Web Applications

Network World's Web Applications Newsletter, 09/03/07

SchoolNet: Building a better district bureaucracy

By Mark Gibbs

I just had a very interesting discussion with the guys from SchoolNet. SchoolNet describes their service as a Web-based “school performance management system” and “a framework for education.”

Many of you who are parents will be familiar with the Zangle Parent Connection service from C Innovation. The Zangle service is, I believe, a tremendous advance for parents who are paying attention to their child’s scholastic progress. But what Zangle provides -- data entry and presentation to parents -- is only part of what is required for a complete school information system. That is where SchoolNet fits in.

SchoolNet is designed to support teachers by providing a repository of best practices, a library of curricula, documentation on standards, tools for assessing student progress relative to standards, and by interconnecting teachers to get help with educational problems.

One of the interesting aspects of SchoolNet is that it is intended to help school districts reduce their data management overload by providing a relational framework for data and its analysis.

SchoolNet consists of the following modules:
* Align, which deploys and manages curricula.
* Assess, which evaluates student performance.
* Analyze, which allows district analysts “to compile, integrate and extract district-wide data.”
* Outreach, which is used by districts to “manage their communication and collaboration…to include teachers, principals, parents and students.”
* PD Planner is a professional development module that “manages and tracks all aspects of district PD programs, and aligns individualized plans with school and district goals.”
* Advance, which helps districts “assess organizational capacity and plan for and manage succession, replacement and development of employees.”
* Skill Builder, which is used to “implement and monitor an effective competency-based program to recruit, develop and retain educators, administrators and district staff.”

What I found particularly interesting is the potential of a system such as SchoolNet to streamline bureaucracy. By providing a common, consistent, and globally accessible platform to collect, monitor, analyze, and report on operations and performance, much of the “slack” -- the errors and missing data that characterize human-driven bureaucracies -- is removed allowing optimized use of resources and much better employee support.

This is a service other Web developers can learn from. It combines a clear vision of service goals for its target market and delivers that service with a clean, well-designed user interface. SchoolNet gets full marks for making school district bureaucracies work efficiently.

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, and columnist and now blogger: Check out Gibbsblog.

Gibbs not only pens (well, keyboards) this newsletter he also writes the weekly Backspin and Gearhead columns in Network World. We’ll spare you the rest of the bio but if you want to know more, go here

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