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August 19, 2009 May 27, 2009 May 13, 2009 April 29, 2009 April 15, 2009 April 1, 2009 March 18, 2009 March 4, 2009
Zangle goes live!
Zangle is now the operating Student Information System for Davis Joint Unified School District, with SASI fading into memory for those staff currently enrolling and developing schedules for our students. SASI will still be used by IT staff for accessing historical records, but the new information demands on the district will be managed by the new SIS.
Teacher training dates
As teachers return to school August 24, they will be greeted with a scheduled training to be provided by their site Power Teachers, colleagues prepared to assist them with the use of the Zangle web-based TeacherConnection and Gradebook applications. Trainings will take place either 8/24 or 25, depending on site scheduling needs.
Elementary site teachers will receive mandatory training in the use of TeacherConnection only. Software improvements are in the works for the Gradebook, so training in this application has been delayed until it is ready for prime time. That said, elementary teachers are welcome to experiment with the gradebook as it exists today (it will work, it's just not as user-friendly as we want it to be), but formal training will take place at a later date. You have class lists available to you in Gradebook, but admin staff requests you keep your lists confidential until the site announces student classroom assignments.
Secondary site teachers will also receive training in TeacherConnection, and there will also be an optional training in the Gradebook application. The Gradebook for secondary is ready for use. You have class lists available to you in Gradebook, but admin staff requests you keep your lists confidential until students have their schedules.
TeacherConnection portal opened
Teachers can access Zangle TeacherConnection at http://zangle.sis.djusd.net
Log in with your normal Windows ID and password. To get a sneak preview of your 8/24 or 8/25 trainings, view the videos prepared for you HERE.
Training continues
Training in Zangle Front Office continues for administrative and support staff. Applications training serving enrollment, site scheduling, and state reporting has been brought to us by employees of C-Innovation, with staff from around the district in attendance.
Configuration continues
Data conversion, creation of the standards-based report card for elementary, and custom configuration of Zangle for DJUSD is the ongoing work of the DJUSD Zangle Team, hand-in-hand with C-Innovation.
August 2009 teacher training details
While Power Teachers, those who have offered their services to train and support their colleagues, will be trained in June with follow-up refresher prior to the start of school in August, the balance of teachers, librarians, and other site-based instructional staff will receive their training during the two days prior to the start of the school year. The exact time for the training session will be determined by site administration and site teacher trainers. The one-hour mandatory training will cover logging in procedures for the web-based system, attendance-taking and use of the student information application. A few minutes will also be devoted to a brief introduction to the Zangle gradebook. For those teachers interested in using Zangle gradebook, another optional one-hour training will be offered at some point in the course of the two work days for those teachers wishing to begin use of the gradebook immediately, schedule to be determined by each site.
Training in elementary & secondary scheduling under way
Clerical and administrative staff have been attending trainings held at the District Office Training Center and North Davis Elementary computer lab in preparation for enrollment and scheduling of students for the 2009-2010 school year.
Critically important to attend trainings
Between now and full Zangle "go-live" on July 1st, many, many people who are critical to the functioning of DJUSD will be trained in their responsibility area in Zangle as SASI is prepared for retirement. It is critically important that you attend the trainings scheduled for your specialty area, and remain for the entire period of the training. Trainings are designed to be maximally efficient. Due to contract constraints with C-Innovation (from whom we purchased Zangle), we can only train people within their immediate responsibility area, so there is minimal cross-training. If you miss your scheduled trainings or portions thereof, you cannot be cleared to use the new system and your site will be without significant capability. Also, as we are a very small IT staff, makeup opportunities will be minimal or nonexistent, and you will need to wait for newcomer trainings if you miss all or part of your scheduled training. [Teacher training is discussed HERE]
JC moving on to new ventures, and the search for a new network administrator
We in Technology are exceedingly conflicted over the news that our most excellent network administrator, JC Leckliter, is moving to St. Louis as his wife assumes an exciting new position for a corporation there. We are happy for him and his family (except for the humidity), but we realize a significant loss, both for his talents and for his contribution to the IT team, his other family who will miss him extremely. His shoes will be a challenge to fill, and the search is already underway. Meanwhile, a remotely-connected JC and Bob Kehr will team up to maintain the network.
Zangle is running on the new server!
DJUSD student data is currently being moved into the Zangle software environment and the database is running on the new server. Now, as trainings and demonstrations of the software are given, Zangle is running in the Davis environment using copies of demonstration data resident on DJUSD servers.
IT Trainings and setup continue
C-Innovation personnel are continuing to visit Davis IT to conduct technical training of IT personnel and conduct data conversion processes as data is moved from SASI into Zangle. Site Power Users will be attending trainings in coming weeks to learn Zangle enrollment procedures as we prepare for the 2009-2010 academic year.
Specialist trainings continue
Specialist trainings continue with trainers from
C-Innovation as DJUSD continues its implementation process. Front Office applications in Mark Reporting,
Attendance, and Academic History have been the focus in recent days. Area specialists from sites across the
district have attended these sessions to bring the Zangle system to a high
degree of readiness once DJUSD officially begins doing business in Zangle,
retiring SASI.
What’s happening to SASI and IGPro?
SASI is the current software application the district uses to manage most aspects of student information, and was a product sold to many school districts by Pearson Publishing. Since Pearson announced in 2007 that SASI had reached its “end-of –life,” districts had to decide how they were going to continue managing that information. With the rapidly escalating complexity of California state data reporting requirements, SASI districts have had to replace this system with a different product. DJUSD replaced SASI with Zangle, and as of July 1, 2009, SASI will cease to be the system our district uses from day-to-day to manage our complex student information demands. SASI will continue to be used by district IT personnel for accessing archived data, but all day-to-day information will be managed in Zangle.
IGPro, also sold to DJUSD by Pearson Publishing, is the
gradebook product used by DJUSD to articulate with SASI. While some staff have used IGPro as a
stand-alone gradebook, the reason this specific product was adopted for
secondary teachers was for its seamless reporting of grades into SASI through the
network, with class lists being updated automatically in teacher
gradebooks from SASI. It was a separate
application from SASI, but it worked well with it. Once SASI ceases to be the SIS for DJUSD,
IGPro will have no role in secondary grade-keeping and reporting, thus it will
no longer be used by district secondary teachers. It will not have the ability to report grades
into Zangle, and Zangle will not maintain class lists in IGPro. Zangle includes a gradebook as part of its
web-based TeacherConnection application, and is part of the Zangle software
product itself. Along with training in
taking attendance (as SASI/Class XP goes away), training in the new Zangle
gradebook will be provided as teachers need it.
“Just-in-time” training
If you’ve been following ZangleNewz, you been hearing a lot about training, and the current calendar is replete with examples of ongoing training events for Zangle. You may also find yourself becoming concerned that you have not experienced any of these training events! A quick word for you: You have not been forgotten. Current “specialist trainings” are somewhat misnamed. These sessions are an interactive process between C-Innovation (the company who created and maintains Zangle) and DJUSD staff who are representative of various job specialties. In this issue of ZangleNewz you read of three areas in which those “trainings” recently occurred. This “training” did not include all staff providing those functions, but only representative staff from sites across the districts who contributed their knowledge to make necessary decisions and provide input to the Zangle setup process. These “trainings” obviously include participants acquiring some facility in the software, but it is not their official training. Later, all SIS users will receive what is called “end-user training,” and they will receive it just prior to it being used on the job. For instance, teachers will receive training in the web-based TeacherConnect application within two days of their actually using it in the classroom. District clerical staff will receive their training sooner because they will be working in Zangle sooner.
If you find you still have concerns regarding your training in Zangle, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
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Data - Data - Data
Data conversion is well underway, with DJUSD student data now appearing and functioning within the new Zangle SIS environment. District clerical staff continue cleaning data with the clear goal of full functionality and usefulness by the Zangle go-live date of July 1.
New Server
The new Dell SQL server is up and running, with setup by Dell engineers in its final stages. The new server will run the SQL database on which Zangle depends, with the Zangle Front Office and ZangleWeb applications accessing the data from the new server.
Training
Subject-area specialist trainings continue for counselors and other staff. Administrators attended a Zangle informational meeting on March 24 to get the scoop on details of the rollout as it will be impacting sites over the summer and at the beginning of the 2009-2010 academic year.
Software setup
Zangle software, both the server-based and web-based applications have been successfully installed onto district office test servers. Technology is using this initial installation as a training "sandbox" for system testing and familiarization for staff during meetings with specialists (see below).
Installation of the new Dell server
The new Dell server which will eventually be the home of the final Zangle installation has arrived and is awaiting setup services from Dell before it can be put to work.
Beginning phases of data conversion begin at CI
C-Innovation is conducting the data conversion from SASI into Zangle at their offices in Irvine, CA. Once this process is complete, district student and staff data will be maintained in both information systems as data checking and scheduling is carried out in Zangle for Fall of Academic Year 2009-2010. By the time the July 1 "go live" date is reached, Zangle should already be serving DJUSD well.
Ongoing meetings with district area specialists
DJUSD specialists representing EL, Special Education, Health and Teacher applications have met with Zangle trainers over the past two weeks to help us inform the customization, implementation, and coming training process. Meetings in other specialty areas begin again next week in Attendance.
The new Zangle training calendar!
If you visit the Zangle Training Page you will see Zangle events posted as they become scheduled. This calendar will track all training and implementation events as the Zangle implementation unfolds, currently showing all training events through July, 2009.
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Data Conversion and Implementation
DJUSD Technology Staff is in the process of being trained while the Zangle system itself is being trained. Data is gradually being adapted and moved from SASI, our current Student Information System (SIS), into the Zangle environment. So that the district can continue to function, for a period of several months data will be entered into both systems, and once the Zangle implementation and testing is complete, Zangle will "go live" as the district information backbone by July 1, 2009.
Power Users, those district employees contributing to the adaptation of Zangle to DJUSD business practices and needs, are currently working with Zangle trainers to develop training materials for end users, and will continue this process through June, 2009.
Training
Staff training in Zangle is based on a Just in Time training model, in which each group of users receives training immediately prior to that group's actual use of the system. Those who are involved in initial implementation are trained as they work with adapting Zangle systems to the DJUSD environment. For example, staff involved in enrolling students for Academic Year 2009-2010 in the spring will receive their training just before enrollment begins. Power Teachers, those who have volunteered to provide training and support at their respective sites, will receive their initial training June 17th, with refresher time provided August 21st. Teachers, who will be using the web-based TeacherConnection, will receive their training immediately prior to school opening on the contract work-days before school opens.
Calendar: A training calendar will be established on this website for all staff to track their appointments for training and to schedule make-ups when necessary. Watch for the announcement of the web-based calendar go-live in the next ZangleNewz.
Sandbox: Once the necessary servers are installed at the district office and software configured, training websites and localhost versions of Zangle software will be made available to district end-users of the system for training and practice. The completion of these processes is set for the beginning of June before the initial Train the Trainer sessions take place.
