RFP for a PD database

[Demetri Orlando]

Do you use software to keep track of professional development? What features do you like about it.

I've been looking around for a web-hosted solution for keeping track of our teachers' professional development. The system we envision has two levels of access. An individual level, in which individual teachers can update what they have done, and an administrator level at which administrators can see reports that show what all teachers (or individual teachers) have done.

Our school has three divisions, so we would want to be able to assign teachers to a certain division so that that division's administrator would only see those teachers' records, but a system administrator would be able to see everyone's records. This feature is not a deal-breaker. It would not be a big problem if all administrators could see all records, so long as they could sort by their division.

It would be useful if teachers could use the system to receive approval to attend events from their supervisors. In this scenario, a teacher would log into the system and enter an event details entry and trigger a request for approval to an administrator. Once an administrator approves an event, that would trigger a message back to the teacher notifying them that the event has been approved. This feature is not a hard requirement if it significantly increases cost. We could skip it, and just use the database to keep track of completed events only.

Division administrators might want to be able to enter upcoming PD events into the system and then recommend those events to certain teachers.

The database would need to be multi-user and robust enough to handle several concurrent connections. The types of info we need in the database include:

User Info
- first name
- last name
- division
- job title
- number of years of service (based on employment start date)
- degree(s) info: degree(s) completed or working towards, dates, institutions, majors
- database security user type (administrator or teacher)

Professional Development Activities
- Event format (conference, seminar, workshop, after-school meeting, etc.)
- Event focus (e.g. technology, diversity, differentiated instruction, etc.)
- Event title
- Event goal/objectives (what will you learn or be able to do after this event?)
- Event date & time
- Event duration (Number of hours)
- Event designation: internal or external
- Event location
- Event sponsoring entity
- Event website address
- Event status (requested, approved, completed)
- Event eligible to count towards continuing education credits
- Event follow-up details field (how will this event affect classroom practice)
- Events at which this person has been the presenter instead of the participant

Professional Goals Table
- Goal type (e.g. technology, diversity, differentiated instruction, etc.)
- Goal title
- Goal details
- Goal status (percent completed)

Reports available to administrators:
- list view shows all teachers (by division), total number of hours currently completed, and events attended
- granular view to see all events of all teachers by event focus type
- list view to show all goals of all teachers
- lists showing what teachers are enrolled in what upcoming events

Addenda: (added after this discussion was posted)
By the way, if you are a Filemaker Pro user, you might want to contact David Baker at Mt. Tam about this topic. In October of 2008 he posted a message to the ISED-L list-serve that said he was developing a Filemaker database for this and would be happy to collaborate with other FileMaker users. His email is dbaker at mttam.org

Another company offering a product can be found here:
http://allofe.com/gen/corp_generated_pages/Product_Home_m228.html

[Brenda Trimble]

Demetri - This is wonderful - the criteria is very much like what I had in mind when I Googled this a few weeks ago - I just couldn’t find a system that was tailored to what I saw in my mind. Either too much, too little, or it just didn’t fit our system. I think all the fields you listed are necessary, but we should consider the fact that there may be certain fields that a faculty member doesn’t know off hand or doesn’t have the info - but the system would still allow them to fill in the pertinent fields and finish the process. I guess what I’m saying is..."Required Fields" and "Optional Fields". Thanks for all your work on this... I agree on shooting for the moon...

[Alex Inman]

May not be exactly right, but you should give PDpoint, from SchoolKit a look. It has a lot of what you are looking for, including content. I think it is pretty reasonably priced as well. These guys have been around for a long time and their founder was one of the first 1:1 principals in the world at a school in Australia. These are good people. They listen.

[Demetri Orlando]

Thanks Alex,
I saw you mention this on ISED, and appreciate the cross-reference here. I watched the online demo of PD point, and it seemed to be more than we want, as it seems to be a tool for delivering prof. dev. for technology. I guess it could also be used just to track PD, but I guess what I'm trying to say here is that I'm looking for a simpler system and one that might be useful for any of our schools. Perhaps I'll contact the guy you mention below. Can you DM me his contact info? PD Point does look like it does a good job of delivering online PD for tech...

[Alex Inman]

If you are just looking for something to be developed as a web accessible tracking and management tool, I know a good, young developer. He develops in php, ajax, xml., C++,. and C#. He's the CTO of Rawclix, an online advertising platform designed for integration into Facebook. He's also developed several web databases and Facebook applications.

He's only 18 but he's very good. My tech club no longer interests him! :-( He needs a bigger challenge.

[Demetri Orlando]

We did also look at MyLearningPlan, but this service seems a bit more than we need. It is a challenge to balance the need for a simple elegant user interface with multiple options.

[Demetri Orlando]

Took me awhile to find this site [it's not indexed with the key words I was using.] It looks like it does what I'm asking for.

http://www.pdtracker.com.au/index.php

However, it's Australian, so enrol is spelled different, and it's a little clunky. I do like how they categorize PD events into strands and domains. I'll have to add that to the RFP if we don't sign up with PDtracker. Also need to add the account creation process and year to year archiving.

[Brad Gerring]

Hi Demetri

Why not take advantage of the 60 day free trial of PD Tracker , and then let me know what changes to the application you require, to better suit your needs.

PD Tracker has been developed for Australian schools, but can easily be modified for schools in other countries.

Cheers

Brad

www.pdtracker.com.au

[Demetri Orlando]

Hey Brad,
Thanks for posting here. I appreciate your willingness to hear your clients suggestions and I should try to be more descriptive in what I think could be improved. I'll see if I can do that. My initial reaction was just that it looked sort of 1.0, and with all the nifty web2.0 interfaces these days it ups the expectations.

On another note I've just been thinking about the way that ning allows events to take on social-networking advantages... knowing who is going, being able to message them, seeing their photos, etc. I wonder if you could work that kind of functionality into PD Tracker. I think there would also be benefit to allowing users to rate events. The point being to build enthusiasm and capture user metadata about events.

cheers,
Demetri

[[e-mail]]

Demetri-re: the RFP, will the date be formatted for U.S.? and the updates to the "enrol" spelling be made? Also, will there be a way to customize the template to only use fields needed? Thanks.

[Brad Gerring]

Hi

The date format and spelling of "enrol" has now been corrected.

Cheers

Brad

[arvind s grover]

Demetri, our Academic Dean has been working on this exact problem. I think that you could use Zoho Creator to do this, but you're right, you'll likely need some help. I would suggest posting this in the Zoho Marketplace (as well as searching around in there) to see if you could find a Zoho developer. They're certainly Web 2.0, and it's fully customizable. The cost is reasonable, and once you have your product, you could share it (or even sell it), to other schools. You will also find adding onto it/modifying it, are fairly easy.

[[e-mail]]

Demetri,
How do we get in touch w/the designer? What has been the response to the RFP items?