WDE Information Management News-- July 30, 2018

Update from the Wyoming Department of Education  |  view online |  website

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07-30-2018  |  General News

LESSONS FROM A CASE STUDY

Creative Use of the Tools You Already Have

Students using iPads

If you’re managing a 1:1 program and provisioning iPads, you have tools at your fingertips that can make device provisioning process a lot easier. Louisa County Public Schools supports about 400 students on iPads in their 1:1 program, and was finding the provisioning process demanded a lot of manual work, and worse, had the potential to break during an SIS upgrade.

Apple School Manager is the software used to provision iPads, and it requires a complex CSV export from the SIS – an extract that is not typically provided by the SIS vendor. In addition, the CSV file format requires a location ID for every class, section, student, and teacher – the location is usually the school, but a typical SIS stores the school’s identifier only in the school object. Export scripts linking that ID and other key information across multiple data types proved to be complex and slow-performing.

Louisa County was already using the Kimono platform for integrations with Active Directory, G Suite, and Follett Directories, as well as to support integrations that move data to other systems (transportation, cafeteria, etc.). Utilizing the mapping and transformation capabilities they already had access to in Kimono, Louisa was able to map School Local ID to the required location ID and create the exact CSV export needed by Apple School Manager, without ever touching the SIS. It is now simple to run the export whenever it’s needed, or they can schedule it to run automatically.

With the SIS data already in Kimono, there’s no performance hit to the SIS, like there normally would be when running such an extract. By offloading complex tasks like this from the SIS server, Louisa County ensures better performance for all their users.

As an added benefit, because Louisa is using Kimono Directories to automate provisioning of Active Directory and G Suite, they were able to use the same credentials for Apple School Manager, enabling students to have just one login for the device and their school accounts. This wouldn’t be possible without some sort of middleware since those credentials do not typically exist in the SIS. 

Louisa County Public Schools, located in Virginia, supports about 4,800 students in six schools. 

Interested in knowing more about how to connect your Kimono integration to Apple School Manager?  Contact Steve at 877-262-9143 ext. 7010.  

REVIEW WINDOWS FOR CONFIDENTIAL STUDENT LEVEL ASSESSMENT RESULTS

WY-TOPP Logo

The agency will confidentially release the 2017-18 student level results from the various statewide assessments, for review by district personnel prior to each public aggregate release. Once the student level review window is over and corrections have been approved, the aggregated results will be calculated and confidentially released to districts at least 24 hours prior to the public release. All results will be embargoed until the aggregated statewide results are released publicly, and summary results should not be shared with local media until the embargo is lifted.

Districts are asked to review assessment results for accuracy and completeness. Each report will be available within the WDE's Fusion portal and only available to authorized users.

The following is a brief outline to help districts identify critical timelines for reviewing and understanding assessment results. 

August 1 - 14 - ACCESS, WY-ALT, and ACT student level review

August  23 - ACT public aggregate release

September 10 - 21 WY-TOPP Summative student level review

September 26 - WY-TOPP public aggregate release

WISER LOGO

The WDE recently started using a new unique identification system. IDs will no longer be retrieved from the Fusion portal. Both students and staff will be using an eight digit WISER ID. Information about the new WISER ID system can be found at edu.wyoming.gov/data/wise/.  

The .csv file batch upload format is new and can be found at the above website, with a guidebook, and a file layout document that provides the expected values. For example the male gender is now input as "male" not "M". There is also a new field called Former Last Name. This field is optional but should be provided for any staff member or student who has a previously used legal last name. Social Security Number is a field required for staff members, but is not allowed for students. The .csv file has an indicator for student or staff and and any record marked as a student will not allow the Social Security Number to be sent to the WDE.

 If you use the Student Locator to retrieve your IDs there are no changes necessary on your end. When using the Student Locator, the student Social Security Numbers are never sent to WDE.

All case conflicts will now be resolved at the WDE. Our staff will be addressing these cases first thing in the morning and directly after lunch. If you submit a request for an ID in the morning, check back in mid-afternoon for resolution of any student or staff member identified with a N_SLF_STATUS of 7 or "Unresolved". WDE is currently providing IDs to the University of Wyoming and local Community Colleges who participate in the state LMS, so we are experiencing a high volume of case conflicts to resolve. Over the next few weeks, the number will decrease and we should be able to return IDs to you at a much faster rate. The new ID system does not have email notifications so you'll need to check back periodically.

In the July 16th newsletter we provided you a link to a confidential report with a crosswalk of the names of your staff from last year's WDE602, the staff member's old seven digit ID and the new eight digit ID. You can use this spreadsheet to update the staff IDs in your systems.

If you are interested in uploading the staff IDs into an accounting or HR system and need Social Security Numbers, please contact Susan at susan.williams@wyo.gov.  

IMPORTANT UPCOMING DATES