In late September we hosted several Infinite Campus demonstrations as part of our student information system study that is part of our district technology plan.  To quickly review…

We are evaluating both products (Infinite Campus and PowerSchool) to determine which one will be the best fit based upon learner-centered selection criteria:

• Students can see their real-time performance on standards-aligned expectations.
• Academic outcomes follow the student and this whole-child picture can be used to create personalized learning environments.
• The SIS supports classroom instruction and assessment in a way that is actionable but still flexible.
• The SIS is intuitive, accessible, and feature-rich for all end-users (teachers, admin, parents/families, and students).
• Once entered into the SIS, student data progresses with the child – from registration and enrollment to report card and transcript.
• All assessments (District and standardized) can be administered and/or warehoused in the SIS and follow the child.
• External systems that house student-related data (i.e. LMS, assessment tools, food service, transportation, HR, payroll, etc.) communicate seamlessly with the SIS; a change in one system relays automatically to all other systems.
• The SIS has built-n training and professional-learning opportunities for all end-users (i.e. teachers, schedulers, secretaries, and administrators).

We collected feedback from the demonstration sessions with this tool.  On the evening of October 4th, the SIS Steering Committee met to process this feedback.  Here is the full analysis of the feedback.  It’s rather lengthy, but it contains a lot of useful data.  The Steering Committee focused on the last few pages — with line graphs that give the comparative perception of each product on each outcome.

One question I have been getting consistently is surrounding the status of Canvas. Our technology plan does not call for the study of our LMS (Learning Management System — ie… Canvas) for the next two years  So, there is no intent to replace or remove Canvas in that timeframe.

The meeting on the 4th contained a rich and vibrant conversation of our options.  The next, and final, meeting will be on the evening of October 22nd.  We hope to have a recommendation to stay with PowerSchool or to transition to Infinite Campus by the end of that session.  Based upon our meeting on the 4th, we are gathering additional information about both products.  If you have input for the team, please drop me a note and I’ll include it in our discussion or contact a Steering Committee member directly.