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.

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.

openSIS Preps for Release of Moodle Integration

Last week, I previewed the final beta of the openSIS Moodle integration and my first reaction was "Wow, that is really cool!" I have seen some other SIS systems integration, which typically amounts to an automated user login and then the display of the Moodle application, typically in an iFrame.  To me, this does not really represent integration, which I define as a robust exchange of data and functionality between two different applications.  So what does "integration" really mean for openSIS and Moodle?  Let's review:

openSIS ==> Moodle

• User Integration - When you create new users, teachers, staff, etc., in openSIS, these users are automatically created inside of Moodle.
• Students Integration - When you create new students, they are automatically created inside of Moodle.
• Courses - Courses created in openSIS are automatically created in Moodle.
• Course Periods/Sections - Like courses, individual course period/sections and the enrolled students are all automatically created in Moodle.

Moodle ==> openSIS

• Assignments - Once created inside of Moodle, assignments are created in openSIS grade book
• Quizzes - Just like assignments, quizzes are automatically created in the openSIS grade book
• Tests - Just like assignments and quizzes, tests are automatically created in the openSIS grade book
• Grades - Grades given in Moodle automatically transfer to the openSIS grade book for the given assignment.  

Other benefits include the ability to:

• manually create users and students in Moodle,
• include Moodle grades in final grade calculations or 
• exclude Moodle grades from final grade calculations.

It is really amazing to see it happen in real time and know that openSIS is the only SIS company that has truly integrated with Moodle providing bi-directional data exchange and deep functionality truly making it easy to deploy and effectively use Moodle in conjunction with openSIS.  The integration has a key benefit of making the teacher's tasks easier and less time-consuming enabling them to spend more time doing the important things, teaching that is.

Are you a Moodle hosting client?  This next piece will be interesting to you.  Final testing is being done now to ensure performance across a wide area network with integrated versions of openSIS and Moodle.  What does this mean for you as a Moodle hosted customer?  You can install and use openSIS locally while integrating to a remote hosted Moodle instance.  How much easier can it get?

openSIS is on the move and continues to add functionality further enhancing the solution and offering real usability for a very low cost.  It has been exciting to watch the growth of this dream and even more exciting to think of what the future holds for openSIS and OS4Ed.  Stay tuned to the openSIS website as we release some videos in the next couple of weeks showing it in action.

openSIS on the Move

openSIS has just deployed it's first 1 click state reporting module here in the US. One state down and three to go for this school year. Now users in the state of New Hampshire can, with only one click, generate all of the required CSV files for state reporting. This is really exciting news for this open source SIS solution that just keeps getting better and better.

Other development news includes the scheduled release of a beta Moodle integration by Thanksgiving 2010. Bob Ghosh, OS4Ed co-founder, is personally overseeing the development and is confident the final integration will be released in January 2011. Schools and districts entering their budget cycles for the next school year should have time to download and evaluate the openSIS solution to determine if it fits their needs and can be a replacement for more costly solutions.

openSIS is growing recently signing a Vermont school district, St Vincents and Grenadines and multiple other independent schools and colleges. Many of these clients are using the new cloud offering where clients can purchase a hosted solution online and have a production instance deployed for use in minutes.

Congratualtions to the community of clients and the hard work by the folks at OS4Ed for making all of this a reality and a great product. Cheers!

openSIS #2 on Eduforge

Check us out and help make us #1! https://eduforge.org/project/stats/?group_id=298 With version 4.6 we continue the march towards alternative SIS based on free and open software and standards. Join the cause and help us create a thriving community!

openSIS 4.6 Available for Download

Open Solutions for Education (OS4Ed) has released version 4.6 of the open source student information system, openSIS. Version 4.6 completes the full migration to a MySQL database, numerous fixes and several new features that continue to establish openSIS as the leader in open source student information systems for the K-12 and high ed markets.

For full information on the release notes, click here.

openSIS is designed to meet the needs of small and medium school districts using free and open software. Full support options are offered in variety of levels to fit the budget of every school or district. The openSIS community is growing every day and one can find answers and community support at the openSIS forums.

Check out this great offering that is free to download and use and requires no commercial software.

Six Technologies

eSchoolNews has an article reviewing a report on 6 new technologies to watch for in education. The technologies seem to be a collection of some of the latest industry buzzwords: online collaboration, the personal web, collaborative environments, mobile devices, cloud computing, etc. While the article offers Relevance for Teaching, Learning, or Creative Expression as a sub topic to each technology, the content seems to elicit a "so what" reaction from me.

I still think that we have not figured out the true power of technology that leads to individual education plans and differentiated instruction. The report correctly states that all students learn differently and the real power of technology has yet to be realized in helping tailor education to individuals learning abilities and styles.

Different abilities, different learning speeds, different learning styles are all pieces of what makes education an amazingly interesting, infuriating and challenging field that most people simply don't understand.

Life with the Thin Client

Week one into my test with a thin client. From a work perspective, I can easily accomplish all of my tasks in this operating scenario. We have had a few hiccups here and there, but for the most part running M$FT applications on a Debian thin client has been very painless. I am using all of the M$FT Office 2007 applications including Project and Visio. For my test, I am using all of the big three web browsers and a couple of open source applications, namely a Jabber server client and an app called ColorPick. My only annoyance is ColorPick as I cannot figure out to shut it off with a keyboard shortcut. But I will get that resolved in the next few days.

So, at this point, I am very content with the pilot. I have also been using the thin client software from home across a VPN on my wireless network. The performance is almost exactly what is on the corporate network and all of my applications work flawlessly. As this is my first experience using thin clients,I am surprised at how well it works. I can't imagine why many companies wouldn't take this approach, especially those that deal with sensitive data. The security of a thin client and the ability to lock it down at the server level are very appealing.

All in all, a very satisfying experience and with the growing presence of available broadband, I ma quite content moving forward computing in the cloud.

Metrics of Open Source Success

Dana Blankenhorn and Paula Rooney's blog at ZDNet has a posting today about the metrics of success for open source. It succinctly describes why many of us pursue open source solutions and being providers of open source applications to needy industries. That is why I started Open Solutions for Education, to serve an education community that is under many different pressures.

Most of us chasing this path will never be rich and many of us write our own personal checks to get our business started, keep it floating and many times to avoid shutting the doors completely. While open source is a great movement, the reality is that products quickly become complex and require an organization to provide long term support to ensure that the market penetration occurs where widespread benefits can be realized.

So the next time you download that "free" application, consider that someone has likely spent thousands of dollars and thousands of hours getting that product to a point where you can use it. So give back to the originators. Click on their Google ads, donate some money, send them some code, help them get some customers, etc. It is all about community and if you truly like the product and consider yourself to be a community member, then contribute! Altruism and philanthropy are noble pursuits.

Walking the Talk on Thin Clients

This week sees the beginning of my one month pilot to completely use a thin client in a pilot project for my company. The thin client software comes from an education thin client provider in Georiga, ACS, and is very affordable. For the cost of the client software and a decent thin client, Aleutia as an example, I can compute for under $500 at the desktop running Linux and using M$FT Windows applications off of the server.

My current setup includes a 4 year old Dell laptop, Ubuntu 8.10 and the IDS native Linux client. My server profile includes all of the M$FT Office 2007 suite, IE 7.0, Firefox 3.04, Pandion Instant Messaging, Adobe, etc. The pilot server is an old Dell desktop that is about 4 years old as well. It is all running on a 10/100 network and streaming audio and video are not considered.

So far so good. I will keep updates coming as I go through the test. With this approach, schools could literally use computers until they completely failed while still allowing the students and staff to use the latest and greatest SW. There is a huge cost savings aside from the initial HW purchase in that the thin client SW only sends outputs from different devices and then recombines them onto the client. Thus, you do not have to have a M$FT client access license and you can "share" applications in the sense that 2,000 users could use only 500 licenses for M$FT Office. Pretty cool stuff.

More updates to come.

openSIS Version 4.2 Released

My little startup, OS4ed, released our latest version of our open source SIS, openSIS, on November 12th. You can read about it here. This release marks a real milestone for us as we are confident that we have a very stable version out there that is ready for schools to depend upon day in and day out. It also marks our commitment to the community in that it is now deployed at Eduforge.org and no registration is required for download.

We hope to continue providing new functionality and new solutions in the coming years that will serve education. Take a look and join the community. Also please send us suggestions for improvements and we will do our best to get them into the product. Thanks for the continued support.

Computing in the Cloud or is Google Apps Ready for Prime Time?

Chris Dawson at ZDNet had a recent post on the thought that he might switch his users over to Google Apps. His basic question was: Is there anything teachers or students need that Google Apps can’t do? I think a better question would be: Is there anything we do that is too complicated for Google Apps or Open Office or Star Office?

I am a member of the camp that thinks the majority of us can easily replicate our current functions and daily activities inside a number of free offerings available today that have longevity, maturity and good support. The real obstacle in many organizations is resistance to change and a desire to stay in a current comfort zone. Granted this is an oversimplification, but in many cases it is very true.

At the core, I don't really think that the average user uses any advanced features in the M$FT Office Suite. And at the end of the day, we could all stand to be without whiz bang PPT slide shows with the latest SmartArt features and animations. So as I evangelize open source in my organization and to my clients, I ask them to explain to me what they do that is so complicated? Often times, they simply can't answer as they haven't really thought about it.

TCO is an important point that people always talk about it. Paul Murphy (pseudonym) had a post today about recession favoring open source and gave an example business case of TCO savings. It has some very good points in it about how small business might be more willing to look to open source as all costs have to be examined.

So, how complicated are your Office documents?

School Improvement - A Tough Road

I was speaking with a professor form LSU recently about efforts to reform schools where students were not making advancement.  We both agreed that the institution of education in America is essentialy broken in many ways.  And while our disucssion was great and heartfelt, I came away from it with no real new ideas about how to fix a broken bureaucratic institution.  There are so many obstacles that I surrender to defeat very time I think about ways that can be adopted to achieve widespread school improvement.

The key element in every idea that I have is people.  Good qualified people who are willing to be held accountable for providing a safe, nurturing learning environment where students can succeed and realize their potential.  How do you get great people to work for miserable pay levels often times in very poor conditions inside of a seemingly backwards bureaucratic institution?  I have no clue.  I only know that it is not working.

I don't think that anyone can argue that our best natural resource in this country is our people.  And right now, we are not investing in our children who will very soon become the next generation of our best natural resource.  I read news stories every day of children who can't read, teachers engaging in social promotion and school leaders cheating and falsifying data to meet NCLB requirements.  When does all of this madness stop?

The Cost of Registration

Somebody commented on one of my blogs today that having to register for free SW applications and solutions was not open and it was just plain wrong.  Why?  In registration, you are asked to provide some information.  Why?  So the people who are working hard to GIVE you your free application can communicate with you, can get feedback and can inform of you new developments.

And at the end of the day, what is the cost of that reservation?  And what did you gain from that registration?  In many cases, open solutions result in fairly significant cost savings or allow you to get something you may not have been able to afford.  What are those savings?  What is the ROI on the newly gained functionality?  What price can you place on the free and open solution?  

A registration process in many cases.  Small price to pay.

Last question:  When is the last time that you, avid user of free software, gave back to the creators in some way?  Giveback takes many forms and often can be as simple as a thank you email.  Most of us are in this because we have a dream that we are following.  And you have nothing if you don't have dreams.

LinkedIn - Discovering the Value of Community

Like many people, I have a profile on Linkedin.com and I have a few recommendations.  I didn't full understand LinkedIN and the potential it had for me until I learned about the groups.  LinkedIN groups offer individuals the ability to join a larger body of people interested in the same subjects as you.  You can start discussion in your groups, email members, etc.  

It is really the discussions that interest me most as I have the ability to introduce a topic and get a ton of community feedback.  Feedback from both business and potential clients that gives me better insight into the market from both sides.  My first discussion post resulted in over 30 thoughtful replies and the feedback and knowledge gained will certainly enter my business and strategy.

I highly recommend joining some groups on LinkedIn and creating your own.  I have joined the Internation Society for Technology in Eduation (ISTE), Technology in Education,  K12 Tech and EdNet.   Obviously some groups are better than others and you willrealize that as you start to participate.

Another great feature of LinkedIn is the abiity to ask questions of the general population and get answers.  It is very simply getting free help and consulting, often time from experts.  Great stuff.  Check it out.

openSIS Arrives

Open Solutions for Education (OS4Ed) has released their new open source SIS, openSIS. This release abandons the inclusion of Centre in the name and marks the end of their relationship with the Miller Group, who was an original partner in OS4Ed.

This release brings AJAX into the interface with sliding menus and fast page load times. Other important features include field level validation and the removal of HTMLDoc, which required specific settings for different OS's. openSIS also includes an automated installer for Windows, which is very nice and helps the beginning user to get up and running quickly.

You can check it out at http://os4ed.com/opensis

Open Source has to be Easy

I was reading Chris Dawson's education blog on ZDNet as I do often. he had a recent post about Linux and meeting all of one's needs. This is very true and more than anything adds credence to my title. In order for any us to get people to switch to open source alternatives, we have to make it very easy. Much like Apple computers, it just has to simply work.

At OS4Ed, we are doing our best to emulate this practice. That is the reason we created an automated installation process so that non technical users could easily try our software. Eliminating upfront license fees, lowering total cost of ownership, 100% web-based, built on all free open source software doesn't mean anything if it is not easy.

How do we successfully move people over to open source? Make it so easy and so affordable that the decision is no brainer.

Intel Classmate PC - China, but not the US?

Intel has announced the release of its second generation Classmate PC at an event in China. We have closing schools, declining budgets and a well known gap between students and available technology in schools, yet our companies are selling low cost PC's everywhere else. Why isn't there a stronger push to get these low cost PC's into US schools? My guess is that profit is a motive.

But in the long run, the more students get exposed to technology, the more they become technology enthusiasts creating lifetime clients for the industry as well as future employees. M$FT is smart about this selling their software to education for next to nothing in many cases, thereby creating lifelong users at an early age.

Education has to push industry and ask for these things. Come on educators, you are smarter than this! Control your vendors, not vice versa.

Catholic Schools Closing at a Record Rate

A recent EdWeek article talks about the crisis facing Catholic schools and the closing of 1,300 schools since 1990. Budget issues are cited and I truly think that open source can play a major factor in all education as a way to replace costly commercial software that continues to eat away at instructional budgets. Where education is often a laggard in technology, this is an area where they need to be a leader and show others that open source alternatives are viable and force change among the traditional software vendors.

Education, stand up and flex your muscles! In many cities, you are often the largest employer with the largest budgets. You have the ability to enact change in the software market. You also have the ability to be leaders in helping open source companies like mine develop true alternatives to costly proprietary systems. Step up to the plate and help us give money back and sustain small faith based and independent schools that are doing great jobs in educating our children.

Open Solutions for Education

In the time since I left IBM, I have joined and invested in a small startup called Open Solutions for Education or OS4ED. ( http://os4ed.com) The mission of our little philanthropic venture is to produce quality open source alternatives to costly K-12 administrative software. The business model is like most open source models: Give it away for free and make your living from fees for maintenance services, training, customizations, etc.

Yesterday we released our new SIS, openCentre, and opened the demo site. I encourage you all to visit and try it out. The demo is located at http://demo.os4ed.com. You can log in using these credentials:

Administrator - User Name = admin, password=admin
Teacher - User Name=teacher, password=teacher
Parent - User Name=parent, password=parent

We also have an alpha version data warehouse and are set to release an add-on module for critical communications called EasyCom. We are excited about our efforts and hope you find our SW fits your needs. Enjoy!