Schools are facing a number of challenges, including the need to stay on top of student performance and the rising costs of education. One of the biggest issues facing schools is data interoperability.
Data is the lifeblood of any school, and it’s not just about making sure that students are getting the best education they can. It’s also about making sure that teachers have access to the right tools, materials, and resources so they can teach their classes effectively.
But data interoperability is hard–and it’s not just because there are so many different systems in use at schools across the country. It’s also because different systems have different ways of storing information, which makes sharing it across systems difficult. And even if a system does offer some kind of data sharing functionality, there are still issues around who owns the data and how it can be accessed by others outside of your network.
Here are some reasons why schools need data interoperability:
Easy Data Import and Export
Data interoperability is an important part of any school’s technology strategy, because it helps you get the most out of your investments in technology. The more data you can share between systems and applications, the more effective your school’s use of technology will be.
It’s not just about sharing data between systems; it’s also about sharing data with other schools or districts. In order to do this effectively, schools need to work together on projects that allow them all access to the same information in one place. This is especially important when it comes to managing data security issues like student records and attendance records–and those are definitely issues that affect every school district across the country! It is key to the success of schools, and it’s something that can be easily overlooked.
Data interoperability is a concept that allows different data sets to be joined together and then used in new ways. It’s important because it allows students, teachers, parents and other people involved in education to see how their individual data points connect to other individuals or groups. This allows them to make informed decisions about what they want from their education system, and what kind of outcomes they want for themselves.
Save Time and Money
Data interoperability also helps schools save money by allowing them to use existing resources instead of having to create new ones from scratch every time they want to collect new information about students’ progress towards graduation or earning more credits toward graduation than originally planned for them when they enrolled in high school. Tim Clark, Vice President, K-12 Programs at IMS Global Learning Consortium, explain interoperability as “…multiple systems sharing a language or a framework for language that’s designed to help them function together as a whole to improve usability and/or security. Interoperability in practice might look like many systems acting as one based on a shared data standard. Interoperability is synchrony.” It’s common for a teacher to use one software system for grading and building a class page, and another to deliver assessments. And yet another to manage IEPs or gifted and talented student performance. Each of these systems collects and shares data in its own way, and it can be challenging to make sense of it altogether. To see how a specific student is doing in one of their classes, or how a group of students has performed over the past three weeks, they may have to open multiple software solutions to compare data. They’ll likely have to manually re-enter the results for each student from each program into the grading system. The more tools teachers use, the more difficult it becomes to manage data when they are not interoperable.
Focus on Student’s Learning And Progress
An interoperable solution that integrates with other edtech products can make your user experience more streamlined, convenient, and natural to maneuver between programs—much like you’re using one overall program. Users get familiar with how applications function, how to navigate quickly, and how to increase productivity. In addition to fostering a healthy tech ecosystem and learning environment and giving teachers a complete view of student progress with shared data, interoperability can make the school day smoother and more productive so teachers can focus more freely on students. “The purpose of a teacher is to help students learn,” says Stacey King, a teacher at Utah Online High School. “There are some housekeeping items that will always need to be done and that are helpful in gauging student understanding and personalizing learning. However, when there are too many systems, programs, and tools to manage, the teacher’s job turns more into a system management role, which takes time away from helping students learn. The less a teacher has to worry about managing tools, the more time they have to work with students!” In short, interoperability can do wonders for streamlining your workflow and making it easier, and more productive, to use multiple edtech products to their fullest.
Talk To The Experts
FCS has developed a solution called Data Interoperability Tool which makes data-driven school districts a reality. Districts of all sizes can now accelerate innovation by solving their complex data interoperability issues and having access to data-driven insights when they need it. We encourage you to embrace this initiative and work with us to achieve these benefits for your students and staff.
Educators, staff, and students have much to gain from data interoperability in such circumstances. The failure to embed such solution could threaten to widen the achievement gap among K-12 students. Forward-thinking tool like FCS’ Data Interoperability Tool focus on the right balance between scalability and interoperability so that educators can use the platform to its full potential. Send us a message for a free consultation.