Reflection - Module 5

Reflection: Schools are often working against themselves as there are distinct applications for various needs:

• Teaching and Learning Systems  
• Administrative Systems  
• Back Office Systems  
• Supplemental Systems

Reflect on how you could help to clarify and unify these systems.

I would unify various systems by looking for a Single sign-on (SSO) solution so that staff and teachers can access all of their platform services in a user-friendly way with a one single sign-on and sign-off feature. This will help make things much more efficient and also safer since a teacher may have multiple tabs open on her computer and forget to sign off properly.

I would also seek to make sure that data is readily accessible for teachers, staff, and for transfer to the respective stakeholders, such as the state's departments of education. This is one of the challenges many school districts have and was discussed in the Arizona Education Learning and Accountability System (AELAS) Business Case. Being able to export reports on all platform services in a way that is migratable and importable to other systems (i.e. csv file), is key and vital when choosing a platform service. A Software solution that that can export reports that are draw from various applications and platform services would be ideal and I would look for a software solution that helps with this.  

I would also search for redundancies and anywhere where there is an unneeded duplication of data entry.  This could potentially help save lots of time and money, especially if there is an overarching software that can draw reports from various platform services.  Having said that, there are often ways for applications and platform services to be synced and thus, when one field or value is updated in one system, it automatically updates it in the other systems that use that same information.

I would seek out solutions of this kind to make teaching and learning systems, administrative systems, back office systems, and supplemental systems more efficient, accessible, and useful for all users.