inBloom, Train Wrecks, and Ed-Fi

As I sat down to write this entry, my day was interrupted most unusually.  Doug texted me the picture to the left.  The caption said simply, “Say hello to 26th street and the railroad track.”  In the picture I saw the same view I see every work morning from the “Big Table” here at UPD where many of us sit.  After more than 4 inches of rain over 36 hours, the ground right outside our office gave way taking more than a dozen cars and half the street with it.  If you watch the video (found below) of the ground as it collapses underneath the cars, you will see that it left the wall with nothing to hold, and fell under its own weight.  The stories on the news have since revealed that the neighborhood has know this was a problem for years, but their complaints and concerns met a deaf ear in the city and with the rail company.

 

It’s hard to see such a calamity and think not metaphorically about my originally intended subject: the collapse of inBloom. inBloom was, in lieu of a more boring technical description, a cloud based data integration technology, that would enable districts and states to connect their data to an “app store” of programs and dashboards that could sit on top.  The vision was a seamless and less expensive way for teachers and principals to gain easy access to data about their students.

 

inBloom was a very big deal.  Started in 2011, several big funders and education heavies devoted their credibility and more than $100 million to try to make it successful.  Their efforts succeeded in garnering several state and district partners.  But since its inception, consumer groups, parents, and privacy advocates have worried that placing their students data in the hands of a third party would not be safe.  Or worse, inBloom might “sell” their student’s data to the highest bidder.  Then came Edward Snowden, and what was a niche news story went prime time.

 

If you look at the technology within inBloom that transfers and stores data in the cloud, the critics did not have much of a leg to stand on. inBloom’s data protection technology is as good or better than just about any existing state or district.  If you look at inBloom’s license agreement, parents and privacy advocates had more explicit protections than they have now with many student data systems.  What caused inBloom to collapse as quickly as the wall outside my window was more fundamental: trust.  As citizens, we trust districts and states with our students’ data.  And for all of inBloom’s technical explanations on the security of the data, they never made the case that we could trust them as an organization.  With the withdrawal of Louisiana, New York, Colorado, and several districts, nothing could hold inBloom up.

 

Over the past year at UPD, we’ve done a lot of work with the Ed-Fi data integration and dashboard suite.  We successfully rolled out the system for the entire State of South Carolina in about nine months (public dashboards here) and are very excited to start work with the Cleveland Metropolitan Public Schools to implement Ed-fi there.  Ed-Fi is very different than inBloom, even though they both utilize the same underlying data model.  Based on extensive research on what teachers and principals say they need, Ed-Fi provides a set of powerful data integration and dashboard tools that a district or state can download for free.  Rather than shooting data up into the cloud, Ed-Fi lives where most people already trust, in the data centers of the district or states.  19 states and more than 7,000 districts have licensed Ed-Fi.

 

The tragedy of inBloom is that it was a great idea ahead of its time and stood to do a lot of good in education.  But the protectors of the status quo should see no victory in its collapse.  Teachers and principals are clamoring for better information to help their students.  Ed-Fi seems ready to pick up where inBloom left off, and do so with the trust this work requires.

———————————

This blog was written by Bryan Richardson. Bryan is a Partner at UPD Consulting and brings over thirteen years of experience in private and public sector management. Bryan holds national expertise in performance management, data systems, and complex project implementation. 

Asking the Right Questions—Data Privacy and Security

There are a lot of good signs to be seen in recent news about security and privacy in the education technology sector. Some of the key questions being asked by educators and administrators are “how well are student data protected from prying eyes and greedy corporations?” and “who has access and how are the data being used?” These are good questions, and they represent the vestiges of our struggles with adopting modern technology over the past 15 years. Conversations have matured from simple arguments around the value of computers in every classroom to philosophical debates about our organizations’ embrace of performance data as the ombudsman of quality education. Progress has clearly been made, but in our rush to catch-up with our corporate cousins we missed asking what turns out to be a pretty important question–who owns all this stuff?

 

That’s the question that ultimately sealed the fate of inBloom, a non-profit offering a cloud-based data warehouse designed to help districts and vendors share student information. Despite funding from big foundation names like Gates and Carnegie, inBloom collapsed under the weight of a five word question they were never able to answer well enough to satisfy concerned stakeholders. If data are stored on a machine that is not physically located in a building owned by the district, who really owns the data?

The data issue is really a matter of security and access, which isn’t so different from the days of paper records in filing cabinets–information was kept in a secure, locked location and only certain people had access. With data warehouses replacing filing cabinets, the difference is that the information is stored off-site and the keys are also in the hands of the data warehouse manager (in other words, the system or database administrator). inBloom failed to effectively communicate this subtle difference early on, and any answer they eventually provided came across as reactionary, slick, dishonest, and–my favorite new term–“hand-wavy.”

 

Schools and districts aren’t used to asking those questions, and the education technology sector isn’t used to answering them. This disconnect doomed the effort from the beginning. Had the question “who owns this stuff?” been asked early on, the answer would have at least brokered a conversation rather than distrust and eventual dismissal–not to mention a waste of about $100 million dollars in grant funding.

 

Ideally, that conversation would lead to a compromise where information storage and archiving solutions satisfy the security and access needs of all players–parents, teachers, administrators, and the general public. Perhaps the right solution keeps an element of the status quo: secure data such as individual names, contact information, and other personally identifiable information could be stored on-site with the keys in the hands of the same people, but the bulk of the data could be stored in the cloud. Hybrid solutions like this are possible with dashboard software like Ed-Fi where the software itself can be installed on-site along with the secure data and set up to pull the remainder of the data from the cloud.

 

In the consulting world at UPD, we see those disconnect problems all the time: Group A spends a ton of time and money solving a problem for Group B without ever truly engaging the members of Group B. inBloom undoubtedly engaged their stakeholders in the early stages, but not deep enough to where someone was able to ask “who owns all this stuff?” This is often the result of too much focus on delivering a solution and providing answers rather than asking questions and identifying the problem. It comes with the territory–we get so excited about the possibilities of new technology that we jump right into requirements gathering without stopping to think if we’re asking the right questions and solving the right problem. It might just be as simple as an issue of maturity; if we’re getting serious about our relationship with technology, it’s probably time we start asking about intentions.

———————————

This blog was written by Andrew Keller. Andrew is a Consultant at UPD Consulting and brings over 10 years of experience in education, policy, and data metrics.  

How to Run a Computer Based Training Session: Three Indispensible Techniques

This week I’m really delighted to introduce Frank Nichols a talented consultant from our strategic partners at Strategic Urban Solutions. Strategic Urban Solutions will be guest posting for us from time to time, and this week will be sharing a training post with us.  

At Strategic Urban we tend to do a lot of work with large institutions: Cities, Non-Profits, Schools, etc. Typically, these institutions will need to move on from their old paper-based methods of doing business and adopt an organizational system. Let’s face it, this is usually long overdue and necessary.  When an organization’s staff need training on these new systems, it can be both rewarding and challenging to be in the position of the Trainer. I will be honest and say that I have not always been good at this. In fact, I wouldn’t be able to offer up any of this wisdom if I haven’t been thoroughly beaten up along the way. After many years and nearly 100 training sessions, I’d like to offer up three techniques that I have found indispensable.

1. Don’t Be a Policy Middleman

Many times when you are introducing a new system or process, it is due to big changes in an organization. It is inevitable that you, as a trainer, will be seen as the middleman between staff and management. In order to prepare staff for the new system, you might have to give them an overview of recent policy changes. Make sure they also understand your role and purpose: to help them adopt new technology. Don’t let your training session become a place for the airing of grievances. Negativity about an organization’s changes can carry over to negativity about the technology that you are introducing.

If you are consulting for an organization, and are not management yourself, you can position yourself as an advocate on their behalf. Show sympathy for the staff, while also maintaining positive representation of the management. One way to avoid becoming the policy middleman is to have the contact information of the policy expert(s) on hand. Inform the staff that they can direct specific questions to that contact so that you don’t get off track. Even better yet; if a policy expert is available to address the policy implications in person, during the introduction, you’ll be free to focus on technology for the rest of the session.

2. Positives Before Challenges

Showing staff a new system or process and then asking for questions can sometimes, understandably, lead to a wave of complaints. If one person comes up with a complaint the rest of the staff in the room might feel compelled to pile on. This is why it is important to take a few breaks throughout the session to discuss Positives and Challenges. I always start with Positives by asking “Now that you have seen some of the system features, what do you like most? Why is this system an improvement on what you have done in the past?” You’ll want to discuss Challenges as well…but hold those Challenges hostage. I won’t move on to Challenges until someone can offer up something positive about the system.

For Challenges, I like to ask “Do you anticipate any challenges in applying this system to your work?”. When you frame it this way, you’ll get thoughtful anecdotes from the Staff instead of complaints. They will help you to understand what they are dealing with when they go back to work, and you’ll be better prepared to use that context for the rest of the session.

3. Demo Before Practice

If you have a room full of staff with a computer in front of them, good luck getting their attention. I’ve been in the front of many training sessions, but I’ve also been in the back. A computer is not only an invitation to check email and social media, but also an invitation to explore the system ahead of the instruction. Getting ahead of the class in a focused computer training session sometimes means getting lost. Each section of the system comes with explanations, demonstrations, and discussions…all of which will be missed by someone who is staring at their computer and going on their own personal journey. How many times have you tried to get through an entire demonstration, only to be interrupted at various stages because someone is trying to click on this or that and it is not working? The solution is: clearly state when you are demonstrating and that the opportunity to practice coming up next. Demo before practice.

Before you introduce a part of the system, explain that you are going to first do a demonstration. More eyes will be on you (More, not all…I’m realistic, you can’t get everybody) and those staff will clearly see the current system component, they will hear your explanations and guidance, and will have an opportunity to ask questions. THEN, you can put them on a mission: “Now that you have seen how this component works, go ahead and complete this step on your own.” The beauty of this is that you can free yourself up to walk around and help people individually, before you command their attention on the next demonstration.

I hope you find these techniques valuable and that you experience the reward of a successful training session. Happy training!

–Frank Nichols is a guest blogger from our friends at Strategic Urban Solutions

Stuck in the 80s

Although I have over 25 years of for-profit corporate America experience, I am not one to think that we should leverage everything from the business field to the education field.  However, I do think there are areas where the educational field could learn more from the business field.

One of those areas is student information systems, or SIS for short.  Simply stated, a good SIS manages student data and should cover areas like scheduling, grading, attendance, discipline records, etc.  I look at this as backbone stuff.  Every school has to do it and do it well.

I liken it to an accounting system in corporate America.  You have to do it well, but let’s face it, invoicing is invoicing.  Companies don’t get a competitive advantage from this activity.  (Of course they could be at a disadvantage if they don’t do it well).

When Madonna first started singing about being touched for the first time, corporate America had hundreds of accounting systems.  In fact, one company, depending on its size, could have several accounting systems.  Today, efficiency rules, and the likes of Oracle and SAP are generally used in large companies.  Large companies that have more than one accounting system are ridiculed as being behind the times.

Why then, are “a-ha” tunes still heard echoing in education halls?  I work in a small state, and there are at least ten SIS applications.  That means that data collection at a state level is complicated and knowledgeable resources in one SIS system cannot be leveraged across multiple LEAs.

The only reason to have variance is if it is bringing a significant value to the student experience.  If that advantage is not there, then one SIS should suffice for a region or state.  If you disagree, let me know and…”Hit me with your best shot.”

–AW