AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF ROTTERDAM JUNE 2011
ICT: STUDENT INFORMATION SYSTEM Adopting a new Student Information System would empower the faculty, staff, and administrators at the American International School of Rotterdam to realize its vision, mission, and strategic plan. One streamlined, centralized system for managing school data and administrative functions would replace multiple, disparate, and independent systems. This new tool would not only serve our students and families with one effective tool for communication and reporting, it would also greatly reduce inefficiencies, lost time and frustrations associated with utilizing separate programs for grading, data management, and online learning, ICT ESSENTIAL CONDITIONS: The ICT Implementation Plan centers on establishing conditions essential to the effective use of technology in an educational setting. Upgrading our Student Information System would address several conditions, including planning for improved digital communication, providing access to resources for all stakeholders, engaging skilled personnel in meaningful training, ensuring timely and reliable IT support, and centering learning experiences on students’ needs and abilities.
Vision External Leadership Planning Community Evaluation
Funding
For Students
Access for all
Curriculum For Teachers
Personnel
IT Support
Please see more about ICT Essential Conditions from the International Society for Technology in Education.
PowerSchool is the fastest-growing, most widely used web-based student information system, supporting more than 9.5 million students in 50 states and over 50 countries. This student information system will provide AISR with the tools necessary to serve our students and families, as well as to streamline administrative procedures, reporting systems, and online learning tools into one secure, user-friendly system.
Benefits of Implementation PowerSchool will enhance the efficiency of our operations at AISR by: - Streamlining the admissions-to-enrollment process for new families - Integrating separate silos of information for administrative, financial, medical, and instructional use into one secure system - Eliminating duplicate data entry, saving time and reducing margins of error - Replacing our dated, unstable reporting systems with user-friendly, reliable, “all-in-one” data management, reducing user frustrations and time wasted - Allowing us to capture and visualize student data to drive student-centered decisions in curriculum, instruction, and strategic planning - Disseminating essential inter-department information with one-click - Increasing student and parent satisfaction through a centralized information system to improve shortcomings in vital communications Cost-Elimination: The effective implementation of PowerSchool will offset the following costs: - Studywiz- Annual Costs: 2400 EUR with additional staffing funds - Reports Printing and Mailing Costs: Est. 700 EUR annually - Shark Printing Costs: Est. 10,000 EUR annually
SERVING STUDENTS AND FAMILIES PowerSchool parents and students have been logging in to check real-time grades and attendance since 1997. Since that time, the PowerSchool parent and student portal has grown in popularity to become the most visited SIS portal on the web. PowerSchool provides parents with the opportunity to engage in their students learning by providing the tools to: Track Student Grades, Assignments, Performance, and Attendance: Parents can view real-time grades and attendance, as well as assignment submissions and teacher comments. In addition to grades, we will be utilizing PowerSchool to communicate student performance on formative assessments, such as the Measures of Academic Progress test results. Elementary school reporting also provides standards-based grading. Track Student Performance Over Time and Plan for the Future: Grade and attendance history is available for the full year, allowing students and parents to monitor patterns and improvement in performance. Class registration is also available through PowerSchool, as well as graduation requirement tracking. CAS hours can also be tracked using PowerSchool. Centralize and Update Family Information: Parents can see each of their students from their PowerSchool home page and can edit personal information, contacts, and medical details for students with just a few easy clicks. Stay Informed about Events and Announcements: The Shark and other announcements can be linked directly to parent log-ins, so each time parents log-in, they can access the newest events and information. The school calendar is also available from the home page. If logging on is not convenient, parents have the option to customize their email notifications. Options available include the frequency of communication, from daily to once a week, to any chosen email addresses. Manage Payments and Billing to the School: The billing system allows families to view fees, paid and due, and by student or by family. The reporting system can be extended to include payments for tuition, library fees, sports team memberships, and field trips. WWW.PEARSONSCHOOLSYSTEMS.COM/PRODUCTS/POWERSCHOOL/
www.aisr.nl
AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF ROTTERDAM
JUNE 2011
STREAMLINING PROCEDURES AND SYSTEMS: IN THE CLASSROOM Implementing an internationally recognized Student Information System (SIS) enables today's educators to make timely decisions that impact student performance and maximize individual success, while creating a collaborative environment for parents, teachers and students to work together in preparing 21st century learners for the future. Essential instructional tools include: Web-based, Real-time Gradebook: This digital gradebook not only provides students and parents with immediate feedback on student performance, it also serves as an instruction tool to allow teachers to make that feedback meaningful. Aside from the basic gradebook functions, such as weighting, linkable assignments, and filtering, PowerSchool offers new tools such as the ability to create different grouping by simply clicking and dragging, to mark collection of an assignment by a checkmark before assessment, to make individual student notes by assignment, and to provide feedback using a standardized bank of comments connected to school academic and behavioral standards. The greatest benefit of utilizing PowerSchool is the single-entry for grading data. The online gradebook and the reporting system are the same. PowerTeacher: Teachers can create assignments and homework calendars within PowerSchool to provide students with digital tools to enhance their online learning experiences.
STREAMLINING PROCEDURES AND SYSTEMS: IN THE OFFICE PowerSchool also serves to streamline administrative and official functions at AISR. The areas where the greatest improvements would be felt are in: Secure Data Management: A wealth of student information is maintained in an password-protected environment, including student and family demographic data, health and medical information, student photos, learning and behavioral plans, and emergency contact information. We can also customize the data entered, from Netherlands-specific details like swim diploma leveling and immunization records, to AISR-specific information such as assessment scores from ISA, SAT, and MAP testing. All demographic data can flow from our Admissions application, for the ease of one-time entry, but can also be updated by the family and the school, when necessary. Our current system requires four points of data entry for an upper school student (admissions entry, database entry, Studywiz entry, and Engrade entry) and requires updating in four different areas. All data is stored on a local server and is accessible via web applications from any location in the world, using a private, individual log-in. The data collected also provides an institutional historical record which could be used to collect alumni data and track student scores and performance over multiple years.
Interdepartmental Communication: PowerSchool can foster internal communication, increasing staff and administrative efficiency. General information and calendars are available through leveled log-ins. Each user level has access to the appropriate bulletins and information (students, parents, staff and faculty, and administration). Applicable announcements are available from the homepage, after logging in. Studentspecific information, such as comment logs, nurse visits, attendance notes, and disciplinary infractions can also be shared through PowerSchool, keeping all parties informed with one-time data entry into one system. Additional information, such as student involvement in sports teams and extracurricular activities, is available to ensure easy access to student lists and attendance for NECIS tournaments and trips.
Admissions Management: PowerSchool will improve our current admissions process, by creating “pre-enrollment” student and family access to PowerSchool. Once the admissions process has started, parents can continue to update demographic, medical, and academic data for students. Not only does this streamline our data collection process, it also eases the transition of students into our school, by ensuring that they are already “in” when they arrive for their first day at school.
Reporting:
Reporting at AISR takes several forms including progress (narrative) reports, grade reports, transcripts, attendance reports, standard-based reports, and bus schedules. Billing and invoicing for tuition is also a vital part of reporting at AISR. PowerSchool creates many of these reports with one-touch ease. Time-saving report tools include an historical record of regularly-run reports, for one-touch PDF delivery, and customized reports through dragging-and-dropping. Customized reports can present a more meaningful progress report for our students, to include MAP scoring, grades in course, and narrative reports from teachers. Grouped reporting is also available through PowerSchool for reminders or alert Costs for Implementation reporting such as high absenteeism or payment over-due reports. Annual PowerSchool Subscription Fees PowerSchool Annual Maintenance & Support
2,500 USD 0 USD
PowerSchool Implementation- Basic Setup PowerSchool Implementation- School Setup PowerSchool Software Installation
4,200 USD 1,200 USD 500 USD
PowerSchool Product Education Subscription PowerSchool Training Consultation PowerSchool University
2,500 USD 4,500 USD 2,000 USD
Billing: Tuition, library fees, sports fees, and other additional payments can be billed and tracked through PowerSchool. Family There is also the potential to link PowerSchool billing to a scannable ID card for use in the lunch room.
Scheduling:
Our current system for scheduling is an entirely manual and timely process. PowerSchool creates an efficient school schedule that not only fulfills the most student course requests (which can also be collected through PowerSchool), but also takes into account a multitude of constraints such as multiday rotation, room capacities, resource management, teacher prep-periods, student scheduling priority, etc.
Transportation Management: Bus routes and times are available through TOTAL PowerSchool Annual Subscription Fees (On-Going)
17,400 USD 2,500 USD
PowerSchool and can be run on a daily basis, as is currently required. We would like to develop a customized data entry point to include daily bus cancellations/ reschedules through PowerSchool, so students and parents can easily cancel bus service in a timely and convenient manner.
WWW.PEARSONSCHOOLSYSTEMS.COM/PRODUCTS/POWERSCHOOL/
www.aisr.nl