The Vermont Department of Education recently completed a study of data management practices in Vermont school districts and created a "Best Practices" guide. The study consisted of an external review of the data management practices of six supervisory unions and a statewide online survey of all superintendents in Vermont. The guide presents the data practices that work most effectively for Vermont school districts. Administrators and other school personnel will be able to use the guide for improving their district's ability to efficiently collect and report high quality information.

Download Zipped PowerPoint Presentation:
Developing a Data Management Best Practices Guide
for Vermont School Districts (2.7 MB)

At the 2001 MIS Conference in Arizona, we presented the beginnings of a data distribution system for North Carolina. Six years later, the system has matured and is running strong. The Education Statistics Access System is an interactive web-based data distribution system. It is designed to enable anyone to see and extract basic data about North Carolina Public School Systems and to create custom reports to meet his or her needs. Then the report, with the desired content and format, can be downloaded. We will demonstrate the system, explain the architecture, and discuss the lessons learned in the design and implementation of the system over the past six years.

Like most states around the country, citizens of Oregon are demanding data about student achievement in the public school systems. The Oregon Department of Education has two major initiatives to help address the need for accurate, timely data: (1) K-12 Integrated Data Warehouse System-Building a model in partnership with school districts to help educational stakeholders and (2) Integrated Data Transfer System-Partnering with the Oregon University System and school districts for electronic transfer of student records both horizontally and vertically. We will also examine the planning involved for building a scaleable infrastructure to support the large databases that constitute our transactional systems.

Developed for teachers, by teachers, "Sunshine Connections" provides educators with an online avenue to share lesson plans and best practices, as well as access instant student performance data right from their desktop computers with just a few clicks of a mouse. Teachers will be able to view and analyze their students' Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test scores and easily identify each student's strengths and weaknesses in particular skills and content areas. "Sunshine Connections" will help teachers find, modify, or design curricular materials around the unique needs of each student as early as the first day of school.

Version 3.0 of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Handbooks Online went live on the NCES website in October 2005. The Handbooks Online provides guidance on consistency in data definitions and maintenance of education data, so that such data can be accurately aggregated and analyzed. This updated version contains many new features including additional content and element history. The presentation will give an overview of the updates, and a demonstration of how to use the new features. In addition, proposed changes to content and new functionality for version 4.0 will be presented. The State of North Dakota has been working on a customized version of the Handbooks Online to produce a State Data Dictionary. They will present a summary of the project, including a progress review, some examples of the customization, and challenges for future use of this tool.

Download Zipped PowerPoint Presentation:
Update on the Construction of a
Customized Data Dictionary for North Dakota (2.3 MB)

Rapid e-Learning and the use of games are the two hottest trends in e-Learning. In this session you will learn about rapid e-Learning and how it can be used to solve many of your training needs. Rapid e-Learning solutions provide the fastest, most cost-effective way for organizations to capture the expert knowledge of key employees and share it over the Web. Discover the techniques that the Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit, the Schools Interoperability Framework Association, and others are using to create high quality online training that are ideal for voice narrated software demonstrations, information sharing presentations, and even entire online courses.

This session will review the status of the current internal U.S. Department of Education process for identifying the data elements that will be part of the 2006-2007 Education Data Exchange Network (EDEN) clearance package to be available for public comment in May 2006. The presenters will discuss the options, under current consideration, for changes to the current (2005-2006) EDEN Data Set and the submission schedule of EDEN data for the 2005-2006 school year. The session will briefly review the current EDEN Data Set and then discuss potential changes and the reasons for considering those changes for the 2006-2007 school years. There will be an opportunity for audience participation and suggestions in the development of these milestones and objectives.

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