Introducing the MiDataHub Newsletter’s “Practitioner's Corner” -
Starting next week we will share one story each week from a Michigan educator. If you have a success story about using MiDataHub or any of its related tools, please
share your story
through Twitter or email us at
THoag@GoMASA.org
. We will review submissions and spotlight one story each week throughout the school year.
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MiDataHub Team Spotlight -
Dozens of people from all corners of Michigan are working together to help make the MiDataHub vision a reality. In our Team Spotlight, we hope you see that this is truly a system built by Michigan schools for Michigan schools. Starting this week, we will spotlight one of the many MiDataHub staff, support specialists, advisory members, or partners who are playing a critical role in all that we do. We cannot thank each of you enough for all that you do!
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MiDataHub Team Spotlight for September 13, 2018 -
An active member on the Actionable Data Advisory for the past year, Dr. Brandi-Lyn Mendham has played a key role in the early development of the MiRead and MiStrategyBank tools that are in development and will be piloted by eight school districts this coming fall.
Dr. Mendham is the Director of Curriculum & Technology for Zeeland Public Schools. She spent five years as an elementary teacher at Baldwin Community Schools before moving into administration. Upon leaving the classroom, she served as a School Improvement Director and later as an ISD Consultant for West Shore ESD. Before serving Lake, Mason, & Oceana counties as a consultant, she served nationally as a Site Developer for Atlas Communities based in Cambridge, MA. This work allowed her to provide school reform support across the United States. In addition, Dr. Mendham served as a Field Supervisor for student teachers at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) and has provided consultant support to various ISD’s throughout the state of Michigan as well as local districts. Dr. Mendham has presented extensively throughout the state and has been honored to serve as a keynote speaker for her colleagues based on her doctoral research in the field of technology and early childhood. She was honored by her alma mater in April 2018 as GVSU’s Outstanding Alumni Leader.
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New Development Items Approved - Phase 8 -
The MiDataHub Advisory Committee has approved a new batch of development items that will increase the functionality of MiDataHub. Collectively, those items will make up the 8th development phase over the 5 years of the project. The items are summarized below:
- MiDataHub - One Statewide "HUB" - Currently the data for each hub is stored on servers in its own region. This work will consolidate the data to one data store that will be replicated for fault tolerance. Each hub will still serve as a portal to that data, but a district will be able to access via any hub in case one of the hub regions is offline for any reason.
- Implement Ed-Fi ODS/API From Current Version to v2.3 - MiDataHub relies on the Ed-Fi Alliance data model for its work. A new version, v2.3, is available. This will update the data hub and allow us to work with vendors on getting to the new version. This is a short-term step to version 3.0, which will be more involved.
- Renaissance Learning / STAR Assessments CSV integration - For MiRead and other uses, we’ve identified that the Renaissance Learning assessments would be valuable. Since there is not yet an Ed-Fi API to load that data, we are taking the short-term step of loading that data as we have for other assessments like DIBELS and AimsWebPlus.
- SWIS CSV Integration - An integration for SWIS is one of the most commonly requested connections. Since the SWIS team is not yet ready to send back discipline referral data via API, we will be working to read in their CSV format. This will be immediately beneficial for the dashboards and Early Warning System.
- OneRoster API Assessment 'Write' Capability - Our initial read-only implementation of OneRoster is taking off rapidly. We have now had a few assessment vendors ask about the ability to write data back via OneRoster API, so this item will address that need.
- UserName/LoginId Management (ability to schedule creation of student.loginId field, assumes uniqueness only within district) - One of the items most requested by system vendors is to get a student login from the data hubs. This will allow for each integrated product to have its own login id, managed by district users setting up rules for login id creation. Utilities such as AD integrations will benefit from this.
- Display API and Inbound Integration Statistics - We currently have no convenient way for districts to monitor how often their data is used via API. This will add the capability to get statistics to see how much their data is being read from or written to by a connected system.
- Skeleton for Integration Statistics and Dashboard (assumes DataHub staff carrying out dashboard development) - Currently we maintain a spreadsheet of the status of all districts. This will create the basis to replicate that work in a PowerBI dashboard, allowing for getting a variety of statistics in convenient interface. Once the skeleton is created by our developers, it is expected that MiDataHub staff will be able to tailor the dashboard to our needs.
- At-A-Glance Report Enhancements - The At-A-Glance report is in need of more information for things such as discipline, grades, and to differentiate between daily and period attendance. It also is in need of an “as of” date to allow the report to be beneficial during periods when students are not enrolled. During the summer, the report is often blank or showing very few students due to exit dates.
- Dashboard Testing - We have often encountered inconsistencies in the way the Ed-Fi dashboards are showing the data that is housed in the district database. This would provide for testing for 5 districts, one each from our 5 main integrated SISs. That will allow us to work out any SIS specific issues and to ensure the dashboards are providing the best data possible.
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Support Needs -
For the first time we are experiencing a high volume of questions and support calls at back to school time. This is a sign that districts are beginning to rely on data hub integrations and processes. When seeking assistance, we ask that you email us at
support@midatahub.org
. Please include the following in your email:
- Name and email (usually not an issue for emailed tickets)
- District name
- Issue Details
- Phone Number
The district name and phone number are especially helpful in allowing us to expedite resolution of tickets. We can usually guess the district from an email address, but sometimes it takes a bit of work.
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MiDataHub Retreat -
MiDataHub is holding it's first strategic planning retreat September 26th and 27th. For those across the state on the Actionable Data Advisory, Data Integration Advisory, and Operations Work groups, please check your email for details. This strategic planning session will be geared towards identifying ways to improve our capacity to support the integration work we provide for all districts in Michigan.
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Data Hub Participation Counts -
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