there was no search, it wasn't managed using a database and wasn't "connected" to the print catalog, and the navigation could have really used some work.

These are the biggest things we wanted to help them achieve were:

To put it simply, PSU needed a better way to manage both their print and online catalog (previously, there had been quite a long, long paper trail).

A more automated process: menus and catalog structure should be rendered automatically, any updates made to course catalog content should update the all instances of that item in the catalog, instead of having to go and update each individual item manually, the ability to print the catalog on-demand, etc.

A catalog website that would fit in seamslessly with the university website.

Better Navigation. This was a big one.

Search. PSU needed a way to allow students to globally search the catalog for course and degree information.

Ability to have complete control over the catalog hierarchy and structure.

Ability to determine custom fields for each type of catalog item from college, department, program, degree, or course.

And there were a lot of others...

We were able to meet all of these needs - and guess what: instead of updating the catalog every two years, as they had in the past, the awesome folks at PSU will now have an annual catalog.

The good thing is, with our extensive background and experience in other similar academic systems, we are better able to handle the unique needs that come up. Every university is different, so what worked for PSU probably won't work perfectly for another university. But the cool thing is: We Welcome It.

Pittsburg State University Launches New Online Catalog with CatalogM

2011-08-25T17:00:00.003-05:00

Check it out at: http://catalog.pittstate.edu/.

And the university's release on it: http://www.pittstate.edu/press-media/detail.dot?id=358652.

We'll be doing something a little different than a regular release this time around - a before and after sort of thing. Stay tuned and keep an eye out for it early next week.

This project was pretty snazzy, and a blast to work on. Really excited for what's to come with this one. Lots of good stuff in the works.

University of New Haven Launches SMASHUP

2011-08-13T10:01:00.007-05:00

I'm so happy to announce that the University of New Haven has announced the official launch of their SMASHUP. I've been anxiously awaiting the unveiling of this website. This is our fifth university SMASHUP to go live. Kent State University will be the next.

See it at http://social.newhaven.edu/

As part of this particular project, we also worked with UNH to develop a new social media policy for all stakeholders to follow, which will promote safe use and best practices in social media.

As part of the SMASHUP website implementation, we worked very closely with UNH to ensure consistent branding in regards to the university website, emphasis on main "official" social media accounts, and integration of all university-wide social media into one interactive hub.

Click here for more about this particular project.

Is your university interested in becoming a part of this elite group of universities that are setting the standard not only for university social media and social media mashups, but social media mashups as a whole for any sector? Send me a note at kbrosious AT allofe.com.

On Winning

2011-07-26T15:05:00.004-05:00

Before you go all Charlie Sheen on me, hear me out. (This really has nothing to do with him.)

We've been talking a lot around the office about winning lately, whether it be in our recreational volleyball league, a new project against a competing vendor (Click here to see why we hate that word.), or just creating the best systems out there.

There' s a lot of drive required to maintain a relentlessly winning attitude.

And really, it's not just an attitude. Winning is a state of mind.

I'm a really competitive person. With that comes a bit of perfectionism; my better must be better than your better. This has mostly applied to sports for me. I started swimming competitively when I was 8 and did that throughout high school. I hate cold water to this day, but still have a lot of good memories from those ten years and a lot of success - with boxes of ribbons to show for it.

While in college, I joined the rowing team. This took things to a whole new level; while swimming was mostly an individual sport, rowing is as team-ish as you can get [and the water got a whole lot colder]. With that came a whole new slew of factors.

However, the competitive spirit was always there. It just manifested itself in different ways. And it's always been a part of who I am as a person.
_____________________________________________

Telling people that they just aren't cutting it doesn't always go over well. But if you can get them to understand that it's not personal - instead that it's for the good of the team, and it inspires them to be better, do better, and work harder - then you've got it made. However, it doesn't always work that way.

The same goes for the office.

The key point here: criticism isn't necessarily personal. If you do it in a respectful manner, with good intentions behind it, telling people they need to do better will only improve things for the good of the team. If everyone is working toward the same goal, then it can cause really positive changes.

You can inspire greatness.

But if not everyone is working toward the same goal, this causes animosity toward the rest of the team from said person.

Winning requires a relentless drive to be the best. If you are surrounded by people with that drive, you will be told when you aren't doing everything to help achieve that goal for the team. And it will make you better.

That's really what it takes to have a winning attitude - you have to believe, and you have to not only accept criticism, but welcome it, and use it to make yourself better. If your goals don't line up with the team's goals, then you'll never win. But if they do, then you're just golden.

And nothing can stop you from winning.

A poem has been making the rounds around the office that I thought was fitting as part of this blog. Thanks, David, for sharing this:

If you think you are beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don't;
If you'd like to win, but think you can't;
It's almost a cinch you won't.
If you think you'll lose, you've lost;
For out in the world we find
Success begins with a fellow's will.
It's all in the state of mind.
Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man;
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the one who thinks he can.
-adapted from Walter D. Wintle

The Latest: Our SMASHUP Partnership with Kent State University

2011-07-12T16:19:00.008-05:00

We recently partnered with Kent State University for our latest university SMASHUP project. The SMASHUP will serve as the university's social media hub, giving students, parents, faculty, staff and the community a place to interact with the university through social media.

The Kent State SMASHUP, or social media mashup, will aggregate all of the university's social media accounts in one place, giving all accounts from across the university the exposure they deserve. KSU wanted a way to make its social media more interactive and to bring its online brand to a whole new level. Since the university already uses a lot of social media, this is really a natural progression for it to make what it's already doing a lot more successful and the university's social media will reach a lot more people.

Kent State is the sixth university that has selected SMASHUP as its choice of social media mashup. Kent State joins Youngstown State University, Northern Illinois University, DePaul University, Our Lady of the Lake University and the University of New Haven (launching soon) as AllofE's latest SMASHUP implementation.

You can find out more about the SMASHUP project at http://higheredcms.info/SMASHUP/home or send Katie an email at kbrosious@allofe.com.

6 Reasons you Need to Post your Course Catalog Online

2011-07-12T15:37:00.003-05:00

In my last blog post, I talked about course catalog management systems and how to choose one. But before you even think about that, it's important to understand why you need to post your course catalog online in the first place.

Your course catalog affects your entire university - from students to faculty to parents, all of these stakeholders are impacted by the course catalog. An online catalog must be searchable, easy to navigate, contain the most current information (a student is a lot more likely to look something up online than search through a book), and be branded to match the university's online image. But before you can even think about that, the catalog has to be posted online. Here are a few reasons to post your course catalog online:

Accessibility. Give your audience the ability to access the course catalog from anywhere. This is really the biggest reason to have an online catalog - it makes it easier for all university stakeholders.
Recruitment. Show students what courses they can take and what they're required to take. After all, that’s what they’re there for. Through our research, we've found that parents view academic programs or majors as the most valuable information in university online content, and what better to meet that need than an online catalog?
Student Enrollment. Make it easy for students to find their degree requirements, general education requirements, and view their course options through intelligent Search features.
Show off what you Offer. By posting your course catalog online, you're disseminating all programs and courses to all that come to your website - making your university look even better.
Easy Navigation. It's a lot easier to find what you're looking for in a website versus a book - giving students a place to search for a course or program instead of forcing them to flip through a book [that they probably lost weeks ago...] not only increases the accessibility of the catalog information, it's just easier.
Save costs. No surprise here. Printed catalogs take up a ton of space and are incredibly expensive to print – and what if there’s an error after the books come back from the printer? Get rid of printed catalogs altogether, or print only the number of catalogs as are necessary, since you won't have to distribute them to the entire university when all the information is online.

These are just a few of the reasons your catalog should be posted on your university website. To find out more about how CatalogM can help you be successful in managing your online catalog, go to http://catalogm.allofe.com, or send me an email at kbrosious AT allofe DOT com

NEW PRODUCT LAUNCH: CatalogM - catalog management system

2011-07-05T15:15:00.002-05:00

You may have noticed all of our recent blogs about online catalog management systems, which probably led you to believe that there was something going on behind the scenes in regards to that very same subject. Well, you thought correctly. Today we announce the launch of our latest product for higher education: CatalogM catalog management system.

Click here to see the release.

Or go to catalogm.allofe.com to find out more.

9 Things You Need to Consider in Choosing a Catalog Management System

2011-06-25T09:56:00.002-05:00

A university’s course selection is one of the top reasons to choose a school. In terms of recruitment, then, a university course catalog can strongly affect a student’s decision to apply to a school or not. However, it’s not like you can hand out a printed course catalog to every student that visits the campus; not every student can afford to visit the campus, anyway.

We’re in a world where everything is done online. If students can apply online, take a tour of your campus online, and meet their roommate for the next year online, why shouldn’t they be able to check out the course catalog online?

A simple-to-use, interactive and informative online course catalog can make a huge impact on a student’s decision. Here are some things you need to consider before choosing a catalog management system.

9 things you need to consider when choosing a Catalog Management System

How difficult will the transition from print to online be in terms of the mindset in your office or department?
How flexible do you want the system to be?
How flexible will YOU be with the system?
How many users will need to update the catalog (i.e. workflow and approval processes)?
How are you currently managing your print and/or online catalog and how satisfied are you with that process?
Do you intend to continue producing a print catalog?
How interactive do you want the online catalog to be?
Do you want to incorporate Web 2.0 aspects in your online catalog such as social media, audio and video?
What aspects are most important to you? I.e., search capabilities, style and design, ease of use (both from your perspective re: catalog updates and a student perspective), tracking history of changes, etc.

There are a lot of considerations to be made before choosing the right catalog management system for you, these are only a few questions that should go into your decision-making process.

Our Newest Addition to our Higher Education Product Offering: CatalogM

CatalogM aims to help you meet your goals, however specific they may be, because it was built to be flexible enough to support unique needs. We will also work with you to make the process very streamlined to save you time and make the process as painless as possible. We'll be releasing more and more information over the next couple of weeks, but please contact Katie at kbrosious@allofe.com if you're interested in learning more.

Catalog Management Systems: You shouldn’t have to choose between online and print

2011-06-17T10:31:00.014-05:00

Over the next few months, we'll be launching CatalogM, the most revolutionary catalog management system universities have seen in years. But before that, here are some nuggets of wisdom regarding course catalog management that we've learned along the way. To find out more information about CatalogM, contact Katie at kbrosious@allofe.com.

Why you need an online catalog

We’re in a world where everything is done online. If students can apply online, take a tour of your campus online, and meet their roommate for the next year online, why shouldn’t they be able to check out the course catalog online?

A simple-to-use, interactive and informative online course catalog can make a huge impact on a student’s decision.

What you need to consider when choosing a Catalog Management System

Traditionally, university course catalogs were all print. That’s not the way of it anymore. There’s been a paradigm shift in not only the way course catalogs are managed, but with the way that information is shared. We no longer live in a print-minded society, and haven’t for some time, so for those who are so focused on keeping print alive, wake up. You’re fighting a losing battle.

However, that doesn’t mean that you should just slap your catalog online and that be the end of it. There is still a place for print catalogs, and there are still champions of the print. But majority rules. You have to have an online course catalog.

Therein lies the problem.

So many Registrars are so traditional and so dedicated to the print catalog, that this isn’t an easy transition. So you’ll begin to see a few different things:

Universities with no online course catalog
Universities that simply upload documents or PDFs to their university website
Universities that manipulate their catalog in a way that makes it more web- and user- friendly and eliminates the print-like qualities.

Obviously, what works for print won’t work on the web, and vice-versa, but in terms of what’s currently available, universities are really forced to choose between having a great print catalog or a great online catalog; it’s very difficult to find a catalog management system that supports both.

However, some do offer ways to export catalogs to Word, allowing the universities to make changes before printing. The problem here is that the overall structure of the exported catalog is based on the web version, which is usually very hierarchical and has a much more rigid structure than a traditional print catalog would have.

The other problem is that most catalog management systems force the university to do things differently. Of course, they have to learn how to use a new system in terms of updating and maintaining their catalog, but it goes a little further than that. Most catalog systems force your content to fit into specific pockets into a specific hierarchy, ultimately completely changing the way you do things.

So, where is it going?

At some point, universities are going to need a more comprehensive system. And really, we’re at that point right now.

Universities need a way to have a strong online course catalog without completely re-writing their print catalog and having to change it to fit into a system.

The system needs to support unique needs without costing a fortune, and without spending months reorganizing the catalog. However, the system must also help the university systematize their catalog.

Sometimes print catalogs have no rhyme or reason. They don’t always have a concrete structure. They have missing pieces of information. Catalog management systems already do a good job of helping to building that structure and making the catalog more systematic for an online version, but it takes away a lot of the beauty of print when it forces the content into structured, hierarchical buckets. Catalog management systems should give a nod to both print and online, making it easy to please both sides, and ensuring that the university doesn’t have to choose between the two.

We initially partnered with Pittsburg State University, which was looking to do something different than the options currently available for universities and wanted a balance between their online catalog and the print catalog without having to change the way they currently do things, and created CatalogM in an effort to bring something new to the table. Because that implementation has been so successful, we want to help other universities do the same. More information on that partnership is coming soon.

If you'd like to learn more about how you can be a part of this project, please email Katie (kbrosious@allofe.com).

Image Source: Google Images, catalogm.allofe.com

edYOUcator Facebook Poll

2011-05-19T17:44:00.003-05:00

We're excited to introduce the edYOUcator Facebook Poll to help us decide what new feature should be added next to the edYOUcator site! As edYOUcator grows, we want the edYOUcator community be part of the process. This is your chance to help shape the search engine and help it become what you would like it to be, so that you can benefit from it.

There are four different options to choose from:

User accounts with points
This option would allow users to create an edYOUcator account and earn points by doing searches, clicking on lesson plans, submitting lesson plans, submitting an error or bad search, and referring new users.
Tracking favorite lesson plans
By tracking your favorite lesson plans you could bookmark a lesson to come back to at a later date or keep track of your favorites without having to do another search.
Earning badges for milestones
Badges would be based on milestones such as frequency of searches, lesson plan/assessment submissions and submitting a problem or bad search.
Rating lesson plans
You could view ratings and rate a lesson plans on the search results page.

The poll will last until next Thursday the 26th at 5 PM EST - so get your vote in now!

2011 SchoolE Award Winners

2011-05-13T15:32:00.007-05:00

The nominations have been sent, sites judged, the votes cast & validated and now we’re proud to announce the 2011 SchoolE Award Winners!

Small
Lexington City Schools

Medium
York County Public Schools

Large
Clear Creek ISD

Congratulations to these districts and thanks to all the districts who participated! Also a big thanks to everyone who helped make this year's awards happen.

Prizes
Each winning district will receive the following prizes:

Video review of district site by Nick Denardis.
Nick will be reviewing the top district in each category. As host of his EDU Checkup video blog he reviews education websites through the eyes of a first time visitor, while critiquing the design, information architecture and code of the sites. Keep a look out on the blog and Twitter for links to these videos when they’re done!
Full Feedback Analysis of Website
Tons of exposure
In addition to the media exposure of the event, winning districts will be featured in a press release to major media outlets that include national and regional newspapers and news sources, targeted both to your geographical area and nationally. Winners will also be featured heavily within Social media and networking sites, such as Twitter (@allofek12), Blogger, Facebook, focused on the K-12 sector.A badge to proudly display on their district website
And More....

Recap of Voting
The voting round ended up being a total of 6 weeks and the districts really took advantage of every single one of those weeks. The competition started out strong with Brownsville, Rockingham, and Lexington being the category leaders.

In the Medium category Rockingham came out ready to win with over 1,000 votes in the first week - that’s more votes than they had nominations! Overall the category maintained their momentum all throughout voting. There was so much competition and many lead changes within this category that you never know what district might steal the #1 position. York County had been on Rockingham’s tail since week 2 of voting and finally surpassed them for the #1 position in week 4. Their victory was a little short-lived; Rockingham came back the next week and with over 1,000 votes in one day, they regained the title. But York hadn't been too far behind since. When voting ended Rockingham was in the lead, but once the votes were validated York was so close behind they ended up in the first place position! Oxnard Union High, Upper Darby, and Independence 30 we also strong competitors. While they didn’t see quite the vote count of the lead districts, the competition for 3rd place was definitely worth watching.

Districts in the Large category had their fair share of competition as well, but it didn’t start until later on. It seemed no one was going to give Brownsville or Keller ISD any trouble until week 3 when Clear Creek started receiving votes in droves, providing both schools with competition and stealing the #1 spot. Although Brownsville was never able to steal back that position, they stayed strong and kept up with Clear Creek’s voting. Both districts put forth a lot of effort in this competition!

Small districts started off the competition slowly, but they surely moved their way on up in votes. Lexington City and Zachary Community were the front runners in this category. Once they hit over 500 votes their competition was only with each other. These two districts changed #1 position for the category almost weekly until the last two weeks of voting showed a landslide of votes from Zachary Community, which put them further ahead than they had ever been before. At the end of voting Zachary Community seemed to be the winner but after a validation of all the votes Lexington came out on top! With these two districts it was a close call! They should both be proud though, their overall vote counts were in the same range as Large category winner Clear Creek!

Exposure
With this year’s awards every district is a winner! The exposure districts have received has been phenomenal! The SchoolE site has seen page views from 64 countries around the world and of all the page views 75% of them were unique visits!

SchoolE has also gained exposure in the news. Local newspapers and radio stations have been doing stories on the awards and finalists such as K2 Radio in Casper, WY and The Ledger in Lakeland, FL. and Daily Press in Newport News, VA.

As well as news articles, SchoolE press releases have been featured on a number of educational blogs and sites such as eSchool News. The districts were very proud of their finalist statuses as well, they displayed their finalists badges on their sites and issued press releases about the awards. Here are just a few of the many press releases done by schools- Keller ISD, Clear Creek ISD, and North Mason SD.

In Closing
This year’s SchoolE Awards was a great success! So many schools were dedicated to giving their district site the recognition it deserved. It’s so awesome to see communities come together to support their schools.

Although the awards for this year are over, your part is not! Please let us know about any suggestions, comments, or questions you’ve had about the competition. Leave us a comment on the SchoolE homepage and tell us what you liked, didn’t like, or would like to change. We listen to every single one - suggestions from last year helped us make this year’s awards even better and that’s what we want to see with next year as well!

Thanks again to all the districts, everyone who nominated and voted, our amazing judging panel, and everyone who helped with the awards along the way.

Make sure to keep an eye out for Nick’s video reviews and check back for more information on this year’s awards and next years!

Here’s hoping to another great year of SchoolE Awards in 2012!

SchoolE Voting Now CLOSED (May 12, 2011 at 5 PM EST)

2011-05-13T13:32:00.003-05:00

**This blog was posted yesterday, but Blogger was DOWN! Grrr!**

SchoolE voting ended as of 5 PM EST on May 12, 2011. What an exciting voting round it’s been! There has been a ton of competition, 100+ lead position changes, districts with remarkably high vote counts, tens of thousands of votes cast and more than 55,000 SchoolE website hits.

Thanks to all who participated! Every vote and nomination led this year to being the biggest and best SchoolE Awards yet. The voting round is by far the most important round, not only because it decides the award winners, but because it shows what the awards are really about - district websites with strong community support!

Remember that the votes and standings you see on the website are based on unvalidated vote counts. That means positions can and will change once votes are validated, so don’t start celebrating too early. Here are the unvalidated standings as of 5 PM EST on May 12.

I’m sure all the districts are excited for us to announce the official award winners tomorrow, but meanwhile check out these awesome news articles about the SchoolE Awards and two of the finalists. You can listen to or read the stories on K2 Radio in Casper, WY or from The Ledger in Lakeland, FL. The exposure districts have received for this year's awards has been phenomenal! Every district is coming out a winner with all the attention from not only across the United States, but internationally as well - more than 60 countries have viewed the SchoolE site!

While voting may be over, your part in the awards is not! Please let us know about any suggestions, comments, or questions you’ve had about the competition. Go to the Interact page of the SchoolE page and write us a comment.

The official 2011 SchoolE Award Winners will be announced tomorrow, May 13th. The time is still to be determined so keep an eye out!

Good Luck!

edYOUcator: 3 Months

2011-05-10T16:23:00.005-05:00

This week marks 3 months since the launch of edYOUcator. Over the past months it has seen thousands of unique search topics and even more searches. But as the edYOUcator community continues to grow so does edYOUcator. We’ve received lots of feedback and plan on implementing some new features in the near future to help out our educators!

Since its launch in February, educators from around the world have been searching not only for lesson plans, but assessment help and instructional help as well (such as how to deal with cyber bullying and differentiated instruction). edYOUcator has become much more than a lesson plan search, it’s becoming more of a community every day.

The most popular subject areas for searches have been English and Math - especially math. Not a day goes by that someone isn’t searching for fraction help!

Speaking of which, the most popular search with the greatest number of lessons visited has been fractions - and any form of fraction, fraction multiplying, adding fractions, fractions to decimals, etc. Next to fractions, Africa came in a close second.

Many have been searching for upcoming holiday activities, lesson plans, and unit plans as well. This is a perfect example of why edYOUcator is so useful. All you have to do is type in the holiday. No need to type lesson plan or scour through the Internet looking for legitimate sites- edYOUcator does that for you. It also comes in handy with current events such as the Japanese Tsunami and Osama Bin Laden’s death. When you’re not planning on teaching about time sensitive events like these, a quick search can go a long way.

There have also been a few really unique searches, one being the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. (For those of you who might not know the fire happened 100 years ago. It was the single most deadliest industrial disaster in New York City until the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 2001.)
Another unique search was aphorisms, which, according to Princeton’s Wordnet means: a short, pithy, instructive saying. Here's an example: One today is worth two tomorrows. - Benjamin Franklin.

There is no limit to what you can search for on edYOUcator! If your search doesn’t give you the results you’re wanting please, please, please tell us about it! We thrive on feedback, so we’d love to hear from you.

Or if you'd like to figure it out on your own, take advantage of the video overview we posted last week. You can find it here. In it we give a quick overview of how to use edYOUcator and the advanced search options. It also shows how to utilize the help options while searching. If you still can’t figure it out, it shows you how to contact us from the site as well.

We hope to do more video tutorials on edYOUcator in the future, so if you have any questions or comments on what you’d like help with tell us about it!

edYOUcator has been spreading like wildfire. The more that people hear about it the more feedback and exposure it seems to get. James Gubbins, a self proclaimed EdGeek, and host of the blog Zenodotus, focused one of his posts on edYOUcator last week. You can read it here. This is what we love to see: People spreading the word and helping out the educational community.

To celebrate 3 months of edYOUcator we’re also introducing a Facebook Question for the edYOUcator community to vote on what feature you’d like to see next. Keep an eye out for it later this week (we’ll be tweeting about it and will post another blog when we post the question.)

This is just one of the many things we have planned for edYOUcator, so keep searching, submitting lesson plans, and telling your educational friends and family about it. The bigger it becomes, the more resourceful and useful it will be to you!

Higher Education and Curriculum Mapping

2011-05-09T15:52:00.005-05:00

I was doing some research related to higher education and curriculum mapping for our release of eCurriculum HE and strangely it was difficult to find a lot of information in this area. People ask questions about it, define what they want, but there seem to be few examples of what I would call a comprehensive, “feasible” solutions.

I found a lot of research projects that were funded and performed by programs in higher education institutions to go through the mapping process for an entire program or a set of courses. Strangely, this seemed to be a pretty manual and cumbersome process of documenting, charts, spreadsheets, etc.

From this study by a professor at Colorado State University to this study at Oxford College of Emory University to this study at Indiana University, it seems they all concluded that curriculum mapping was beneficial and needed, yet there is a distinct lack of systems that successfully meet the needs of automation.

I think it may be time to delve into the reasons a little deeper.

K-12 school districts got a head start on this a few years ago. They automate the curriculum management process, get their initial curriculum into the system and then benefit from the advantages of being able to generate all kinds of gap, overlap, and other reports on the What, When, and How of their instruction. Then when needed they just have to reevaluate and tweak the content.

Simple.

Time saving.

No research projects (or the associated cost) involved.

Sounds like pretty good reasons to me. So where is the problem? Well, I am guessing it has to do with a few factors:

The complexity of needs at the Higher Ed level compared to K-12 - this could be more perception than reality. However, it does make it harder for things to gain momentum. The needs of different areas are too diverse to find a common ground when designing solutions that can apply broadly. Perhaps, it is a resistance to follow the K-12 school districts’ lead – This is understandable but maybe we should let that slide.

Customization Needs - This is related to the first point. For a solution to work in Higher Ed, it has to be highly customizable. More importantly the customization has to be cost-effective and quick. This could explain the lack of high-end systems specifically geared towards higher ed.

Perceived “cost savings” of doing it ourselves – Again, this builds on the above two points. Given the lack of good custom enterprise solutions, it is easy to support the notion that "we should try to build it internally”. Without going into all the details here, this often ends up not quite achieving the results intended. Rather than saving money, it ends up being ten times more expensive, takes forever to develop and creates something less robust than a high-end customizable product.

Honestly, given all these factors, I think the biggest one is that there is just not really much out there in terms of enterprise level systems that are truly flexible, customizable, and scalable enough to manage the curriculum for higher education.

Stay tuned for more information on some exciting developments related to Curriculum Mapping specifically for Higher Ed.

SchoolE Update: One Final Week to Vote

2011-05-06T15:32:00.002-05:00

If you missed the announcement earlier this week, the SchoolE Awards voting round has been extended until May 12th. That's a whole extra WEEK of voting so take advantage of it. As of now, it looks like the 2nd place districts in each category could really take advantage of the extra time. The competition is so close, this extra week is going to keep us on the edge of our seats until the winners are announced Friday. So since voting was pushed back we'll get some logistics out of the way first.

Voting will end Thursday, May 12th at 5 PM EST
Winners will be announced on Friday, May 13th (time TBA)

Remember that the standings you see now are based on unvalidated vote counts, so positions can change once we close voting and validate the votes. At the end of voting on Thursday, don't celebrate your win or defeat just yet, wait until the winners are officially announced! In the nomination round we did see position changes once they were validated, and the same thing may happen with voting as well.

This week there has been an insane amount of voting! Both Rockingham Co. and York Co. have reached over 4,000 votes. WOW! Their voting has been non-stop all week. While Rockingham is still in first place, York County is working hard to keep up with them. On Tuesday when Rockingham passed the 4,000 vote mark, York soon caught up. These two districts have been neck and neck the entire voting round and the battle is driving their vote counts way up. With the extra week, I wouldn't be surprised if they each receive over 6 or 7 thousand votes...or more.

The Small districts have really increased their game in these past few weeks of voting. In the beginning their vote count wasn't too impressive, but this week Zachary Community took over and now holds the first place position. With almost 2,000 votes, their vote count is in the same range as the #1 district in the Large category Clear Creek. Second place Lexington City isn't too far behind either with just over 1,000 votes. Lexington can really use this extra week to catch up with Zachary, these two schools rotate 1st and 2nd place positions almost every week, but this is the week that both of them need to go all out.

In the Large district category, Brownsville still can't seem to get ahead of Clear Creek. They have been right behind Clear Creek since being knocked to the #2 position but haven't been able to pull off a #1 position steal just yet. Although they're about 500 votes behind I don't anticipate them giving up to easy. They have been a very big contender throughout the whole competition including nomination rounds, so I wouldn't be surprised if they give Clear Creek some stiff competition in these upcoming days.

While at the moment the really exciting competitions are between the top 2 schools in each category, that doesn't mean that the other districts aren't voting as well. Anything could happen in this final week of voting- including an underdog coming up to steal the #1 position! So to all districts- keep voting! The competition isn't over yet.

This extra week sure is going to make things interesting so keep an eye out, take advantage of the school profile pages, rally your district's community, use all the voting tools (E-mail, Facebook, and Twitter) and vote! If you have any questions or comments contact us at the SchoolE Interact page or to cheer on your district leave a comment on your district's profile. Keep an eye out for the winners on the SchoolE site, next Friday the 13th could be your districts lucky day.

edYOUcator: Video Overview

2011-05-03T13:09:00.004-05:00

I'm excited to show you the newly created video overview of edYOUcator! Whether you've been using it, haven't used it in awhile, or you're a new user, this overview will help guide you in making the best searches possible.

Make sure to visit the edYOUcator site after viewing to sign up for a PIN, contact us, or most importantly start searching! Remember the more you use edYOUcator, ask questions, and suggest, the better it will be.

Happy Searching!

If you have any additional questions regarding the video or the edYOUcator site please feel free to e-mail us at edYOUcator@allofe.com.

SchoolE Extends Voting Deadline to May 12

2011-05-03T10:07:00.001-05:00

Due to popular demand and a LOT of requests, we have extended the SchoolE Awards voting deadline to May 12, 2011, giving you an extra week to rally your community and get your district more votes. This has been a VERY exciting voting stage with a lot of close competition, a lot of lead changes and big rivalries blossoming. The SchoolE Awards Team is SO excited to see which district comes out on top in each category.

Click here to see the current standings, and here to leave a comment about the contest or your district.

Voting will now end on Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 5 PM EST. Winners will be announced the following day.

Congratulations to all districts thus far - and be sure to take advantage of this extra week!

SchoolE Update: One Week Left of Voting!

2011-04-29T16:46:00.001-05:00

We are in the final week of voting for the SchoolE Awards! Voting will end on Thursday, May 5th at 5 PM EST and winners will be announced on Friday the 6th (time TBA). Remember that voting is open to everyone, so they don't have to be a direct part of your district to cheer you on and vote. Talk to your friends and family to help your district's website get the recognition you feel it deserves.

There have been so many close races throughout this year's competition. The top two districts in each category are within 350 votes of each other, making it really anybody's game. Voting this week has been intense, with a ton of lead changes, and the total vote count is now almost 14,500 meaning there were 4,500 votes this week!

Most of the intense voting in the contest has come from the Medium category. Rockingham has been working overtime this week to not only steal the #1 position from Polk County, but also to reach over 3,000 votes! Rockingham called its community to action on Tuesday when it overtook Polk County, casting almost 1,000 votes in one day! Rockingham can't get too comfortable yet, though. York County is right behind them, needing less than 350 votes to tie. The competition in this category doesn't end there. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th positions are battling it out as well. Although Upper Darby currently leads the pack, Oxnard Union High and Independence are both within 65 votes of the 3rd place position. While they have quite a way to go to catch up with Rockingham's 3,600+ votes, anything is possible in this last week of voting!

In the Large category, Clear Creek and Brownsville have been battling it out, but it seems that this week their voting has really slowed down. Clear Creek hasn't had more than 25 votes this week and Brownsville no more than 30. With these two districts so close in vote counts they need to keep up the voting to fight for 1st place!

The voting in the smaller categories has been a bit stagnant most of the week. Zachary Community has kept a well-maintained lead over Lexington City but just today that's changed. Lexington has been voting all day to come within 30 votes of the category leader. With this new competition and the fact that the overall vote count in the Small category is rather low compared to the other categories, this next week may be full of surprises.

Here are the Top 3 districts in each category based on [unvalidated] vote counts as of Thursday afternoon:

Large:
1. Clear Creek
2. Brownsville
3. Polk County

Medium:
1. Rockingham Co.
2. York Co.
3. Upper Darby

Small:
1. Zachary Community
2. Lexington City
3. North Mason

There's only one week left so don't let your districts voting fade out now! Even just one day of voting could knock your district out of it's position. Remember to keep an eye out for the announced winners on Friday, May 6th!

Good luck to all the districts!

Higher Ed Social Media: Help Wanted

2011-04-27T10:42:00.011-05:00

It’s no doubt that social media has played a prominent role in higher education within the past few years. As each year passes, institutions have gone from hiking aboard the new “trend” to utilizing social media as a tool for marketing, alumni, and prospective students.

In 2010, a study done by CASE, mStoner, and Slover-Linett Strategies Inc., showcased their findings on if constituents are using their institutions social media, what barriers are keeping institutions from using social media, and most importantly, how is social media success measured?

In March 2011 Slover Linett Strategies Inc., mStoner and CASE conducted the Second Comprehensive Study of Social Media Use by Schools, Colleges and Universities via e-mail to 18,000 representative CASE members, of which 951 replied. The results may not surprise anyone but they do show that universities are realizing the importance of not just using social media but using it in the best way possible to reach their social media goals.

Almost every institution is using it.
Though not too surprising, only 4% of institutions aren’t using it. Almost all institutions have jumped into social media. What arises from all institutions using the same types of social media is a lack of originality and driving competition from each institution to stand out. According to the study, 84% of institutions use social media due to competition from peer institutions. An institution needs to have something different from all the rest of its competitors, they need to be ahead of the curve.

Why they're using it – Alumni & Branding.
While most might think that institutions are using their social media to connect with current students or recruit, the big reasons for using it are Alumni and Branding. The study shows that Alumni ranks first in goals of social media with 30% saying it's “Quite a bit” of their social media goal and a whopping 54% say it's “Extensively” part of it.

Branding falls second to Alumni, 40% quote it as being “Quite a bit” of their goal and 35% say it’s “Extensively" part of it. Branding is also the number one motivator for institutions in using social media. Institutions feel that they need to sustain and protect their brand “Quite a bit” (40%) and “Extensively” (20%).

If sustaining and protecting their brand is so important to institutions, why aren’t they using their social media to its fullest potential? Why get lost in the ordinary, mundane social media sites. By having a centralized hub with all of your social media, branded to an institution's exact site, their brand is not only sustained and protected, but they’re a step above the rest.

Facebook: favored by the majority.
Facebook is the front-runner in social media for institutions. Not only do nearly all institutions use it (96%), but most feel that it’s the best tool to help meet their social media goals (91%) and that it’s the most successful in meeting these goals (87%). Only 43% use Twitter to help meet their goals and only 27% consider it the most successful in meeting these goals. Since Facebook is the most widely-used platform, it would be advantageous to any institution to have all the department’s pages accessible on one main page in some sort of mashup. This would be an easy way for a user to visit a single page to connect, share, and like for every department within an institution.

Main basis for success – number of touches.
The most interesting data from the survey is what institutions are using to measure the success of their social media. Without an easy way to determine an ROI, institutions are using the number of touches (number of friends, click-throughs, participation, etc.) to determine how successful their social media is.

Based on this criteria it’s hard for an institution to be successful if no one is seeing the social media they are putting out there. Many display their main accounts on the main page of their website, but what about different departments? Users often have to search for a social media directory (if there is one) or find the social media themselves.

If all an institution's social media was on one page, users would be engaged, able to see all social media available, and pick which is most useful to them. It would increase the number of click-throughs, likes, and friends, and would engage them to participate in multiple social media accounts by only visiting one page.

Staffing considered barrier to success.
Although many institutions find their social media to be successful, (62%-somewhat successful and 22%-very successful), there are still many barriers that they feel inhibit their overall success. According to the study, the two top barriers institutions encountered were due to staffing. Staffing for day-to-day content management was felt to be the biggest obstacle in being successful with 28% of institutions saying it was “quite a bit” of a barrier and 22% saying it was “extensively” a barrier.

Staffing for site development came in a close second. The same percent of institutions believed it was “quite a bit” of a barrier, but only 16% said it was an “extensive” barrier.

Schools often don’t have the staffing ability to train, create, and manage social media. If an institution does have someone working on social media it’s usually only one person, not a group of people. According to the study 41% of institutions have only one person working on social media at least 25% of the time. Even more disheartening is the fact that 85% have no person whose job is to work on social media 100% of the time. What happens when that one person who works on social media is gone or the person working on social media needs to use 100% of their time on something else, does the social media of the institution stop? In the social media world, nothing ever stops and every day things are changing and moving forward.

What institutions need is a simpler way to manage their social media, something that anyone can learn and use easily.

What social media policy?
Half of all institutions using social media don’t have a social media policy. While not stated in the study it’s easy to assume why. As stated above most institutions don’t have the staffing needed to create a policy. While there are many policies out there that can be borrowed from it’s often difficult to fit it to an institution’s exact needs.

With nearly all institutions using social media, policies need to be enacted to regulate their social media. It is an institution’s voice and it needs to be protected just as much as the institutions brand and image (something nearly all universities have a policy on.)

In Closing
This study shows that institutions are seeing the need for more organized, individualized social media. Not only do they need to use it, but they want to use it to protect and sustain their brand. They want to be successful by the standards they set in their social media goals. They want to be in charge of their social media and not hire out. But they can’t seem to find a way to do all this with limited man-power.

That’s the reason SMASHUP was created. It gives institutions the tools they need to make their social media the best it can be. Institutions have freedom and control over their social media with a little outside help. It creates a place for all an institution's social media, making it easier to interact with and more successful. SMASHUP is easy to use and easy to learn, cutting back on the time and man-power needed to sustain it. It gives an institution a big boost in the right direction, all while protecting their brand.

SchoolE Update: Week 4 of Voting

2011-04-22T15:55:00.003-05:00

It's the end of Week 4 which means there's still about two weeks left to vote for your district, but this week the districts have been acting like they're in the final minutes of the game. We had almost 2,500 votes this week bringing us to over 10,000 total votes.

The Large Districts are still bringing their A-game this week. Though Clear Creek's voting has dwindled a bit compared to the landslide of votes they had last week, they've still managed to maintain their lead over Brownsville for the #1 spot. Polk County and Keller ISD are still a bit behind the two leaders of the category, but have been within 100 votes of each other all week.

The Medium category is where it's at this week. Just today York County upset Rockingham County for the #1 spot! Currently York County is only 60 votes ahead of Rockingham. While York has been very active in voting, it’s the voting in the past two days that have really made a difference for them. This is the second big upset of the competition, just last week Clear Creek took the #1 spot from Brownsville in the Large category. There are no clear front runners anymore in these two categories; it will be interesting to see how it all plays out!

Upper Darby and Oxnard Union High are still battling it out for that 3rd position. All week they’ve been within 10 votes of each other and today Upper Darby has only a 3 vote lead over Oxnard. But both need to watch out for Independence 30. They haven't been much of a competition so far, but since the Thursday they've manage to almost catch up with Upper Darby and Oxnard. Keep watching out for them, they're well on their way to move even farther up in this category.

The small category hasn't been idle either. While the vote counts aren't as high as the other two categories, the districts have slowly started gaining more votes. Competition is fierce in this category as well. Basehor-Linwood and University Academy were tied with an even 100 votes each on Wednesday, but Basehor came out on top at the end of the week - currently they are only 16 votes ahead of University Academy. Although the top two Small category districts, Zachary Community and Lexington City, have a well maintained lead over the other schools, with the vote count so small in this category it's anybody's game.

Here are the Top 3 Districts from each category based on [unvalidated] vote counts:

Large
1. Clear Creek ISD
2. Brownsville ISD
3. Polk County School

Medium
1.York County
2. Rockingham County
3. Upper Darby

Small
1. Zachary Community
2. Lexington City
3. North Mason SD

Most of the votes have come from teachers, parents, and staff but remember your community and students can vote too. There are a few students voting, but they can be your district's driving force! Encourage them to show their school pride and vote for their district's website!

There are less than 2 weeks left to vote! Now's the time to rally your community if you want a chance to win!

SchoolE Update: Week 3 of Voting

2011-04-15T15:32:00.002-05:00

The competition in SchoolE has been nuts this week! After last weeks wake-up call the Large districts are getting their heads in the game. On Thursday, Clear Creek ISD surpassed Keller ISD and Polk County. Near the end of the day they knocked Brownsville out of the #1 position for Large districts – a position they’ve held from the start of voting. There’s definitely going to be a lot more competition in the Large districts than we thought.

The Medium districts have two great competitions worth keeping an eye on. Rockingham still remains in the #1 spot, but York County is only a couple of hundred votes behind. York has been very active throughout the competition, but toward the end of this week voting for their district has died down. While Rockingham hasn’t had quite the weekly vote count as before they’re still receiving a good number of votes every day. York is going to have to push themselves if they want a chance at that #1 spot.

But they should look out for the current 3rd and 4th place districts - Oxnard Union High and Upper Darby. These schools have been battling for 3rd place all week, but currently Oxnard has come out ahead. Although still over 400 votes behind the top 2 schools, the close competition between these two schools might just drive up their vote counts.

The total SchoolE vote count is now over 7,600 - almost 3,000 votes this week alone. Three districts have even reached over 1,000 votes– Rockingham, York County, and Clear Creek. Keep it up districts!

The current overall voting standings based on [unvalidated] vote counts are:

1. Rockingham Country Public Schools (Medium)
2. York County Public Schools (Medium)
3. Clear Creek ISD (Large)
4. Brownsville ISD (Large)
5. Oxnard Union High (Medium)

Cheer on your school by commenting on Interact page and also your districts profile page under ‘District Comments’. Fans of the districts have been posting thanks and links to articles about their districts making it into the final round.

Also since we're getting even closer to the end, remember the new prize for this year's SchoolE Award recipients - a video review of the winner's district site by Nick Denardis! Nick will be reviewing the top district in each category. As host of his EDU Checkup video blog he reviews education websites through the eyes of a first time visitor, while critiquing the design, information architecture and code of the sites.

Keep your eyes on the prize and keep voting for your favorite District website!

SchoolE Update: Week 2 of Voting

2011-04-08T15:54:00.003-05:00

It's week 2 of SchoolE Awards voting and things are starting to heat up (along with the weather)! The total vote count is over 4,800. Many districts that had little to no activity really stepped it up this week, especially Oxnard Union High. The district was voting non-stop on Thursday, bringing them to 4th place in the Medium category, very close behind Upper Darby. Voting runs like that make the competition exciting! It's awesome to see a school go from relatively no votes to almost 500 in a day.

So far the Medium category districts are rocking the voting round. They've accounted for more than 3,300 of the 4,800+ votes so far- that's almost 70%! The Large districts still haven't quite gotten their votes up, they've only received 886 total votes - less than some of the Medium districts had alone. I keep expecting the other Large districts to step up their game, but it doesn't look like any of those districts are going to give Keller ISD or Brownsville any trouble. Where's the school spirit in large districts? With so many people in their communities they should be blowing everyone else out of the water!

Right now, the overall voting standings based on [unvalidated] vote counts are:
1. Rockingham Country Public Schools (Medium)
2. York County Public Schools (Medium)
3. Oxnard Union High (Medium)
4. Brownsville ISD (Large)
5. Upper Darby SD (Medium)

Clearly, the medium districts are extremely competitive, so it's going to be exciting to see what happens over the next few weeks.

Remember that this year there are three categories:

Large - Enrollment > 25,000
Medium - Enrollment 7001 -24,999
Small - Enrollment < 7,000
That means this year there will be a total of three winners! One from each of these categories.

Make sure to check out the Interact Page on the SchoolE website. There you can cheer for your district, ask any questions (we always respond!), or give credit to whoever deserves it for making your site the best it can be! Also remember voting is open to everyone, so if you believe that your site has something special such as a feature or design tell everyone about it! Cheer your school on and tell everyone why you believe your district's site is the best.

Good luck to all the school districts!

SchoolE Update: Week 1 of Voting

2011-04-01T11:42:00.003-05:00

It may be April Fool's Day, but there's no joke here (the jokes are here, here and here). Since we opened voting on Monday, the SchoolE Awards has received far more than 3,000 votes. What a great week to kick off voting. No time has been wasted in voting for the 21 finalist school districts. Votes have been coming in at all hours of the day; today's votes started at 3 AM and haven't slowed down since. Methods of voting have also been very diverse. Unlike with nominations where we saw mostly e-mails, more voters are using Facebook and Twitter - which also helps the districts spread the word!

As of now the category leaders are Brownsville ISD, Rockingham County, and Lexington City. Rockingham County has especially stood out this week with over 1,000 votes - that's 1/3 of the votes so far, they're definitely in it to win it! Not too far behind is York County Public Schools. I anticipate that these two schools won't be the only ones competing for the #1 spot. Can't wait to see what next week will bring!

Make sure to visit the SchoolE website to check out the 7 finalists in each category, their district profiles, websites and most importantly to vote! Remember, voting is open to everyone. So even if your district didn't make it into the finals, vote for the district you believe has the best website. Voting will be open till May 5th so spread the word and get to voting.

There will only be one winner, so vote now!

Announcing the SchoolE Awards Finalists // Voting is OPEN!

2011-03-28T08:38:00.013-05:00

The time has come to announce the 2011 SchoolE Awards finalists! After two weeks of judging, the 7 finalists from each category are as follows (in alphabetical order):

Large

1. Brownsville ISD
2. Clark County School District
3. Clear Creek ISD
4. Keller ISD
5. Newport News CPS
6. Polk County
7. San Bernadino City Unified

Medium

1. Independence 30
2. Natrona County School District #1
3. Oxnard Union High
4. Richland County School District 02
5. Rockingham County Schools
6. Upper Darby SD
7. York County Public Schools

Small

1. Basehor-Linwood
2. Godfrey-Lee Public Schools
3. Lexington City Schools
4. North Mason School District 403
5. St. James School
6. University Academy
7. Zachary Community School District

Congratulations to all district finalists!

There were so many great district sites this year I'm not sure how the judges did it! The judges have spent the past two weeks evaluating the top 15 districts in each category on 3 different areas: Design, Content, and Overall. Our panel of judges were able to rate these areas on multiple subcategories. Here is an example of a rubric.

Also, a big congratulations and thanks to all the schools who were nominated or made it to the semi-finalist round! Your communities definitely showed their passion for your district’s websites. Even though you didn’t make it through to the final round this year, remember there is always next year!

We’d love to give feedback to any districts who didn’t make it as finalists to help you improve your district's web presence. Please let us know if this is something you are interested in.

We’d like to encourage you to stay involved with SchoolE and vote for whichever school district you believe has the best site! You can view all the finalists profile pages (with links to their websites) on the SchoolE Awards website (http://schoole.allofe.com).

Voting is now OPEN! Make sure to spread the word to your community. This is the final round. Voting will end on May 5th, so there’s just a little over a month to vote your school to the top!

You can vote for the BEST school district website here.

GOOD LUCK!

Take the Leap into Mobile Learning

2011-03-17T14:53:00.006-05:00

Cellphones. Every student uses one. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, most teenagers get their first cell phone by the age of 12 or 13. So why aren’t they incorporated more into the classroom? Many teachers are afraid of venturing out into the world of using cell phones in lessons, but the truth is, cell phones are becoming more and more common in schools. Within the last year, cell phones have gone from banned toys to encouraged tools.

Teachers can have trouble incorporating new media into the classroom, especially cell phones. It’s a risky venture to use something students are used to playing with and turning it into something they learn with. So where do you start?

edYOUcator was made for this. It’s hard to keep up with new technology, trends, and things that you’ve never used, or maybe never even heard of before. edYOUcator helps you find the best lesson plans, especially when you have no idea where to start.

This week, I came across some awesome plans on edYOUcator that use cell phones. They are great starter plans to ease you and your class into mobile learning. Mobile Learning Lesson Plans, found on the Scholastic web site, offers simple step-by-step instructions for educators. These steps even include instructions on setting up other media used in the plans, like Flickr.

My favorite plan is Collecting Biological Phenomena in Everyday Life. In this lesson students use their cell phones to take pictures of plants and animals they observe in their everyday life. Then they send the pictures to Flickr with a short description of what they found and where they found it. In class they are able to put all their photos on a Flickr map and the teacher covers biological classifications. How cool is that? Most kids use their phones to interact with friends and family, why not have them interact with learning too?

Not every student will use them only for learning. Inappropriate use of cell phones is one risk teachers take when using them in the classroom. The Pew survey mentioned earlier stated that 26% of teens have been bullied via text message and that 15% of teens age 12-17 have received a "sext message.” Luckily, lesson plans like these present a great opportunity for educators to teach mobile safety. Include a safety lesson or review every time cell phones are used in the classroom. However, the more engaged your students are, the less likely they are to stray away from your lesson.

These plans are just one example of the great resources available on edYOUcator. Not ready to use cell phones in your classroom? Start with something small like a blog. Do a quick search in edYOUcator for "blog" and pick a plan. This will help both you and your students begin with a familiar way of media based learning. Then you can progress to using different types of media.

edYOUcator helps teachers think outside of the box. Use it to help broaden your horizons and you’ll have the opportunity to grow and learn with your students.

Do you have any mobile learning lesson plans you would like to share? E-mail us at edYOUcator@allofe.com!

We Woke Up This Morning...

2011-03-14T09:15:00.005-05:00

to THIS!

I think we were all hoping that the forecast was over-exaggerated, but it happened. And it's still happening.

I can't even be mad because it's too pretty! Big fat flakes that blanket the trees and make everything seem calm and quiet are my favorite. And it will melt tomorrow anyway :). Let's hope this is the last snowfall of the year, but for now, let's enjoy it!

SchoolE Nominations are Now Closed. Who are the Semi-Finalists?

2011-03-11T16:46:00.018-06:00

Time has really flown - the SchoolE Awards nominations closed yesterday! What an exciting nomination round it’s been. This year, we received more than 7,500 nominations, which is almost 5 times more than last year! I can’t wait to see how many votes we get this year, just based on the turnout thus far. These last few weeks of nominations have been VERY busy ones, with hundreds of nominations coming in each day. We have received nominations from districts across all 50 states. It’s awesome how many people have been cheering their districts on.

Without further ado, here are the Top 15 school districts from each category that will move onto the judging round. Congrats to these school districts!

Large	Medium	Small
1. Brownsville ISD 2. Marion County School District 3. Newport News CPS 4. Fayette County 5. Prince George’s 6. San Bernardino City 7. Clear Creek ISD 8. Montgomery County 9. Chatham County 10.Fairfax County Public 11. Keller ISd 12. Polk County School District 13. Clark County 14. Elk Grove Unified 15. Kanawha County School District	1. Rockingham County 2. Independence 30 3. North Allegheny SD 4. Upper Darby SD 5. Township HSD 6. Blue Springs R-IV 7. Oxnard Union High 8. Walker County 9. Richland County 02 10. Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD 11. McAllen ISD 12. Lawrence Public Schools 13. Bradley Cty. School District 14. York County Public Schools 15. Natrona Cty. SD #1	1. Danville Independent 2. Zachary Community Schools 3. Groton School District 4. University Academy 5. New Milford 6. Lakeland District 7. Godfrey-Lee Public 8. St. James Schools 9. South Texas ISD 10. North Mason SD 11. Basehor-Linwood USD 12. Beggs Public Schools 13. Grain Valley R-V 14. Metcalfe County 15. Lexington City Schools

So what’s next?

Over the next two weeks, our Panel of Industry Experts will evaluate the district websites based on the Design, Content, and Overall presence. Our Panel of Industry Experts includes innovative leaders in areas such as educational technology, Higher Education web content, and graphic and web design.

Curious to see an example of what criteria the experts will be judging on? Check out a sample rubric here.

Judging will end on March 25 and based on the scores, only the top 7 districts in each category will move on to voting (21 districts total). We will be announcing the finalists on Monday, March 28th and after that, the voting will begin!

Voting will continue through May 5th and winners will be announced on May 6th.

Once again congrats to the 15 semi-finalists and good luck in the judging round! Make sure to keep checking out the SchoolE website for updates, district profiles, and more!

SchoolE Awards Update for Week 2/26 - 3/4

2011-03-04T17:17:00.000-06:00

There's only one week left until SchoolE nominations close. We've received around 7000 nominations from across the country, and they just keep rolling in. In addition, the SchoolE Awards now has at least one district represented in all 50 states. Hawaii became the last state to enter the race with the Kauai Complex Area District on the island of Kauai.

The Rockingham County School District has received more than 1,000 nominations, which is pretty awesome for a medium size school! Another medium size district, Independence 30, is also not too far away from reaching 1000.

We are seeing a very surprising trend...
small > medium > large

What does this mean?

The smaller school districts are bringing in more nominations than the medium districts, and the medium districts are bringing in more than the large!

Based on the total number of nominations, smaller school districts are behind the medium-sized ones, but overall, the smaller districts have been more active. To give you a bit of perspective, the top district in the Large category, Brownsville ISD, has almost 50,000 students, but has little more than 675 nominations, whereas the second-place district in the Medium category, Independence, has less than 12,000 students and more than 800 nominations.

Pretty ironic. I guess being a larger district doesn't necessarily mean more nominations. But that also gives large districts a huge opportunity to take over the lead or at least move into the Top 15 during the last week of nominations.

One large district that has been very active this week is Marion County School District in Ocala, Fla. The district has accounted for over 50% of nominations every day since Wednesday and has moved up to the 4th-place position in overall nominations. And it doesn't seem to be done yet! I love seeing the competition that comes out toward the end of nominations.

Most of our nominations have been from teachers, faculty, staff and the community but don't be afraid to encourage your students and parents to nominate also!

Remember it's the last week for nominations. They will close on March 11th, so make sure to nominate you district now! The judges will begin scoring the websites the week after. Voting will open on March 28 for only the top district websites.

Have fun and happy nominating for this last week!

edYOUcator opens to broader audience

2011-02-28T17:38:00.003-06:00

Have you heard the word yet?

You can now register for a pin number directly from the edYOUcator site. Didn't get access after an email request or taking part in the Twitter drawing? Now's your chance.

Go to http://edyoucator.com/edyou/home. Perform a search. Click "Click here." Fill out form. Voila!

Easy as pie.

Happy searching!

One other thing. You can now add YOUR lesson plans, right from the search engine. Just send us your info here.

_________________________________________________

Don't forget: Send an email to edYOUcator@allofe.com with any questions, problems, suggestions, etc., etc., etc. edYOUcator is still in its very early stages and the only way to make it better is through YOUR feedback. We are looking to supply educators with ONLY THE BEST resources. We want to minimize the amount of searching you have to do to find the best lesson plans or assessments, so we're being very particular about what is added to the search engine. But that also means we want to hear from you, to know what YOU find useful.

The more searches you search, the more questions you question and the more suggestions you suggest, the better it's gonna be.

It's a group effort!

SchoolE Awards Update for Week 2/19 - 2/25

2011-02-25T17:07:00.001-06:00

There are only 2 weeks left until SchoolE nominations close! That means school districts only have the next 2 weeks to get in as many nominations as they can to be a part of the top 15 in their category. Only the top 15 most-nominated districts in each category will move on to the judging round. If you want your school there, tell your friends, family, coworkers, students and community to nominate your district by E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, or even all 3. Don't forget that we will be validating email addresses, so any invalid addresses will be void and those nominations will NOT count.

Even if your school is in the top 15 right now, that doesn't mean it will stay that way. In the final weeks, we expect nominations to grow by thousands, so keep up that nominating! Rockingham County Schools still has the #1 spot, and they are just shy of 1000 nominations. Will any other schools reach it to 1000 nominations before the round ends?

One district that is really starting to make their move is St. James School from Alabama. They received their first nomination only last week but are looking to quickly move up - they were the most active district Thursday with over 41% of the nominations!

Before last week we hadn't even received a nomination from Alabama and now we have multiple districts competing to move on to the next round. Maybe the next state added to our competition will do the same! SchoolE had it's first nomination from Montana by Shepherd Public Schools in Shepherd, MT. Congrats to Shepherd for being the first district to nominate from Montana. With 49 states participating, that means we only have 1 more to go until we've received a nomination from ALL 50 states!

Remember that only the top 15 districts from each category will move on to the judging round. The categories are determined by the number of students enrolled in the district; they are small (less than 7000), medium (7000 - 24,999), and large (25,000 +). The number of nominations each district receives will determine the top 15 districts which will be judged by our expert judging panel. From there, only the top 7 districts from each category based on their scores from the judges will move onto the voting round, where the top district from each category based on validated vote counts will win.

Good luck and keep nominating your district!

edYOUcator: How To

2011-02-23T10:37:00.009-06:00

So you’ve heard all the buzz about edYOUcator. You might have access or you might still be waiting to receive your pin number, but either way, you'll be using it soon. We want you to help edYOUcator grow. Every day, we index hundreds more of the best lesson plans, units and other instructional materials that we think educators will benefit from, but we want to hear from YOU.

edYOUcator was built for you, the educators. Using the edYOUcator search engine results only in what we believe to be the best resources for educators. As many of you who have used the edYOUcator search engine have seen, it’s easy and simple to use. But there are a few advanced options you may wish to use as well.

When searching use the “Advanced Search Options” to search within a specific subject or grade level. Say you’d like to find crafts for a Kindergarten class. Just type in Crafts and click the “Advanced Search Options” then check the “K” box like so:
To be more specific in your search, choose a subject area to search in by using the drop down menu in the “Advanced Search Options” as shown in the screen shot above. By choosing a subject area, your search is limited to lessons within that subject.
Another edYOUcator feature is being able to preview a page before you visit it. You can do this by hovering your mouse over the magnifying glass by the lesson title. By using this feature and reading the short descriptions you can be sure it’s a plan you’re interested in without even leaving the search page.
Another option is to click “Help” under the search bar. This will bring up a list of helpful ways to type in your search. One helpful way is the Title search. It is used when searching for words or phrases in the title of a lesson. If you search title:”ABC” your results will yield material with “ABC” in the title of the plan.
If you still can't find what you're looking for, then please, please send us an email at edYOUcator@allofe.com. That's the only way we'll know to look into the problem and once we're aware of it, we will do everything we can to fix it. We want you to take ownership over this, and we want you to get the most benefit possible.

Here are some more helpful tips to find exactly what you're looking for in you edYOUcator search:

Keep it simple - don't complicate your search. There's no need to specify you're looking for a lesson plans, so instead of searching "algebra lesson plans", just search algebra.
Use the Advanced Search Options - You can choose one specific grade level or multiple ones and even search within a certain subject area.
Keep using it - The more you search the more edYOUcator will grow and the better your search results will become.

So what’s next?

As edYOUcator grows we will be incorporating new features into the site! There are some features in progress:

By having an account on the site you’ll be able to fully benefit from these future features, especially ones like tracking and rating your favorite lesson plans.
Another feature we’re currently developing is allowing users to search for state specific and national practice assessments. These resources will focus on tests like the SAT, ACT, Texas’ TAKS and New York’s Regent Exams to name a few,and will include helpful practice tests, former exams and answer keys. If you can't find practice assessments from your state, please let us know at edYOucator@allofe.com.
Finally one of the features we’re very excited about is allowing educators to be able to contribute their own plans! edYOUcator is a network of educators that we want to share and engage with other educators. While this is not something we’ve added as a feature yet, if you’re interested in contributing lessons please let us know at edYOUcator@allofe.com.

As educators you are the focus of edYOUcator! If you’ve been using it, how do you use it and how would you like to use it in the future? Any suggestions on how we can improve? Leave a comment or e-mail us at edYOUcator@allofe.com!

SchoolE Awards Update for Week 2/12 - 2/18

2011-02-21T09:12:00.001-06:00

With only 3 weeks left of the nomination round we are receiving hundreds of SchoolE nominations every day. The schools are definitely competing for their chance to proceed to the judging round. For the 2nd week in a row, Rockingham County Schools is making their presence known. They've inched their way up to the #1 spot in total nominations - beating out Texas's Brownsville ISD and Missouri's Independence 30. Rockingham took over the #1 spot in less than two weeks!

This week has been a busy one for SchoolE we've had 4 new states join the competition! We have now received nominations from every state except 2! The four new districts to first represent their states in the SchoolE awards are:

Montgomery City Schools from Montgomery, AL
Archbishop Spalding High School from Severn, MD
Litchfield School District from Litchfield, NH &
La Salle Academy from Providence, RI

Congrats to these schools - keep nominating! As Rockingham County Schools has shown, it's never too late to break into the top 10 or even the #1 spot.

The SchoolE awards are getting bigger and more active than ever! Even with only 3 weeks left in the nomination round of the competition we still expect to see thousands of more nominations to close out the round! We have received almost four times the amount of nominations than last year, so make sure to keep nominating your district by Facebook, Twitter, and E-mail to move up in the number of nominations or to maintain your position! Remember that only the top 15 schools in each category (Large, Medium, and Small School Districts) will move on to the judging round!

Take advantage of the Top District's profile pages to assess your schools position or see how many nominations you need to catch up with a district in your category!

Tell your friends, collegues and community to nominate your district for SchoolE to get the recognition your districts website deserves!

Good luck to all districts and keep up the nominating!

DePaul Interview About SMASHUP

2011-02-18T17:47:00.014-06:00

Recently I had the chance to speak with Kris Gallagher from DePaul University on how their SMASHUP has changed social media for their school. DePaul’s SMASHUP was launched in October and is one of the first live SMASHUP sites. Kris oversees the social media for the school and manages the SMASHUP.

Q: Why did you want a SMASHUP for your university?
Kris: “We had a lot of people doing social media at DePaul. We maintained a directory page but it was not exciting visually. The SMASHUP made a live feed from everything, showed the most recent posts and the video was much more accessible. By displaying content as it is done in SMASHUP someone could immediately say, ‘Yeah, that’s useful to me.'"

Q: What benefits have you experienced from having a SMASHUP?
Kris: “The SMASHUP is a good central place to have all the University’s social media. It has made the maintenance much easier. People really like it. Also with Google Analytics [integrated] on the SMASHUP it’s now easy to track what’s being looked at - how many visitors the site has, which tools are being used the most and where traffic is coming from.”

Q: What do you like most about SMASHUP?
Kris: “It’s easy to update. You log in, put the info in, and you’re ready to go. Even if I’m gone I can turn it over to someone else and they can manage it easily.”

Q: How often do you make changes to the DePaul SMASHUP? How much time would you say you spend on the SMASHUP monthly?
Kris: “We only make changes about once a month. Mostly we just make sporadic changes when we need to add a new group or change the focus on the main page to a different group. On average it only takes about 3 minutes to make a change. “

Q: Are you using your social media sites more frequently because of SMASHUP?
Kris: “No, but we are pushing out the SMASHUP through social media. By using the SMASHUP we are able to gather and promote information faster and more broadly than before. And now people are more aware of our social media sites.”

Q: Have you pushed the SMASHUP out to your students? If so, how have they responded?
Kris: “We’ve pushed it out through Social Media and there have been no complaints. Students are used to seeing things in this way, so no news is good news. They aren’t complaining about how behind the university is. “

Q: What expectations did you have for SMASHUP? Did it meet them? Exceed? etc?
Kris: “One of our biggest expectations was to create more traffic. SMASHUP has exceeded that. We’ve had about 1700 page visits with each person viewing two or more pages, spending an average of 2 or more minutes on each. SMASHUP has increased the exposure rate. Another expectation was to improve on the directory visually and now with a SMASHUP it looks sharp.”

Q: Do you feel that your SMASHUP is unique to your university? Why?
Kris: “It’s unique in a way; there are other universities that have it but it shows how our university is using our social media compared to other universities. The SMASHUP fits well with our website and by working with the design team at AllofE we were able to incorporate our logo and colors to reflect our overall university site.”

SchoolE Awards Update for Week 2/5 - 2/11

2011-02-11T16:43:00.002-06:00

The SchoolE awards are rocking and rolling this week! We've been receiving hundreds of nominations all week from across the U.S., giving us almost 5,000 nominations thus far. Today alone we've received more than 500 nominations, and most of them (80% to be exact) have come from Rockingham County Schools in Eden, NC. Not only did they break into the Top 10, but they're currently in 3rd for total nominations! Remember: one day of nominating could make all the difference to get your district ahead of the rest!

We also received nominations from Academy 20 in Colorado Springs, Col., and from Aleutians East Borough School District in Sand Point, Alaska, this week, making them the first district nominations from Colorado and Alaska, respectively.

With only 4 weeks left in the nomination round don't forget that only the top 15 most-nominated districts will move on to the judging round, so it's up to you to get your district the recognition you feel it deserves.

Use these tips to increase your chances to move onto the judging round:

Use Facebook and Twitter to nominate! Not only does this allow you to nominate up to 3 times (if you nominate via email address, too), it also posts on your Facebook and Twitter pages so your friends can see you've nominated your school district and remind them to nominate too!
Use a SchoolE Nominate Badge for your district website. Encourage your district to put a SchoolE nominate button on the district homepage to get even more nominations - you'll find instructions on the top right corner of the Nominate page.
Tell your students and community.The majority of nominations are coming in from teachers. Make sure to spread the word to your school staff and students, friends, family and the community to help push your district through to the next round.
Don't Stop the Nominations. Even if your school is ahead don't stop nominating. We've seen districts with zero nominations go to the Top 5 within hours. There is no limit on how much a district can be nominated each day, so keep nominating and spreading the word to stay ahead!

Also remember that we have a few new features:

The current Top 5 districts in each category now have "District Profiles" to help them gauge their positions, leave comments, and see how far they have to go to move up in rank: http://schoole.allofe.com/schoole/district_profiles
See the Top 100 district map: http://schoole.allofe.com/schoole/district_map
Don't forget the "Interact" page where you can leave comments, etc.: http://schoole.allofe.com/schoole/interact

Keep up the nominating and good luck to all districts!

Introducing: edYOUcator

2011-02-09T17:28:00.005-06:00

You may have seen the chatter on Twitter about a new search engine designed especially for educators, called edYOUcator. edYOUcator provides quick and easy access to lesson plans, units and other instructional materials. It aggregates content from many educational resources across the World Wide Web and provides a centralized tool to find information based on subject area, grade, keywords and more, and is only going to get bigger and bigger, especially with YOUR help.

Now, let me take a few minutes to really explain.

How can you gain access?

While the new search engine will launch tomorrow (Feb. 10, 2011), not everyone will be able to access it...yet. We will be selecting a few random users of the #edYOUcator hashtag per day to gain the first access to it - so...

If you want to be entered into the random drawing, you must use "#edYOUcator" in your Tweets.
I'll be announcing when the drawing will happen throughout the day - I am estimating around 5 per day (give or take) - so follow @allofek12 and pay attention on Monday-Friday between 9-6 CST from Feb 10 - Feb 18.
If you're selected, we'll mention you from @allofek12 and ask you to send us a DM with your email address so that we can send you some information on how to log in.

If you really want to go above and beyond, you can request access by sending a really nice email to edYOUcator@allofe.com and we'll see what we can do. After Feb. 18, there will be a sign-up for a request to gain access.

First adopters that either get selected for access, or request access will be the first to get new features that will be given to account holders, such as tracking favorite lessons, rating lessons, and things like that - so keep that in mind.

Another thing to remember: we are going to be indexing more and more resource-rich websites as edYOUcator grows, and since it's a free service, we WANT contributors (if you would like to be a lesson contributor to edYOUcator, please email edYOUcator@allofe.com).

Our goal for the roll-out process is to solicit feedback from educators about the search engine - what they like, don't like, and suggestions. That way, as we roll it out to more people, we'll put our best foot forward. This really is a work-in-progress and as it grows, we want to know what you will benefit most from.

The History

We have vast experience in working with educators across the nation to build the most comprehensive suite of intuitive, web-based applications for K-12 schools to manage everything from curriculum to online assessments to student information to staff professional development. We have worked with administrators and teachers to provide online tools that help them in their everyday lives and better communicate with students, parents, and the community. We've found that there's a void in terms of an easy way for teachers to find really good resources quickly and easily. edYOUcator is our way of filling that void.

The Future

We hope by using edYOUcator.com that teachers across the world will have easier access to the instructional materials they need to learn better and to teach better. It aims to provide focused content to K-12 teachers by indexing relevant content from across the web combined with high quality educational material from our own dedicated educators.

We want to build a network of educators that share and contribute to this learning repository - so as the search engine grows, there will be more and more opportunities to contribute your own instructional materials and share them with the world.

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We are excited to be able to offer this to such a wonderful group of educators we've come to know and love - and we're even more excited to see what you think! We'll be putting out new information as we go, so definitely keep in touch and let us know of any questions you have.

Education Blackout

2011-02-08T13:02:00.001-06:00

The recent Internet blackout in Egypt has left many wondering: “What if that were to happen in the US?” Besides the obvious ramifications of losing the Internet, such as mass riots due to not being able to log onto Facebook to check Farmville accounts, or not being able to tweet what you ate for lunch on Twitter, the biggest effect might very well be on education.

As an educator, student, or parent of a student, just think about how often you get online. Much of modern learning, in the classroom or outside, comes from online sources. In fact, I admittedly don’t watch television news, but I do check the news online everyday. Obviously if there was an Internet blackout I would be forced to adapt to getting my news in different ways, but what about education in universities? Even focusing just on this sector, so much of it is now reliant upon the Internet for teaching, grade reporting, homework, help, and even obtaining degrees. And while yes, we would be able to adapt to this, I believe it would be a very hard transition, especially in a few areas.

Here are some areas I think would be the hardest to transition out of:

Online Degrees
One area of higher education that would be affected the most would be online degree programs - they would absolutely cease to exist. Popular with non-traditional students, such as adults who hold a full-time job already, online degree programs are the most convenient and economical form of education for many. If these programs ceased to exist, many people might not even bother getting their degree or furthering their education.

Not only do students benefit from online degree programs, but universities do too. These programs provide a great amount of money for universities, especially with funding in education being so low.

Email
As any college student would tell you, whether 20 years old or 45, the best, most convenient form of communication with a teacher is through email. Far less intimidating than asking a question in class, much faster than waiting for the next class, and way more beneficial in the long run, email has almost replaced traditional office hours. Although it is most effective to talk to a teacher in person than by email, email provides something a student can refer back to when asking a question. It’s also something teachers can benefit from. How do you easily reach 10 students in a class - call them? Well what about 700? Without email, many students would be afraid to ask questions, couldn’t quickly make up work missed in a class, and possibly miss out on information a teacher was willing to share outside the classroom.

Virtual Learning Environments (Blackboard)
Any teacher I had from high school on loved well-known virtual learning environments like Blackboard. Yet another great place to reach many students at once with information through tools like announcements, these sites allow interactive learning between students and teachers. Things like safe-assign, grade reporting, announcements, blogs, and even pertinent class information can be found in one place online, conveniently. With so many students having grown up with Blackboard and sites like it, transitioning away from it to a less interactive way of learning might very well hinder some students.

Homework
Online homework is a go-to for many classes. Many teachers use online homework tools that are associated with the textbook for the class. Pearson, for example, has many “labs” that connect with their textbooks, giving helpful tips, homework problems, and study guides. Online homework can also help with students who like to work ahead - they aren’t forced to learn at the speed of the rest of the class. These come in really handy, especially with language classes. A student is capable of seeing and hearing lessons even outside of the classroom.

Not only would online homework be affected without the Internet, but traditional homework would be as well. The quickest way of learning about anything is a quick search on the Internet. Students have quickly learned what are acceptable sources and use them for research. While there are encyclopedias, dictionaries, and well written books on topics, updating and using those takes lots of time. Students can learn more when they are researching with faster means - and most of the resources I mentioned are available for search online.

I know I haven’t even touch the tip of the iceberg when it comes to education online, so as educators, students, and parents of students - what would you miss most in education during an Internet blackout?

Five Weeks Until SchoolE Nominations End - Where are we now?

2011-02-03T17:03:00.004-06:00

With just five weeks left until the SchoolE Awards end, nominations are pouring in and the race is getting tight! Between 50 and 100+ nominations come in each day and the numbers are growing as we near closer to the finish line.

As of today, the top 10 school districts in terms of nominations are as follows:

As you can see, the top 10 list is a diverse crowd from all over the United States. A cool thing to note: half of the top 10 schools are small school districts, and they make up for 35% of the total amount of nominations received for the top 10 nominees.

The SchoolE Awards website has received over 8,000 unique visitors and 17,000 page views with hits coming from all 50 states. Not only has the site been actively viewed in the U.S., it has also been getting international attention with more than 43 countries having viewed the SchoolE Awards site. A few other things to note:

The majority of the nominations are coming in through e-mail. --> Let me just say, that districts should encourage nominating through Facebook and Twitter to significantly improve their odds - and increase their nominations!
Votes from almost all 50 states
We have much more than doubled the number of total nominations we received last year
The majority of nominations are coming in from teachers (Why not get more students and the community more involved?)

Check out the new district profiles we recently added to the SchoolE Award site and let us know if you would like your district featured. To learn more about the district profiles click here.

The nominations phase for the SchoolE Awards ends March 11, 2011—so spread the word and keep up the good work! Best of luck to all participating districts!

Never Underestimate the Knowledge of Kids

2011-02-01T14:26:00.002-06:00

Back when it came time for me to apply and choose a college, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go far from home. While most of my friends were eager to spread their wings and finally take the opportunity to get out of the suburbs of Kansas City, I had three little things weighing on my decision.

Those three little things are named Joe, Jimmy, and Johnny—my three little brothers. My parents did things a bit differently than the average American family and when my two older brothers and I left the nest, they decided to have more kids. The day Joe was born, I went from the former baby of the family to older sister, ‘built-in-babysitter’, and in a lot of ways—a second mom. Two years after Joe was born came Jimmy, and two years after Jimmy came Johnny. To say that those three little boys are my whole world would be an understatement- I absolutely adore them.

So when it came time for me to leave for college—KU was a perfect fit. It was far enough away for me to have my own life, but close enough to come home on Sunday afternoons for dinner, to do laundry, and most importantly, to see my little brothers. When I moved to Lawrence for my first semester of college, the transition went surprisingly smoothly. The little ones readjusted to my new presence in their life, and I fit right in to my new college life.

But something changed when I went back home for a month over the holidays one year. Johnny (the baby) was finally old enough to fully understand things. It was almost as if he rediscovered who I was for that month that I was home—and when it came time for me to leave, he was absolutely beside himself. The day before I left, he was my little shadow. Whether I was packing my clothes or running last minute errands, he didn’t leave my side. By 8 that night, my mom finally broke the news that it was bedtime—and the flood gates opened. As I held my crying 4 year-old brother in my arms, I tried to explain that I would come back home to see him soon. But in his innocent mind all he could focus on was goodbye.

As hard as it was to leave him, I had to continue my own life. But one thing eased the pain of my absence for Johnny—Skype. Johnny recently had his first Skype experience. As I sat talking with him, it blew my mind that at the age of 4 he could actually see his sister and talk to her over a computer. When I was 4 I didn’t even know what a computer was. Jimmy, my six year old brother, is able to take my blackberry, find the games, and use my touch screen to beat MY high score. Joe, the 8 year old, can get on a computer by himself, type in his school’s website, and check what is for lunch. Pretty amazing, huh?

Watching how technologically advanced kids are at such young ages makes it almost a no-brainer to use technology in the classroom. Not only do times change, they change fast. Technology is what today’s kids have grown up around-- it’s an area they are comfortable with, and it’s most definitely not going anywhere. We need to make sure that America’s classrooms are not only keeping up with the current times, but that they are catering to the way children learn best. We shouldn’t underestimate how ready and prepared children are to use technology in the classroom.

A Closer look at SchoolE District Profiles

2011-01-31T11:25:00.006-06:00

We've been putting in some hard work into the SchoolE Awards site and I wanted to give you all a good overview of the changes we've made and things we've added so that you can really take advantage of them!

Here's a quick overview of the brand-spankin'-new District Profiles pages (Click on the screen shot to view district profiles for the top nominees):

How many nominations needed to move up to the next rank: this stat is in red in the top left-hand section of the page
Recent Activity: this is the percent of nominations the district received on a given day: This stat is relative to the total amount of nominations received for that day.
Association Nominations: The percentage from which nominations are coming from (i.e., administration, students, staff, parents, teachers, alumni or the community),
Nomination Types: what type of nominations have been made through email addresses, Facebook and Twitter
Category Rankings: ranking in the district's respective category (also shows the district's total number of nominations)
Overall Rankings: the district's ranking overall
District Profiles include: a screen shot of the district website, a link to the district site, and a short excerpt about the district
Comments: a place for district stakeholders to leave comments

SchoolE Awards Update for Week 1/22 - 1/28

2011-01-28T17:35:00.000-06:00

SchoolE has some very exciting news to announce this week - A new prize for the District Winners!

Nick Denardis, one of the SchoolE Awards Judges, has graciously decided to donate his time to do a video review of the winners in each category - so he will be reviewing the top district in each category. As host of his EDU Checkup video blog he reviews higher education websites through the eyes of a first time visitor, while critiquing the design, information architecture and code of the sites. He's never reviewed a K-12 site on his blog so the video review for the winners will be the first of their kind.

Nick is only one of the eight judges on the panel, so you can go to the SchoolE Meet the Panel page to learn more about who they are, what they do, and why they were chosen to judge the SchoolE awards. On that page you can also find the grading criteria they will be using to judge the best 15 districts from each category of nominees.

Although there were many active schools this week, two really stood out. Upper Darby from Drexel Hill, PA has been the most active school this week having 47% of the nominations for Thursday alone. Groton School District has been voting non-stop all week to account for 25% of the votes and moved themselves to 2nd place in the Medium School districts.

New to the race is Oxnard Union High from Oxnard, CA. Although they're a bit behind the other schools, they're starting out strong. They've been the most active so far today, with over 50% of the nominations!

Go cheer your district on or leave questions, comments or suggestions on the SchoolE Interact page. You can see what other people are saying, asking, and suggesting or even leave a comment about what you think makes you're district's site is the best! And don't forget to use the #SchoolE hashtag on Twitter!

The races are close and every nomination counts. Keep your eye on the prize and get to nominating!

SchoolE Awards Update for Week 1/15 - 1/21

2011-01-21T17:47:00.002-06:00

A landslide of nominations from Independence 30 this week has placed them at the top of the Medium School districts once again. This school district accounted for 70% of all votes for the week. They also were the most active district - getting at least 30% of the nominations for every day this week.

We've also received our first nomination from West Virginia. Welcome to the competition Randolph County School District from Elkins, WV.

The Top 5 in total nominations includes 2 Small districts, showing that even the smaller districts are keeping up with the larger ones in terms of nominations.

The Top 5 are as follows:
Brownville ISD from Brownsville, TX
Independence 30 from Independence, MO
Danville Independent from Danville, KY
North Allegheny SD from Pittsburg, PA and
University Academy from Kansas City, MO

The SchoolE site also introduced something new this week - A social media toolbar at the top of the site. On the toolbar you can see recent activity and "like" SchoolE on Facebook, view the most recent blog posts, and catch up on what people are saying about SchoolE on Twitter. You can also see the most active school districts for the day, nominate you district, and view the most recent comments - all from the toolbar. It’s a very cool feature to keep you updated on everything SchoolE, check it out on the SchoolE Website now!

Keep up the nominations!

Focusing on the goal, not the task.

2011-01-20T11:18:00.006-06:00

"Don’t let education get in the way of your learning." - Mark Twain

Work can be pretty boring. Doing the same things over and over makes for a very mundane 9-6 day, 5 days a week. I think a lot of things can get this way - just think about your New Year's Resolutions: eat healthy, work out, lose weight, etc. (Don't lie, I know you've all pledged those at least once.) A lot of kids - and adults - say they 'hate school' or 'hate class.' It's boring, and they're not getting much out of it - and for the most part, they're probably right. None of these sound fun, right?

But they can be.

And it's our fault if they aren't.

The key to keeping things interesting and exciting is focusing on the goal - not the task - at hand. For example, the next email I send or phone call I make, could lead to a completely new project with someone new. The next workout I make up could actually be fun - and not something to dread. And the next lesson you teach can inspire.

It doesn't have to be the every-day mundane - especially when you're focusing on the big picture. Sure, I hate searching for 5 minutes trying to find contact information that buried within a website. You probably hate to run. And your students probably hate writing papers.

But when you can find that glimmer within something that takes your mind off the task at hand, it's not so bad. It won't feel like such a drag anymore. You might even learn to love it.

That's the philosophy we need to take when it comes to education.

And with everything we do, for that matter.

Mobile App Revolution

2011-01-19T12:21:00.001-06:00

Back in the early days of social media, I remember getting on Facebook and Myspace from my laptop and “socializing” online. It’s funny to think about how far social media has come in just a few short years. Many new social media innovations coincide with the popularization of smart phones like Blackberries, Android phones, and of course the iPhone. In the beginning, users would just hop onto their small-screened mobile web browsers and squint their eyes to read content and struggle to click around. I’m sure many users experienced a similar experience I did, such as accidentally “like”-ing something on Facebook while trying to navigate on my phone’s web browser.

Thankfully, someone came up with the wonderful idea of social media mobile applications. These apps are an amazing tool that have certainly broadened social media horizons. With so much time being diverted to social media it would only make sense that users would access social media from anywhere possible, especially their phones. Obviously many location based social media sites are actually best used on mobile phones, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, because users can check in using the GPS on their phone. Other social media sites are becoming more and more popular on mobile phones. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo recently announced that 40% of all Tweets come from a mobile phone. That’s up from 20-25% from a year ago.

Phone manufacturers have even realized the fact that many are using their phones for social media. Phones are beginning to become more focused around social media and staying connected (Remember the Kin?). Microsoft, for example, introduced the Windows 7 Phone, which is all about social media. On its “people hub” not only can you view your Facebook feed or contacts from Facebook, but with the “Me Card,” you can even update your status and change your profile picture across multiple social networking sites. For many phones, social media apps are pre-installed. Smart phones and social media seem to be a perfect combination. Phone manufactures like to market on social media sites, and social media sites love to be on cell phones - it’s a pretty mutually-beneficial relationship.

Another great thing about mobile apps for social media is the fact that different apps are being developed every day and if you don’t like one, another is probably on it’s way. With the abundance of twitter applications out there you can basically choose what information you want coming to you from Twitter, from only the latest tweets, to full site functionality, or even Twitterfeed, which offers to automatically tweet posts published on a blog using RSS.

It’s amazing to think where social media and cell phones will be in only a few more years, but for now, I’m content with social media apps.

What do you access you social media from, phone or computer?
Any thoughts on what phones best incorporate social media?

7 Ways to Effectively Use Social Media in the Classroom and Examples

2011-01-17T17:09:00.002-06:00

To say that social media has become a vital part of today’s world would be an understatement. But social media is no longer just a fun way to connect with friends; it has become a learning tool with endless possibilities. K-12 education is most certainly gravitating towards these 21^st century tools because lets face it, if we want today’s children to be educated and ahead of the curve, we need to give them the most current tools to learn. Just as the times are constantly changing, so should schools and their teaching methods because adapting is the only way to assure that students do not fall behind the learning curve.

Here are some exciting and engaging ways to incorporate social media in the classroom:

Connect with other classrooms: collaborative learning can be fun for students and extremely beneficial. Facebook allows for a class to connect with another class in the building or a class across the world to collaborate and learn together. Try Facebook groups to create class discussions - you can even live chat with other group members - no matter where they are.
Keep up with current events: Part of educating students is keeping them up to date with what is happening in the world. What better way to keep students up to date than by using twitter? By using twitter, students and teachers can be instantly updated with the most current events of the world. Reading current event tweets in class can start a class conversation about various real world issues. Students can even contribute to discussions using their own accounts and perhaps a unique hashtag for the class.

Connect with parents: Technology has without a doubt become an integral part of people’s lives. By using social networking sites or Skype, teachers can stay connected with parents to ensure that parents are aware of how their children are progressing in the classroom. Skype can even become a tool to host parent teacher conferences quickly and easily without the necessity to schedule face-to-face meetings.

Facebook book reports: Students can use Facebook to create interactive projects such as book reports and engage other students with what they have learned. Creating Facebook pages for characters is a great example of how students can use today’s technology to communicate in the classroom.

Encourage class participation: Teachers can use Twitter to engage students in class discussion. Learning really takes off when students are engaged with one another, but for some students speaking up in class is difficult. Shyness in the classroom can result in a timid student never sharing what could be great insight. Twitter gives students the opportunity to tweet comments or questions to teachers during a discussion.

100% student created projects: One Tucson, Ariz., science teacher used Facebook to spread the word about a community service project that was important to students. Students chose a relevant problem in their community and used Facebook to get the word out to make the necessary changes to better their community.
Facebook and twitter as a tool to learn a foreign language: Facebook pages have been created to facilitate conversations in different languages in order to help students practice with native speakers. Here's an example: http://www.facebook.com/pages/French-Language/47934424368

By keeping up-to-date with new social media trends, teachers can enhance their classroom and create a supportive, engaging learning environment. The time has come to allow social media into the classroom rather than fear the possible repercussions of opening the door to social media. We only fear what we do not know—so teachers need to be knowledgeable when it comes to social media to be the best educators they can be.

SchoolE Awards Update for Week 1/8 - 1/14

2011-01-14T10:37:00.004-06:00

Yet another great week for SchoolE awards. Nominations just keep flying in; this week marks a big milestone: we've received more than 3000 nominations! The number of nominations was astounding. For the most part we've been getting one nomination at least every 10 minutes, and at a few points throughout the week we were receiving one nomination per minute.

Not only was there an astounding number of total nominations but the competition is really gearing up. Forty-five districts, old and new, have been bringing in nominations all week. They sure are making this a competitive race.

Two new states have joined the race, Chatham County Schools in Savannah, GA was the first state to join from Georgia and Salem City School District in Salem, OH was the first in Ohio.

Out of all the schools this week, two really stood out in voting. North Allegheny School District from Pittsburg, PA, had 27% of all nominations this week, quickly taking over the #1 spot for Medium districts. Brownsville ISD from Brownsville, TX kept up their voting to maintain the lead for Large districts, by accounting for 18% for the nominations this week.

The majority of the nominations are still coming in through E-mail, but remember you can also vote through your Facebook and Twitter accounts - meaning you can really nominate a district up to 3 times. Just choose either Facebook or Twitter under Step 2 on the SchoolE nomination page, log into your account and nominate! Using Facebook and Twitter also helps spread the word of the contest to ensure your district gets the most exposure possible - and increases its chance to move up in the rankings!

Happy nominating!

Snowfalls and New Years

2011-01-10T09:19:00.002-06:00

We woke up to a winter wonderland here in Lawrence, Kan. today! Luckily, my pup loves the snow (and so does my car) - so I probably had an easier morning than most - stay safe out there!

As for the new year - this is going to be a special year for AllofE. With so many new friends, new projects and new products that arose over 2010, the whole team is energized and inspired to start this year out with a bang. Here are just a few of the things that are being introduced over the next few weeks -

The New Milford Holocaust Education Program website - a very inspiring project that has been a blast to work on (what a great district!) that shares an awesome message.
nuCloud Interactive Maps - we are working with the nuCloud team on the development of the second version of the nuCloud Interactive Campus Tour mapping platform - pretty sweet, right?
New University SMASHUPs - in the works!
edYOUcator lesson plan search engine - just what it sounds like - can't wait to share with you more of the details!
Matrix - a district assessment analysis tool

Whew - and that's only the beginning! What an awesome year to look forward to!

Happy new year to you and yours - & here's to this year being better than the last! Cheers!
Katie