People in action with MUSAC

Here are a couple of case studies from one of our North Island Agents, Edtech. The first case study on Edtech's Financial Service division leveraging MUSAC's School Accounting software, the second case study about customisation and training to to ensure a school gets maximum return from it's SMS data and investment.

Sir Ken Robinson Comes to NZ

Massey University, through MUSAC, is proud to sponsor the Inspired Impact conference featuring Sir Ken Robinson to be held in Palmerston North 27-28 January 2011. Registrations are limited and are filling fast to what promises to be an inspiring two days which challenge the very fundamentals of teaching and learning. Check out the Inspired Impact conference website for more details on the conference and visit Sir Ken on Ted Talks http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html for a snippet of Sir Ken.

Thanks to Angela for this link:

MUSAC's latest Classic release

A new release has been mailed (Financial Manager customers) and posted on our website. Primarily this covers off GST changes, however, there are a heap of new features we've added in. Highlights:

• National Standards. Good luck to NZPF and NZEI with the battle they have with the Ministry regarding National Standards. As a back stop, MUSAC software is ready to capture and report National Standards data and has  the thumbs up from the Ministry. Note: Nothing in the software to send any information about National Standards to the Ministry.
• GST in MUSAC Accounts and Student Manager. Accounts and Student Manager were capable of handling the GST change. We've added a few extra peices to make it a little easier. Still recommend applying the update prior to 1 October.
• Automated Compact and Repair. As a preventative measure you can now set up a service to automatically do the housekeeping for your databases.
• NZSSSC updates.
• e-asTTle v5 approved by the MoE. Has been working for ages, but we've now got the official thumbs up.
• SMS-LMS v2.0 interoperability. This is in limited release with Dataview contacting new and current schools to organise migrations. Have discovered that our MyDataOnline 1.4 version had major issues with automated uploads - we had thought it was isolated. SMS-LMS v2.0 implementation has rewritten this and that issue has gone away.
• Automated error reporting. Should your system encounter an error, you can configure MUSAC to automatically let us know. We keep track of these and priortise the software faults and contact you if it is configurtation or environmental. Easy!
• Fixed a search error. Sometimes search pulled up seamlingly random students. Bizarre - but fixed.
• STOP PRESS: Quirky one with markbook speed in a few schools. Developers are on to it now.

Any problems getting the update installed, let us know.

Working on expanding the SMS-LMS interoperability beyond what any other vendor has done, course endorsements for NCEA (although NZQA have not finalised requirements, so it's touch and go), the changes for Roll Returns for 2011, further National Standards related updates (actually additional general assessment features) and a few more out-of-the-box features around NCEA.

What is MUSAC doing about GST changes?

There have been several queries coming through the support hotline (0800 600 159) in relation to the GST changes on 1 October 2010.  So what is MUSAC doing about GST changes?

We have tested that the new rate works and have added a couple of extra reports and tools to make the switch easier. MUSAC Agents have been offering seminars and newsletters talking through the processes associated with the changeover.

Before 1 October, it will be a smoother transition if:

• You talk with your accounting services provider about what information  is required for your GST return in relation to the changeover.
• Student Manager software is updated at school. Released by MUSAC for 10 September.
• Financial Manager software is updated at school. Released by MUSAC for 10 September and an update CD mailed out.
• Change the GST rates in the software after 1 October once you have completed September processing

We strongly recommend that you update the software, as we have added some tools for modifying billable items and a couple of extra reports  to make things a lot easier.

Your accounting services provider can work through the principles behind what is required for your GST returns around the transitional return relating to October. Whether you are invoice based or cash based for GST determines specific steps you need to work through. The software will print your GST report for you but there is more to it than the printing of a report. It is important you have everything covered off in advance of the big day. As you are likely to be using your student management system for a lot of caregiver invoicing, some extra care is needed with recognising this in your accounting package.

Edtech, Solutions & Services and New Era IT each have a Financial Manager helpdesk which you can call for more informed advice in relation to use of the software and have fee based consultancy services to work through specifics.

The software changes have been with our Agents for testing for a week or so now. Looking good so far.

New Faces at MUSAC

We have had a few new people join the MUSAC team over the last few months - some you have met already.

John Rotherham joins us as Service Delivery Manager, taking responsibility for the support and Development teams. John has extensive experience managing projects and software development teams having worked in banking, consulting and retail sectors. John also had some time working on Massey University's Moodle project prior to Christmas. John and his wife have two children – one intermediate and one primary level.

Milton Baxter started in early January, taking on the role of Agile Iteration Manager. Milton’s responsibility is to manage the workflow of the development team, ensuring impediments to progress are removed, priorities are understood and the software is completed in a timely manner. A lot of communication and negotiation. Milton’s background includes project and team management, development, testing and analysis largely in the retail sector of the petroleum industry. Milton and his partner have two pre-school children.

Peter Roberts joins MUSAC as our Product Manager and head of the product team. Peter's most recent roles have been that as a global service delivery manager, spanning multiple countries, cultures and time zones. Peter and his teams responsibility is to work with teachers, school managers, MUSAC Agents, practitioners, academics and other key stakeholders to shape MUSAC products and services. Peter's team includes those with hands-on teaching and school management experience as well as those with wider professional experience in design and business analysis. Peter and partner have one pre-school and two primary children.

National Standards in MUSAC Software

Been so busy here at MUSAC with all the new cool developments ... forgot to tell you about some of them! Today's lesson - National Standards.

Big political topic is National Standards. We're steering clear of the politics as best we can. Our job is to make it as easy as possible and to give schools the necessary flexibility, features and functions to meet the requirements in accordance with the individual schools plans and trying to avoid any political pot holes.

In April, MUSAC released an update (for our customer to grab off the downloads section of the MUSAC website) which contains the necessary data structures and functionality to capture national standards information across reading, writing and mathematics. This includes the capture of a comment or two. We've also included a number of report templates and an ability to set some rudimentary goals and progress against these - if this is useful to you.

In the usual MUSAC way, National Standard information can automatically be incorporated onto reports for parents (if you want to, because you do not have to report student progress against the standard to parents). We've also added a couple of handy little utilities (see the release notes) which help manage the process.

The contents of this release are referred to as "Work Package 1". We are now working on "Work Package 2" which will include some moderation tools, ensure we have full support across all the Ministry documented assessment tools (99% sure we have it already) and some additional functions to assist with slice and dicing for reporting against NAG 2a.

Like any assessment in MUSAC, longitudinal reporting against standards will be quite straight forward and we'll slip a few preconfigured templates in to get you started. Of course, one must record National Standard information for several years before this becomes useful.

All in all, not been too much of a drama for us - we do know that it is not so easy for you. Your job is much bigger and harder. Again, in the MUSAC way, our agents (Edtech, Solutions and Services and New Era IT) will be able to help out. Whether it be just to show you what's there or for some specific customisation you would like because of the special needs and nature of your school.

And what about MUSAC's new web product ... ditto for work package 1. Starting to get stuck into the list of Ministry assessments for work package 2 and by term 4 should have broken the back of it. Works a bit different to Classic.

Therein ends today's lesson in National Standards. With MUSAC, ready to go right now.

PRESS RELEASE: MUSAC expands sponsorship of SEO

As a sponsor and supporter of the SEO conference for around 17 years, MUSAC has decided to increase it's support of the SEO. "MUSAC software is the most widely used software package for school administration across New Zealand schools and it is great to be able to be able to reciprocate the support we've had from school executive officers' schools through sponsorship of SEO”.

School Executive Officers' have been long time supporters of MUSAC and our software and services, and while MUSAC has been a long time supporter of the conference it was felt the relationship between SEO and MUSAC was stronger than that.

As of 2010, MUSAC is now an official Silver Sponsor of SEO and will be in attendance at the annual SEO conference alongside a number of our business partners.

MUSAC is the most widely used brand of administrative software in New Zealand schools and provides an extensive suite of applications for the administration of all schools, including administration and management of assessment, timetabling, curriculum, attendance, library resources, finances and assets.

The software has been developed in consultation with senior school managers and educators to deliver the flexibility required by schools to access the information they need.

MUSAC is owned by, and based within Massey University's College of Education.

PRESS RELEASE: MUSAC renews long standing support of NZPF

MUSAC has renewed financial support of New Zealand Principals' Federation (NZPF), expanding a long standing sponsorship of the organisation.

As the leading provider of school and student administration software systems, we believe it is important to support those that support you. Principals have a challenging role in New Zealand society, so to be able to support them through financial sponsorship of their representative body is a real privilege.

MUSAC is the most widely used brand of administrative software in New Zealand schools and provides an extensive suite of applications for the administration of all schools, including administration and management of assessment, curriculum, attendance, library resources, finances and assets.

The software has been developed in consultation with senior school managers and educators to deliver the flexibility required by schools to access the information they need,

MUSAC is owned by, and based within Massey University's College of Education.

PRESS RELEASE: MUSAC signs New Era IT to service increased demand

MUSAC has signed New Era IT as an agent for the North Island region signalling the establishment of a strategic business partnership that will initially provide  consultation, hosting, training and support services across the MUSAC Classic product suite.

MUSAC managing director Dr Jeremy Dombroski says the New Era IT approach to service aligns strongly with the business values of MUSAC. “The principles behind the New Era IT school agreements provides schools with very good options for managing their ICT.” Dr Dombroski says.

New Era IT has been introduced as an agent in the North Island region so that MUSAC products and services can be provided to more schools. “We are looking forward to being able to give schools a real choice when it comes to selecting a school management system and extending our skills and expertise to set very high standards in the delivery of MUSAC modules to the schools we work with,” says New Era IT director, Ian Lindsay.

MUSAC is the most widely used brand of administrative software in New Zealand schools and provides an extensive suite of applications for the administration of all schools, including administration and management of assessment, curriculum, attendance, library resources, finances and assets.

The software has been developed in consultation with senior school managers and educators to deliver the flexibility required by schools to access the information they need.

MUSAC is owned by, and based within Massey University's College of Education.

PRESS RELEASE: MUSAC establishes stronger links to SPANZ

MUSAC is proud to announce a three year silver sponsorship of SPANZ the Secondary Principals' Association of New Zealand. "MUSAC software is the most widely used software package for school administration across New Zealand Secondary schools and it is great to be able to be able to reciprocate the support we've had from secondary schools through sponsorship of SPANZ”.

MUSAC managing director Dr Jeremy Dombroski says the MUSAC business has been through tremendous change over the past five years following the rapid growth of the business in the early years. "How we work with schools in 2010 contrasts immensely with how we worked with schools in 1990 and this will continue to evolve as technology and new partnerships provide opportunities. What hasn’t changed is the support we receive from secondary schools and our commitment to work with schools to make administration easy, so schools can focus on their core role of teaching and learning."

The first year of SPANZ sponsorship coincides with a landmark change in the way MUSAC provides services to schools.

MUSAC is the most widely used brand of administrative software in New Zealand schools and provides an extensive suite of applications for the administration of all schools, including administration and management of assessment, timetabling, curriculum, attendance, library resources, finances and assets.

The software has been developed in consultation with senior school managers and educators to deliver the flexibility required by schools to access the information they need.

MUSAC is owned by, and based within Massey University's College of Education.

Bunnythorpe School

Looking Good!

The answer is not with the Truant

The latest announcement from Ministry concerning the additional money to assist with managing and preventing truancy should be applauded. Yet one wonders if we actually have a strategy to deal with it, other than get a better measure. Sure, MUSAC and other Student Management System (SMS) providers, through txt message service providers can notify parents of kids not at school - but that is only useful if the parent is interested, or in the case of many teenagers, actually has a real ability to impact teenage behaviour. In fact, most SMS packages can give a school a multitude of reports about how good or bad their truancy problem is. Neat, we've measured it. And it's bad and we already knew that - albeit slightly worse than we thought. What tools do schools have to actually influence this behaviour and look to change it?

The conservative in me might suggest bring back the cane and give em' a good thrashing. And for some, I suspect that would actually work well.

However, I am aware of some psychological research (add a comment to this message and I'll try and dig it out) that looks back at issues like depression, drug use in kids and marriage breakdown. Researchers were looking for "cures" for depression, for example, by studying depressed people.

Similarly with looking at broken down relationships, where I'm sure a whole bunch of common factors were found with statistical significance, about bad marriages and therefore the inference was to have a good marriage, avoid these bad things. Such research found statistically important factors, but the inference the the opposite of these or avoiding these would lead to a good marriage was wrong. Same with kid drug use, same with depression.

At some point, researchers took a different approach - they studied happy people, kids that didn't use drugs and successful marriages. The results were somewhat different to the perceived opposite of the undesirable attributes society was seeking to avoid. i.e the opposite of depressed is "not depressed" rather than "happy". Socio-economic factors were not the leading cause of drug use in kids and communication was not the answer to successful marriages.

Back to truancy. MUSAC has coded, like all the other SMS vendors and as a requirement of special data sharing "approval" for SMS vendors, a whole bunch of statisical reports about truancy and attendance rates. None of it, I believe, actual helps a school determine what they need to do to get their kids more engaged in school so they are not truant. Helps them to measure truancy, but not tackle it.

Study the kids that turn up. That is the behaviour you want. That is the key. Encourage and strengthen that. What is it that gets a student engaged in what goes on in school?

PRESS RELEASE: School administration and support specialists renew and strengthen long-standing partnership

MUSAC has renewed an agency agreement with leading ICT Support Specialist, Edtech to continue a 17-year partnership that will provide consultation, hosting, training and support services for more than 1000 schools using the software throughout the North Island.

MUSAC managing director Dr Jeremy Dombroski says the Edtech agents for MUSAC are truly school-specialists.  “With assessment and reporting systems, Edtech go beyond the traditional method of delivering a one-size-fits-all solution and look at schools’ total needs using MUSAC’s software.” Dr Dombroski says.

Dr Dombroski says the approach uses an innovative assessment and reporting system customised to each individual school, and allows schools to measure, record, and analyse data relating to student achievement using MUSAC Software.

The information is then translated into reports for parents, teachers, management and boards of trustees. It is also used to inform classroom practice and strategies for learning for individual students and classes across the school. 

A consultation service is also provided to ensure schools get the best results from their investment in the MUSAC software. Edtech consultants are based in six centres throughout the North Island,  and the renewed agreement with Edtech allows the delivery of face-to-face training services.

In 2010, Edtech will release and enhance new services unparalleled in New Zealand – particularly around National Standards and Timetabling. These services will augment existing services including the Edtech Financial Services team.

Edtech has over 200 people-years MUSAC experience on top of actual classroom experience. “Edtech’s General Manager of MUSAC Services, Gaylene Hotchkiss, has not only been assisting MUSAC with our National Standards project, but also liaising with the Ministry such is her knowledge and experience.”

MUSAC is the most widely used brand of administrative software in New Zealand schools and provides an extensive suite of applications for the administration of all schools, including administration and management of assessment, curriculum, attendance, library resources, finances and assets.

The software has been developed in consultation with senior school managers and educators to deliver the flexibility required by schools to access the information they need,

MUSAC is owned by, and based within Massey University's College of Education.

2010: School Administration Made Easy

All but one MUSAC staff member is back from their holidays, our temp staff in software support have had their weeks training; the development team has their foot flat to the floor with new features and functions; and the MUSAC product team is quietly scheming away with new ideas and processes to make administration easier.

2010 is going to be one of the most exciting years ever for MUSAC. It is our 21st birthday and MUSAC will be coming of age with new products, services and business relationships. Established relationships will be reinforced and enhanced with new service offerings.

Over the next few weeks I'll provide more information about what these are as well as our plans around National Standards.

Otherwise, welcome back and I look forward to catching up with you soon.