MUSAC - Education Management Systems

Classic Web Portals Rolling Out

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Mon, 14 May 2012 09:03:00 +0000

We've completed the main development of our web portals for our Classic product suite and have now moved into wide scale deployment making these available for all customers.

To date the major benefit has been teacher entry of attendance data with many teachers using their favourite smart phone (BYOD). The developers have optimised the attendance entry screen to work with any smart device. The teacher portal has also been released, with report comment entry and ability to view mark books and core student data. The full power of Classic is still best served through the main application, but routine tasks and looking up of basic information can now be done by teachers from anywhere* using any device.

Still waiting the first school (other than Mt Aspiring and Logan Park High School) to push out the parent and student access providing attendance, financial (just for the parents), timetable, NCEA and on-line reports for download. We've made it easy for schools to manage parent and student logins and remove the worry of managing passwords whilst maintaining security and control over access.

For more information contact us directly toll free on 0800 600 159.

Three things from MUSAC for Term 1

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:31:00 +0000

The three biggies from MUSAC for Term 1:

Support
Classic Web Portals
Edge

Support

We're running free seminars nationwide each term. We come to your region. Any topics you'd like covered for Term 2 or if you'd like to host the seminar please let us know.
MUSAC Agents are delivering more out of the box features and functions to support NCEA and National Standards
We'll be attending all the usual annual teacher and management conferences to showcase our new developments. Stop by to learn how your school can benefit from them and provide feedback.

Classic Web Portals
These are web interfaces into MUSAC Classic. Enables web access for teachers to mark attendance from their favourite Internet connected device, view financial, pastoral and enrolment information. Next release will contain curriculum information and then finally the ability to enter report comments. Other parts for rollout Term 1 are student and parent access. In Term 2 we'll add VENIM for identity management out of MUSAC.

Edge
Our cloud based student management system has been named and branded. We will be promoting Edge through the year. Contact us now to find out more.

It's good to be back

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:20:00 +0000

Rest and relaxation with family and friends over the Christmas break is almost a distant memory. The team here at MUSAC starting rolling back on the 4th of January, support line opened on the 9th of January and we've now released updates to our web product, Classic and commenced roll out of the Classic Web Portals. Updates to Library and Financial Manager are imminent, and Phil and Ngaire are currently at Learning@School in Hamilton.

We are excited about 2012 with the formal release of our web product, the introduction of the Classic Web Portals and VENIM into the MUSAC product suite. The latter are being rolled out in limited release so we can meet demands - the portals themselves were tested in schools in 2011.

Following the popularity of the free MUSAC seminars in 2011, we're going to expand on these in 2012 - larger centres every term, smaller centres every second term and more remote places might just be the oncer. To keep costs down we'll be in touch to secure a host school in the region and we'll have Term 1 visits locked in and up on the website as soon as we can in February.

MUSAC Agents Edtech and Solutions and Services are also out in schools helping get the year started. Edtech and Solutions and Services have been working on ClassRoom Manager customisations with both having extensive Primary and Secondary graphing, analysis and aggregation capabilities. The key, obviously, is the conversation with the school about individual school goals and targets and ensuring staff are familiar and know how to use the functionality.

Boards will be wanting analysis of variance reports - MUSAC Agents can provide assistance if this is currently a chore.

Enough from me. It is good to be back. We're excited and energised about 2012 and look forward to continuing to be of service, meeting and discussing your ever changing needs and requirements.

Necessity: The mother of Invention

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:31:00 +0000

As you've heard, we're developing a web product from the ground up. However, so many of our MUSAC schools do so much with Classic, particularly ClassRoom Manager, that it will be many more developer days of work before you'll wish to swap out to the fully online world. Timing of the roll out of of fibre another consideration.
In response to a request by his Principal at Mt Aspiring, web interfaces were developed (by Tim Harper) to:

Enter teacher absences online (iPad, iPhone, Android, Apple platform/Linux platform ...)
Teacher portal for school reports (further functionality available and being considered)
Parent portal to see whats going on
Student portal to keep informed

These tools are currently active in half a dozen schools - primary and secondary and we've sent a survey to a few schools to gauge the level of interest in MUSAC making these more widely available and supporting them. So far - lots of strong interest!

The idea here is that some schools want the best of both worlds - flexibility and breadth and depth of Classic plus a few basic web tools. When MUSAC's full hosted SaaS web product is deeper in functionality the school can choose to migrate. Those schools who don't use the breadth and depth of Classic will be more inclined to move to the fully web hosted system sooner.

At this stage we're in limited release with the web product, moving to formal release 31 March 2012. The product will continue to evolve and develop over many years. The above portals for Classic can be used until the web hosted product is developed enough for your school.

I expect to have a decision from the MUSAC Board at our next meeting (1/12/2011). I'll keep you posted.

MUSAC's Web based application: The story so far

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:31:00 +0000

We've been a little quiet about our web based application. We've had a number of focus groups (and continue to do so) and also a short road trip talking about our concept and vision. However, I thought I'd share the story so far as a prelude to greater depth of information about where we're headed and why.
MUSAC forecasted that the foundations for Classic that are serving us well would need to change in the future and school expectations would evolve. In 2007, MUSAC completed a development of Symphony Attendance which was the first "Symphony" module. This module was SQL server based, latest in software technologies, windows application based and Ministry approved for Electronic Roll Returns. Sitting alongside this was eTrack, the Early Notification system. The intention was the new Symphony module would sit along side Classic performing synchronisation overnight.

This approach had a number of issues:

The schools we trialled it in really struggled to have anyone that knew enough about SQL server for us to be anything other than very hands on with installation and management. Equals cost and frustration for the school.
The batch synchronisation of live data scared me. Imagine enrolling a student in the morning but couldn't mark them in class until the next day -- unacceptable.
The pain MUSAC often experienced with schools was associated with poor networks and server capacity - this approach wasn't going to address that.
The wave of new SaaS and web based applications begged the question of the long term life expectancy of another in-school based application. I predict Classic has 5-10 years in it - I don't think this application would have been any different.

Furthermore, the expectations of the Ministry around Data Sharing Approvals were not going to be addressed for all MUSAC schools by the strategy we'd adopted. Namely:

Roll Returns
Electronic Roll Returns
SMS-LMS v1 (and now 2, soon to be 3)
Early Notification
Electronic Attendance Registers

The latter part of 2007 focused on addressing, in Classic, Data Sharing requirements, issues customers had shared with me in my first few months at MUSAC. Out of this came MUSAC Essentials and Premier, all of the above Ministry of Education approvals, and work on single sign-on and a menu driven system for driving Classic (remove the perceptions of independent products) plus the mega installer. The risk profile of the Classic menu driven system became such we had to abandon that. I still hear from time to time that Classic is not integrated. Its not strictly true, but could look that way in terms of navigation.

At the start of 2008 I took a bold step and dumped the "Symphony project". We were going web based, end of story. A number of developers were already reasonably on top of the web concept and we invested in PD. We still had a lot of Classic work on - finishing single logon, unpicking the menu system and completing AB6 so all MUSAC schools had a compliant electronic attendance register.

By the end of 2008 we had a web concept, but our lack of experience in web based development was showing. Similarly, we had turned our development processes on its head trying to get away from the waterfall approaches to that of Agile. We knew this would be a much better approach. We got some external help to review where we were with the product and our processes. The reviews were not great, but the team responded beyond my expectations. We turned around in 3-4 months what the reviewer thought was a train smash.

In July 2009 we convinced three schools to have a crack at being beta schools for what was a very rudimentary web based student management system. What was important for MUSAC was to get real schools using and commenting on the product and feeding back into our Agile development lifecycle.
Latter in 2009, a non-target segment school convinced us they too should join as a beta school. This was a rather defining moment for us (always in hindsight!). Our plan was to get a product out that covered the bases of a Student Management system, but only just enough functionality. In 2010, this approached was slam dunked by this school. They were very clear that we needed greater depth and that they would rather wait for width but be able to totally rely on the beta product for specific aspects to be taken care of in totality. At this stage we had Electronic Roll Return approval and electronic Attendance Register approval. One of the best pieces of feedback in 2010 was when we received a call asking if the school had done Roll Returns correctly online - because it was so easy and hardly took any time to do.
At this time we had now been through 3 changes in the look and feel - I expect we'll continue to evolve this. The nature of the MUSAC team has also radically changed. More staff having more input into shaping all products. The management structure had also gone through a number of iterations of change and we also tried to ensure key people in the organisation were oriented to provide best value to schools and our agents. Our delivery processes are better and our phone system finally gives the team some real tools to work from. the support team from predominantly reactive to predominantly proactive and this journey has started.

In the background however, was a continual buzz of: "where is it?" "what is it?" "when can we have it?" "give me a date." At the same time, acknowledgement across the sector the predominantly things were pretty good with MUSAC in schools that had invested in PD and in development of the documents and reports that MUSAC agents excel at. Any conversation that starts with "MUSAC Classic can't ..." can usually be turned around to "let me show you how". I digress.
As we've pushed development of our web product forward, we've always had very clearly in mind that Massey University would host this. We knew conceptually that Massey was part of the KAREN network and were leveraging this to establish a campus fail-over system i.e. if Palmerston North was isolated, all other campuses could continue using IT systems without pain. That is our plan.

We've also continued being Agile and deliver an update to customers every month. Changes are then incremental and the schools grow with our additional functionality. We like this as we get fairly quick feedback, although it doesn't suit all - some like big bang delivery. In 2011, the team execution has been great and our delivery trajectory continues to reforecast ahead of plan. The real question is: Is this fast enough for those who want something different? MUSAC and the University is playing the long game. We now have a reasonably sustainable model and confident we can ensure a long term roadmap of continuous development and improvement - possibly something the Ministry was not so sure of around the time of accreditation.
So what can you expect from our web product this year?

A name (!) - internal joke ...
Approved as an Electronic Attendance Register (done)
Electronic roll returns (done)
Enrolments (done)
Recording and rudimentary analysis of Primary assessment tools (done)
NCEA basics (done)
General secondary assessment capability (next year)
The timetable algorithm from TTSM - (but not all the bells and whistles just yet!) (next year)
Essentials for timetable management (on track)
Basics of school/parent reports (done)
Course management (done)
Rudimentary student fees (by March 2012)
Basic Pastoral (watching the behaviour for learning initiative here i.e. PB4L)

What I've learned in recent years is that many schools don't scratch the surface of their student management system - irrespective of what flavour they ended up with. This makes the approach of when to pick up the MUSAC online product or is MUSAC Classic the better choice not so clear cut. What we do have is not only product but professionals across the country that can work with schools on their internal management processes and guide the school to best use their MUSAC software. I also believe that most schools want to see a real live person from time to time. Yes technology can deal with some day to day work - but education after all is a people thing.

I'll post up soon where our focus will be for 2012 and beyond and what we believe will differentiate this product forom others.

SMS-LMS v2.2 Update

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 03:38:00 +0000

Quick update on SMS-LMS v2.2. The addition of a more robust validation tool (Saxon for the technically interested), addressing of several defects and addition of 2.2 changes has been integrated and is now through to testing. The MUSAC Interoperability Control Centre (MICC, not to be confused with the Cricket Council) will also need regression testing as part of our standard process.

Next step is working with Watchdog and Edtech for KnowledgeNET, Moodle and UltraNET provisioning for target release of early October, as previously indicated.

LMS interoperability has been a long road for all vendors. As I mentioned, we waited until some of the dust settled before diving in, hence why it appears we're "slow". Our downfall was primarily that we did not have very good validation at the SMS end, else we would be in a better position now.

As I mentioned previously, we're looking to to take a more leading role. We believe we have wider support for an incremental change to the interoperability schema than more wholesale at this time. Of course, we also need to be looking ahead and establishing requirements for the future now so we can be ready.

Modern Learning Environments

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:32:00 +0000

With my many hats of MUSAC MD, Dad and BoT representative, I'm lucky to be exposed to similar issues and concepts in all the roles. One of those is that of Modern Learning Environments. Our school is looking to upgrade some classrooms to that more better suited to more modern pedagogy, I see my kids learning in ways that contrasts significantly with my primary school days and have recently heard the Ministry policy and seen an implementation of this first hand in regards to Modern Learning Environments.

With my MUSAC MD hat on I attended the SEO conference in Rotorua last week and sat in on the Ministry talk about Modern Learning Environments in relation to property. Yesterday I was in Auckland as part of a reference group which was hosted by Stonefields Primary School. We were given a tour and I assume saw the Ministry property policy (amongst others) in action.

I asked the teacher showing us around whether the new environment changed the way she taught or made it easier. Her response was both. She indicated that the new environment better supported the way she had taught in previous schools but was also contributing to changing the way she taught because the three teachers in her hub were able to observe each others practice and help each other improve.

Being some one who goes off on tangents and this is my blog ... I linked two other things I'm associated with/doing:

Reading Sir Ken Robinson's book on creativity "Out of Our Minds" in which he speaks of the stifling of creativity and Education being stuck in an industrial revolution paradigm. Stonefields Primary might sit on top of an old quarry, but they (like many other schools in NZ) seem not to quite fit the out of date model Sir Ken (with respect) refers. OK - I'm only up to chapter 6!
The great structure and scaffold around profession development of teachers and linkages with Initial Teacher Education (ITE) at College Street Normal school here in Palmerston North. Mr Kennedy has developed with his team a positive and proactive structure that leverages internal expertise and teacher observation (peer and self review) to grow individual capabilities. Not sure if a case study has been written up, but had great feedback from ITE students on practicum in the school. Maybe at next years Inspired Impact conference?

My point. These modern learning environments seem to be a step in the right direction if the comments from the Stonefields teacher yesterday, the types of scaffold around professional development with peer review/observation that make a difference for students, over laid with the issues Sir Ken so eloquently portrays, are anything to go by.

Almost sounds like an endorsement of Ministry policy :)

Massey University Bolster's MUSAC's Board

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 03:00:00 +0000

I heard an incredibly strange comment the other day about what Massey was doing with MUSAC. The comment was the exact opposite to the reality.

Anyway, Massey University is committed to MUSAC and has been working to ensure MUSAC's long term success. One of the initiatives has been to bolster the MUSAC Advisory Board. The Board now consists of:

Mark Cleaver (Chair). Mark is Massey University's Director of research management services and has accountabilities around commercialisation activities. Mark also has a strong background in educational governance having served on Boards for schools, kindergarten associations and sports bodies.
Professor James Chapman. Pro-vice Chancellor of the College of Education and an international reputation in literacy research. Professor Chapman has also done the hard yards in the classroom.
Terry Allen. Is a director at Massey University's business incubator the e-centre and extensive experience in strategic planning and IT
Grant Travis. Grant is an accountant by trade with particular strengths in strategic thinking bringing a steady, pragmatic and forward focus perspective to Board meetings and discussions. Grant is an independent director on other commercial Boards and a successful businessman in his own right.
Yours truly

MUSAC Commits to SMS-LMSv2.2

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 22:05:00 +0000

Following the beta release of our SMS-LMS v2 implementation (incorporated into MICC) has been the requirement to address a number of issues:

Data validation
Performance
Batch uploads
Scheduling

Underlying those issues (which are MUSAC ones) has been a couple of more fundamental ones associated with the schema which doesn't allow for 2 degrees cellphone numbers, for example. These are addressed in v2.2 of the SMS-LMS interoperability schema. MUSAC has committed to making the necessary software changes to comply with version 2.2. We're going to kick the additional development work off shortly, but to provide better assurance the teams from KnowledgeNET and UltraNET will work closely with us to enable a stronger end-to-end test bed. We expect to do the integration testing within a month.

Thanks also to Paul from the Ministry for providing enabling assistance.

Some schools are probably asking why it has "taken so long". The short answer was that MUSAC deliberately did not take a leading edge position with version SMS-LMS v2 interoperability. MUSAC did so with KnowledgeNET with version 1 of the schema and rewrote a lot of software many times. While the Ministry provided some assistance we absorbed a lot of cost to, in hindsight, essentially develop a proof of concept.

This iteration we waited until the dust had settled a bit, but even then an update of schema v2 was released about a month after we'd pushed it out to all MUSAC schools. The feedback I've been getting is that you would prefer us to take a more leading role. So we shall.

Area Schools Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Mon, 30 May 2011 03:22:00 +0000

I was fortunate enough to be at the Area Schools Conference last week held at the James Cook in Wellington - MUSAC being a key sponsor. We offered two free workshops this year: one hosted by Cheryl from Solutions and Services on the topic of MUSAC Accounts (Financial Manager) and the second hosted by Mal (again Solutions and Services) with the focus on student achievement and in particular data management, analysis and reporting to parents.

It is great sometimes to just sit back and enjoy the ride - Cheryl making things easier for administration staff with tips and tricks around the use of the package, backed by sound accounting practice. And then listen to Mal as he simplified ClassRoom Manager, but again spoke in relation to real information that teachers and managers want to know about students and their progress and achievement. We're in a very fortunate niche situation in that we are the only vendor formally recognised as catering for junior, middle and senior school needs - particularly around achievement. What I'm also saying here is that it wasn't the software features or just the people, it was the two working in combination to provide people in schools with ways to make their jobs easier.

As we do, we also joined in some of the social side of the conference and got to meet an array of great people doing a tough job in often remote areas, on a small scale with all the high expectations of community and Ministry. I take my hat off to them.

Recruitment drive

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Tue, 17 May 2011 02:17:00 +0000

Some of you may have seen MUSAC has been undertaking a major recruitment drive in the recent months. At the end of this drive our staff numbers will be around 30 - a major contrast from the early days of Rory and Doug in one of the Massey University windowless offices in the early 90's.

We're conscious that we've not got our new web application to the level you want it so we've put a bit more weight behind that project. We're also working harder on better support and so in order to free people up to make improvements we've added more resource in support also. All this as well as keeping up with all the demands of the Ministry and NZQA around NCEA, National Standards and interoperability.

If you've missed our advertisements we're looking for developers and business analysts on a fixed term and permanent basis. Development is Agile, so experience there is a must. Find us on Seek or jobs.massey.ac.nz.

First step complete

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Tue, 17 May 2011 02:09:00 +0000

It is no secret that MUSAC is developing an online educational management system. There is mixed understanding when this was initiatied and when it will be "finished". What is clear is that last year we completed a first step, albeit a baby step - we've got a number of schools using the functions we've built. It is not a finished all singing and all dancing student management system - there is a lot of work to do yet. But we have achieved a major milestone. It is in the cloud and it is live.

Those who have been in and around MUSAC for some time have probably heard of the historic false starts, the great promise of what will come - much of which did not. This product has achieved what the previous ones didn't - it is real and being used. It has a way to go to be what we envision it to be - affordbale for all schools, easy to use and strongly supported - but it is a real step in a direction that will underpin the very future of education in many, many New Zealand schools.

I'll be updating you with more about our progress, vision and points of difference as the year unfolds.

2011 off to a great start

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 02:24:00 +0000

Cannot believe it is almost the end of January 2011. Where did that summer holiday go?

The majority of the team here at MUSAC is back on board and we're kicking the year off with significant involvement in the Inspired Impact conference here in Palmerston North. Ross Kennedy has done a fantastic job pulling together a great bunch of keynote speakers, workshops and networking opportunities to get inspired and align ones thinking for another year ahead. Massey University is gold and named sponsor of the conference, reinforcing the significance of education (implicitly and explicitly), creativity and innovation across the University and the alignment with core themes of the conference.

We're excited about being involved and can't wait to hear Sir Ken Robinson speak tomorrow morning.

People in action with MUSAC

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 23:11:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 03:46:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 02:15:00 +0000

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?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:59:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:36:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Wed, 19 May 2010 02:04:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:53:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:55:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 23:55:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:54:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jennosaurus) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:03:00 +0000

Looking Good!

The answer is not with the Truant

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:44:00 +0000

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?