Reading through some of the recent posts on our Skyward Facebook page I came across a comment from a parent suggesting that she would love to see a Skyward iPhone app. Her post went on to say just how convenient it would be if there was a Skyward app that would allow her to check her student’s grades directly from her smartphone. Well, Facebook fans and Skyward users around the world, I am happy to inform you we have that very tool!

This past spring Skyward released SMS Mobile, our latest solution in mobile information management technology.  SMS Mobile provides anytime, anywhere access to a district’s Skyward School Management database from personal smartphones or tablet devices. The technology comes at no charge to Skyward users, and its HTML design offers complete compatibility with current and future versions of devices such as the iPhone, Android, Blackberry or Windows Mobile.

Teachers such as Doug Arendt, a Grafton School District (WI) John Long Middle School music and chorus teacher and track coach, is already taking advantage of the new technology.

“There have been a couple of times the app has been very useful just in the last few weeks,” Arendt said. “I was at a music festival at the University of Milwaukee and we had a group of four kids performing together. Three of the families were at lunch because we had been there all day, but one was separate and we hadn’t arranged a designated place and time to meet, so I asked one of the girls to call their friend and let her know they should meet us at certain place and time. Well, there was no answer from the student, so I went on the new Skyward app, called her mom’s cell phone, got ahold of her and arranged a spot and time to meet. Those aren’t things I was able to do in the past.”

Arendt continued: “Another time, I had a student that was injured at a track meet, and their family had taken the student to the emergency room that evening. I was able to call and talk to the father on his cell at the hospital to check in on the student. It’s very convenient and easy to use.”

Innovative solutions such as SMS Mobile are constantly on the horizon here at Skyward. For more information about our new mobile technology, visit Skyward.com. Skyward users can contact their district representative directly to start using the SMS Mobile application today.

Although incorporating LMS tools into a student information system can be accomplished through interfaces or acquisitions, these approaches create inherent limitations of functionality that hinders meeting the needs of school districts over the long term. 

As we recognized this need, Skyward has committed to being focused on long-term sustainability and ease of implementation for our customers.  By building the functionality into our solution from the ground up, our customers are ensured complete compatibility and greater functionality because the solution is built to work together.  Additionally, ongoing development is faster and provides the seamless interaction needed for analysis and empowering teachers to positively affect student performance.

This approach has proven a wise decision with the release of our Data Warehouse, Response to Intervention, and online assignment solutions.  These new products are receiving strong acceptance by our customers with feedback on how fast they were able to implement, eliminate redundant data entry, and improve their abilities to analyze student performance.   As a further testament, I encourage you to listen to this recent interview with Kyle Berger, Executive Director of Technology Services for Alvarado Independent School District on their use of online assignments in the classroom (http://bit.ly/skypodcast1).

This is only the beginning as we continue to grow our solution to meet the future needs of our customers and appreciate the ongoing feedback that helps us maintain our leadership in the industry.

When meeting with customers, one common question I get is what’s new at Skyward.  We are continuously working on software and service innovations to provide our customers the best K-12 administrative software tools available anywhere in the world. Our latest product innovation, Workflow Manager, is an exciting product that will allow our customers to electronically manage their internal business processes.

One example of a business process would be a new hire at your district. Currently, you are probably using some sort of checklist when an applicant is offered a new position. This check list identifies all of the steps that the district needs to accomplish before the applicant actually starts to work at the district.

Our Workflow Manager provides you with a management tool to move this checklist to an electronic process with analysis tools to evaluate the accountability of how your business process of new hire works.  It provides you with the capabilities to track and evaluate what steps have been done as well as remaining steps within your hiring process at anytime.  By tracking and analyzing these steps, you can see if you have any bottlenecks within the process.  Workflow Manager will provide you with the right tool to effectively manage any of your business processes and ensure that you are providing the best services for your district at the most effective cost.

We plan to demonstrate how effective this product can be at helping your district to provide more services with less cost at our upcoming iCon (our International Conference) event on March 16-18, 2011 in Orlando FL. We will be showing this new product as well as other cost saving measures that our solution offers your district. I encourage you to attend our iCon event in March to learn about how Skyward software can help you reduce your day to day expenses.  Click on this link to learn more www.skyward.com/icon.

I just finished attending all 6 of the 2010 fall User Group conferences. While at these conferences, I had many opportunities to meet with a number of end users to find out what the hot topics are from their point of view.  As you might guess, the number one topic was the move from the Student PaC product to our web product. As always, I found this interaction with our customers to be very beneficial for myself to find out what we can do to better assist our customers with this migration from our PaC product to the web product.  

It was interesting to hear some of the comments from customers that have already made the move as they were already taking advantage of the new functionality that is available within that product. Since there is no cost to customers that already use our PaC product we have had a number of customers already start take advantage of it. A few of the advantages of using the web product are the ability to design your own browses, the ability to set up favorites,  access to the latest enhancements to the product and the ability to use the software from any computer that has an internet connection.

On the other hand, I also heard from customers that have not yet made the move. I explained that since the fall of 2009; we have installed all of our new Student customers with the web product. Those installations range in student count from 22 to nearly 70,000 students, a great testimonial to the functionality of this new product. Similar to our move from our legacy character product to PaC, the move from PaC to the Web will change how everyone will work with our student product. To assist customers in this transition, we have created tutorials in the Support Center web site that will provide you with some guidance on how to go about making this transition at your district. If you have yet to make the move to the new web based Student Management product, please take some time to review these tutorials. I think that once you familiarize yourself with this new product, you will see very quickly the real advantages that it has to offer you.

As I crisscrossed the nation over the past weeks attending various user group conferences, the feedback I received on our development projects and ongoing enhancements to our web-based Student Management Suite has been very encouraging.

This early glimpse into our development projects has garnered positive comments at every conference, including numerous requests to join the beta process.  This early involvement of real-world use will only strengthen our product development and reduce the amount of time to fully launch these new applications. The introduction of our new Work Flow Management tool seemed to be the most talked about application, with our recently launched Data Warehouse following closely behind.

I was also very encouraged by conversations with users that have transitioned to our web-based Student Management Suite.  Change is never easy, but as they explained the valuable benefits they discovered, ultimately improving their district’s efficiency, the results were clear that perseverance in making the transition produced positive results for the entire district.

Every year, I am reinvigorated by these user group conferences which are an invaluable tool for Skyward’s leadership to check the pulse of our customers’ needs.  I am looking forward to future conferences, along with our iCon event scheduled for March 16-18, 2011 where we will fully unveil our development projects and set the stage for future growth in 2011 and beyond.