Monday, November 6, 2017

Why do people hate their software? Why do people love their software?

We work with a lot of people who usually have strong opinions about the student information system (SIS) in their school district. The consensus: they hate them.

Why would that opinion be so widespread?

I've got a theory: they hate their SIS because it doesn't work as they expect it should. I think the root cause is that SISes are made mainly to satisfy the requirements for state reporting. They aren't made to make life easier for the user, unless that user would have been the one to do state reporting without an SIS! (Good luck!)

That's exactly the reason why we at Edclick have an opportunity which we serve with Behavior Manager. Dealing with issues of student behavior both through carrots (typified by PBIS techniques) and sticks (traditional consequences for misbehavior) involves a lot more steps than simply reporting student out-of-placement days to the state. And that's what customers like about Behavior Manager...it covers the entire process. It does what they expect it to do.

Is Behavior Manager perfect? Nope! And here's an example. Yesterday I got a call from a school where a teacher had used Behavior Manager to assign a student out-of-school suspension for nine days. And for out-of-placement consequences, Behavior Manager has a mechanism to collect the classroom assignments from the student's teachers that the student should work on during the suspension. Makes sense in the process of a suspension, and it's in Behavior Manager and people like it. So far so good.

But what the call was about was that the system had not emailed the assignments directly to the student and/or her parents. The collected assignments are available to faculty online but the student hadn't been informed. The software didn't work as expected and the teacher was unhappy. And you know what? The teacher was right. Despite the fact that assignments are usually collected for students with IN-school suspension where they are distributed to students by the faculty, sometimes they're collected for students assigned OUT-of-school suspension. Direct delivery to the student and/or parent makes more sense in that case.

They were right, we were wrong, so we fixed it last night. Class assignments can now be emailed to any suspended student with a simple click.

If software doesn't do what the user expects and if you care about making your customers happy, fix it. At least, that's what we do.

Posted at 12:00 AM (permalink) 0 Comments View/Leave Comment
Keywords: PBIS, Behavior Manager, discipline, carrots and sticks, process improvement

Monday, November 18, 2013

Edclick Joins Pearson ISV Partnership Program

Garland, Texas October 31, 2013 --Edclick expands the discipline capabilities of PowerSchool by joining Pearson’s ISV Partnership Program.

Discipline Manager, Edclick’s top selling software program, gives extended capability to PowerSchool’s current discipline software by allowing schools to track referrals, tardies, sign outs and much more. Discipline Manager is a comprehensive, web-based, discipline management system designed to streamline the discipline process.

Originally created as part of a comprehensive plan to improve achievement at a Title I Texas middle school in 2005, Discipline Manager is now used in over 14 states across the country and expanding each month. 

The embedded interface with PowerSchool will allow Edclick software to easily import and export important local and state reporting measures. Along with Discipline Manager, add Intervention (RTI) Manager, Testing Manager or any other software items seamlessly to your school.

“Edclick is extremely excited about the integration with PowerSchool because our software will expand to new heights as schools get real time updates of their student lists and are able to report state required information directly to PowerSchool. By joining the ISV Partnership Program, Pearson has allowed us to take our software to the next level”, stated Ken Washam Director of Sales and Marketing at Edclick.

About Edclick

EdClick, formerly Harry Tennant & Associates, Inc., was formed in 1993 by Dr. Harry Tennant. Prior to forming Edclick, Dr. Tennant spent 14 years at Texas Instruments, was a TI Fellow, Chief Technologist of the IT Group and conducted research into various aspects of computing technologies. He was also selected as one of 100 Outstanding Scientists under age 40 by Science Digest magazine.

In 2002, Edclick started partnering with schools to meet the desire for more effective school related software. Each software product has been developed in close collaboration with school administrators and teachers.

Our goal is to continue making software for educator by educators.

For more information, visit www.edclick.com or contact sales@edclick.com.

Posted at 11:42 AM (permalink) 1 Comments View/Leave Comment
Keywords: Pearson, PowerSchool, Discipline Manager, ISV Partner Program, Intervention Manager, Testing Manager, Edclick, Discipline