Update on 12/02/2006: Don Simon of EduTech updates us with the latest ND PowerSchool numbers in the comments. I’ve adjusted this post to reflect the changes. Thanks Don!
Jon Undell, Infoworld columnist and über geek, has posted his latest screencast in his “screening room“, this one on Pearson School Systems‘ PowerSchool student information system. It’s a really good visual overview of how the system works technically, but I found the discussion about parent/teacher behavioral changes most interesting, especially the idea of “parent accountability”.
During my 4 1/2 year stint at Edutech, I had the opportunity to learn a ton about PowerSchool, as North Dakota selected it as its “official” SIS right around the time I was hired. The program was owned by Apple at the time, and as much as I love the company, they really botched the acquisition by not giving PowerSchool the resources it needed. My colleagues at EduTech took it all in stride though, and are now some of the leading experts on the software in the US. EduTech’s latest stats have the organization assisting in over 70 86 deployments across the state of North Dakota.
3 replies on “Jon Undell’s PowerSchool Screencast”
By the way, what are you up to nowadays…jobawise?
Just an update Jason. We currently have 86 school districts in North Dakota using PowerSchool. That equates to approximately 50,000 students in the State. We will be implementing 6 more districts during second semester of the 06-07 school year.
Don
EduTech Dir. PowerSchool
Good question – I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me again!
I’m still doing the start-up thing in Grand Forks. We’re looking at early January for an official launch, but until then I unfortunately can’t say what it is we’re working on.
As for what I’m doing personally in this new job, I’ve been absorbed in programming a Ruby on Rails application for the last several months, so that’s been my main task lately. I’m also responsible for integrating our different systems together to make them more useful and to do really cool things their makers never intended :)
I’m also working on web design/development and branding/marketing for our products/services, which is a blast. Probably because it requires a completely different type of thinking than computers and programming.
Besides these, I’ve also got some other not-so-fun responsibilities, like managing our applications, servers, desktops, and laptops. Not that its horrible, but with so many other responsibilities too, it gets to be a burden rather quickly.
Sorry I missed you while you were up Sam – I hope to see you again sometime soon!