Last year, we saw momentum build for open data in education with the launch of data startups LearnSprout and Clever, the creation of the non-profit Shared Learning Collaborative and the release of more government education datasets. But New York-based Schoology wants to step on the gas and is putting up $250,000 to do it.
On Tuesday, the company, which provides a cloud-based learning management system and social network for schools, said that it was…
This is a very positive development for the ed-reform movement, but it strikes me as about as likely to succeed as a bank robber paying SunTrust to allow him to tunnel into the their safe. Sure they get $25K now, but they may find that down the road, people use the bank less often. SIS vendors have built nearly impenetrable walls around their systems, leveraging the fear and paranoia associated with issues such as student privacy and data security, because that allows them to continue extracting rents from their captive users, without having to innovate. Nimble start-ups like Clever, Learnsprout and others are creating ways to circumvent the stranglehold the SIS vendors have had on school districts, and it's refreshing to learn that a Goliath like Pearson is willing to give a slingshot to a David, like Schoology. Fire away!
I was surprised to learn of the write-back capability. Doesn’t this effectively reduce PowerSchool to a simple database used by a small group of administrators? If I’m reading this right, schools could potentially now use whatever gradebook and parent portal they prefer. It’s hard to believe, but encouraging to see that Pearson might be willing to forfeit the eyes and ears of all those millions of teachers, parents and students.
However, we should keep in mind that Pearson is not giving access away. Vendors must typically pay to play by joining Pearson’s ISV program: http://powerschool.com/partners/current/
One advantage to LearnSprout is that it’s not limited to what is provided by the SIS developer (typically the provided API, FTP Autosend or what can be scraped off a web page). LearnSprout establishes a direct database connection and is able to access ALL data within the SIS.