Saturday, February 12, 2011

Who is Engrade Anyway?

Recently, I heard a story about a school that wanted to use openSIS for their grade book. And why not? The openSIS solution has a really good grade book in addition to all of the other great features found in the solution. But instead, they chose to use an online solution called Engrade. That's OK, people choose different solutions for different reasons, but I thought I would check out Engrade myself so over to their website I went.

The site has an About link and here is what it says:

"Engrade, based in San Diego, California, was founded in 2003 by a great team of successful internet entrepreneurs who wanted to use their talents to help the world. Over the years, Engrade has grown by leaps and bounds, being adopted by teachers and schools in all 50 states and in countries across the world. Today Engrade has more than 1,500,000 members. We're very proud to do our part to help educators improve the lives of students around the world.

Our service is truly free and will remain free. We are able to offer Engrade free of charge because we have been fortunate in past businesses, allowing us to volunteer our talents and to pay for expenses out of our own pockets. In the future we may add optional premium services (for example, a service to send student transcripts to colleges) to help pay for costs, but we'll always keep the main features free.

Many teachers ask us if their information will stay private and secure on our service, and we can assure you that it will. We take our users privacy very seriously. Take a look at our privacy and security help pages below."

These guys were really fortunate to provide this great service for free forever. Right..... No such thing as a free lunch right? So I did take a look below at the links, the Terms of Service first because that is where it always gets interesting and the rubber meets the road so to speak. Now we begin to find out what Engrade really is promising and guaranteeing you. Here are some nice excerpts:

"7. Your use of the Services is at your sole risk and the Services are provided "as is" and as available. Engrade disclaims all warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including, but not limited to the implied warranties and conditions of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Engrade does not represent or warrant that the Services will meet your requirements or that the Services will be uninterrupted, timely, or free from error."

Well, free is free and you can't expect it to be available at a 99.99% SLA right?

You will really like this next section:

"8. You understand and agree that Engrade, its owners, subsidiaries, directors, employees, attorneys, affiliates, and licensors will not be liable to you for:

8.a. any direct, indirect, incidental, special consequential or exemplary damages which may be incurred by you, however caused and under any theory of liability. This shall include but not be limited to any loss of profit (whether incurred directly or indirectly), any loss of goodwill or reputation, any loss of data, cost to procure of substitute goods or services, or other intangible loss;

8.b. any loss or damage that may be incurred by you as a result of: any changes that Engrade may make to the Services; any permanent or temporary cessation in the provision of the Services or any features of the Services); the deletion of, corruption of, or failure to store, any content and other communications data maintained or transmitted by or through your use of the Services; or your failure to keep your password or account details secure and confidential."

So in addition to no guarantees on the guaranteed free forever service, now there are no guarantees on your data, your goodwill and all the time you invested building your grade books and entering your data. they can shut down tomorrow and you have NO RECOURSE.

I love this one too:


10. Engrade reserves the right to stop providing the Services to you at any time for any reason without prior notice.

The great fortunate Internet entrepreneurs who promised you this free service forever are reserving the right to pull the plug without even telling you before they do. Seems to contradict all their other grand talk about sharing the fortune with you doesn't it?

How about their FERPA compliance?

All student data on Engrade is stored privately and securely on our servers. Engrade will never release any student data to any third parties. Engrade complies with paragraph (b)(1)(F) of the US Family Educational Right to Privacy Act (FERPA), allowing schools to share data with:

organizations conducting studies for, or on behalf of, educational agencies or institutions for the purpose of developing, validating, or administering predictive tests, administering student aid programs, and improving instruction, if such studies are conducted in such a manner as will not permit the personal identification of students and their parents by persons other than representatives of such organizations and such information will be destroyed when no longer needed for the purpose for which it is conducted;

Engrade is probably using you and your data for research, probably to serve up ads to pay for this service they are providing to you free forever because they were so fortunate.

Does it seem strange at all that you cannot find any information on who is behind Engrade? WhoIs their domain name and you get no information. There is no usable information on their web site and support is simply a wiki of help information. No Contact Us links, no About Us links, only a free forever service whose terms of service say they do not have to provide it free forever.

Who are these guys and should you trust your data to them? Not me. Sometimes free is not so good.

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

openSIS 4.8 Released

Just wanted to pass along that Open Solutions for Education (OS4Ed) has just announced the release of openSIS 4.8. This keeps in line with their goal of quarterly product updates. Here are some notes on the release from the website:

New Features

  • Secondary teacher added to course periods. Now you can have a substitute teacher perform all functions of the main teacher.
  • School, Subject and Course Period filtration has been added to Teacher login. Now it will be easier for a teacher who is teaching. several classes in to be able to find the right class.
  • Improved pagination has been added. Now you can select a few students in one page, skip to another page and select some. more students and both you selections will be there.
  • Student name will now take apostrophe.
  • Teachers can now access the course manager.
  • Pagination has been added to User list and also "back to list" function.
  • System preference settings created to manage preferences.
  • Ability to put openSIS in maintenance mode.
  • Student advanced search options added.
  • Several security features and validations added.

Defects Fixed

  • Visible Between dates are auto initialize in new portal notes if we do not set Visible Between date.
  • All field of new Add User were filled with '1'.
  • Students showing up as inactive when their status is shown but also displayed in an active student list.
  • Course Creation with blank spaces in title accepted the creation of course.
  • Attendance report showed all schools.
  • Student Info record print did not show dates from medical records.
openSIS continues to flourish and thrive and is a serious contender to replace existing proprietary SIS solutions from commercial vendors. OS4Ed offers a cloud-based version that can be setup in a matter of minutes. Take some time and check out the openSIS solution at http://opensis.com.