Thursday, February 24, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Infinite Campus Review - February 2011
Infinite Campus - How do I describe thee: the bain of my existence or absolutely indispensable? Very few computer programs will get so many differing opinions and so much emotion from educators and students, who are required to use it. Many hate Infinite Campus with a passion, while others love it see Infinite Campus as the answer to all of their problems. How do I feel about it? Let's see how I use it first.
Product Name: Infinite Campus District Edition
Company Name: Infinite Campus
Type: Web Application
Website: http://www.infinitecampus.com/pages/top_menu1/solutions.php
Product Name: Infinite Campus District Edition
Company Name: Infinite Campus
Type: Web Application
Website: http://www.infinitecampus.com/pages/top_menu1/solutions.php
Company Product Description: " Infinite Campus provides districts with the integrated tools needed to streamline student administration, enable stakeholder collaboration and individualize instruction. The entire system is web-based so educators, parents and students have access to information from anywhere at any time. The system also serves as a district-wide data warehouse allowing student data to be entered once and used across the entire district supporting data-driven decision making.” from Infinite Campus' District edition page.
Below is a screenshot of Infinite Campus:
How much does Infinite Campus cost? To use it as a teacher, parent or student - no cost, but it does cost $$$ for the Districts to purchase a License.
Is this the first time reviewing this product? I have never reviewed Infinite Campus in depth on my blog, I have mentioned it a couple of times.
Do my students have easy access the product? Yes, it is our school student management system and as long as they can remember/find their student number and password they can access Infinite Campus from any computer than connects to the internet.
Do I currently use Infinite Campus in my classroom? Yes, there is no choice in the matter, all teachers are required to use Infinite Campus at my school.
Is Infinite Campus easy to use? In a word No. There are so many different components to learn and sometimes "hidden" commands to ensure that you have everything reportable can be frustrating at best. Infinite Campus is not something that you are able to sit down and simply start using without either prior training or help from someone who is knowledgeable of how it works.
When I started using Infinite Campus in October 2009, I had no formal training in how to use it and have learned how I use it today by trial, error and bugging my IT department. I have tried to read the documentation, but it is difficult to follow and I just give up after a while. The best word that I can use to describe Infinite Campus is cumbersome and it while it is supposed to be an integrated reporting system, it feels as if it is a bunch of separate modules and projects that have been patched together over time to become the program it is today. My experience with Infinite Campus is that there is a long learning curve.
How does Infinite Campus apply to Special Education? The ability to easily use a program to access parent contact information, student data (schedules, grades, attendance) is a great help in completing your duties as a Special Education Case Manager. At this time Maine's version of Infinite Campus does not have the Special Education Module included as yet. Infinite Campus is a great way to quickly answer questions during a PET on a student's grades, their attendance history etc. are features that I have come to depend upon.
I like the contact log to document when I have contact with Parents, Case Workers, other teachers, etc about a student. It has saved my butt a couple of times, but at the same time it is cumbersome to get to and just isn't that easy to use, plus cutting and pasting is not recommended and it does not have the capability to forward an email into the system, like you can with Evernote or other management systems. Therefore, I don't use this feature as much as it should be used.
What I like: Infinite Campus provides a great deal of data regarding a student that is accessible in one location and I believe that all schools should give teachers access to information that they need to best serve the students that they teach, without having to re-invent the wheel every year/month/day.
I really like that it is cloud based and doesn't take up any space on my hard drive. This means that I can access Infinite Campus from any computer or location that has web access. Therefore, I can work from home and easily enter my grades, etc. into the program.
The Grade Book program is mostly straightforward to use and enter data into and you have a couple of different methods to enter the grades. There are a couple of peculiarities that you have to be careful about "right clicking to post grade", ensuring that the numeric is selected in lesson planner and a couple of other "things" that you find out about when grades or progress notes are due and Guidance is breathing down your neck to get the data in so they can process the data.
Student and parent access is a great feature that allows them to track the work they are missing, what the current grade is, upcoming events, etc. It alleviates much of the routine questions that teachers used to get regarding those issues.
What I don't like:
Infinite Campus is a Student/School data management system that appears to have grown from separate modules, that attempts to do everything that someone wanted at one time or another. At this point in time Infinite Campus appears to be in transition from a tree based database to tab based (which is not available in all the modules). In my opinion it has grown bloated with far too many features "that some see as necessary, but are they really? I personally would prefer to have a program that provides the basic data that teachers are required to input and have access too and then can be manipulated into higher level reports for those further up the food chain, but is much more user friendly than it is now.
There are some days when Infinite Campus is snappy and quickly gets you to where you need to go and there are other days that it is slow and/or unresponsive. When you have those days it is frustrating to use.
Another issue is that sometime you will hit save and it doesn't - it is a pain to have the secretary call and say "Did you do your attendance yet?" When you did and it didn't, like they believe you when you say, "Yes I did", but you have to do it again. Or to have your grades entered and then have to go back and redo them "again."
The lesson planner section is next to impossible to use effectively to help plan your activities. It seems it is there more to provide documentation to the grade book than it is to help teachers with lesson planning. You can not add images, videos or anything other than text into your lesson plan on Infinite Campus and in today's multi-media rich world, it just isn't enough to only use text. The copy lesson plan/lesson function is byzantine and is it the lesson planner, lesson, activity, the nomenclature is a little confusing at first It warns you to not copy and paste from Word into the lesson planner.
You have to input into your lesson planner before you can use the grade book - there is no quick add feature to the grade book.
I personally do not use this module any more than I have to, basically just in order to be able to input my student's grades into the grade book. Which is unfortunate because there are other lesson planner software that allow you to really plan your lessons, this module is it is a duplication of work that I do elsewhere and cannot use that data here.
Something that really bothers me a lot is on general student information screen, the lack of Special Education information available to regular education teachers. There is a small flag that indicates that a student is Special Education
actual sizeand no other information as far as classroom accommodations, goals, etc. I know that there is supposed to be a separate Special Education Module, but the regular educators need much more information than a small flag beside the word Special Ed for the students who receive those services.
Maybe it will all be integrated and regular education teachers will have access to the Special Education module when it becomes available. Until that happens there must be a way to give those teachers more information about what they need to know to provide better instruction for those students who receive special education services.
These are my biggest gripes for me at the teacher level.
Do I currently use Infinite Campus in my classroom? Yes, there is no choice in the matter, all teachers are required to use Infinite Campus at my school.
Is Infinite Campus easy to use? In a word No. There are so many different components to learn and sometimes "hidden" commands to ensure that you have everything reportable can be frustrating at best. Infinite Campus is not something that you are able to sit down and simply start using without either prior training or help from someone who is knowledgeable of how it works.
When I started using Infinite Campus in October 2009, I had no formal training in how to use it and have learned how I use it today by trial, error and bugging my IT department. I have tried to read the documentation, but it is difficult to follow and I just give up after a while. The best word that I can use to describe Infinite Campus is cumbersome and it while it is supposed to be an integrated reporting system, it feels as if it is a bunch of separate modules and projects that have been patched together over time to become the program it is today. My experience with Infinite Campus is that there is a long learning curve.
How does Infinite Campus apply to Special Education? The ability to easily use a program to access parent contact information, student data (schedules, grades, attendance) is a great help in completing your duties as a Special Education Case Manager. At this time Maine's version of Infinite Campus does not have the Special Education Module included as yet. Infinite Campus is a great way to quickly answer questions during a PET on a student's grades, their attendance history etc. are features that I have come to depend upon.
I like the contact log to document when I have contact with Parents, Case Workers, other teachers, etc about a student. It has saved my butt a couple of times, but at the same time it is cumbersome to get to and just isn't that easy to use, plus cutting and pasting is not recommended and it does not have the capability to forward an email into the system, like you can with Evernote or other management systems. Therefore, I don't use this feature as much as it should be used.
What I like: Infinite Campus provides a great deal of data regarding a student that is accessible in one location and I believe that all schools should give teachers access to information that they need to best serve the students that they teach, without having to re-invent the wheel every year/month/day.
I really like that it is cloud based and doesn't take up any space on my hard drive. This means that I can access Infinite Campus from any computer or location that has web access. Therefore, I can work from home and easily enter my grades, etc. into the program.
The Grade Book program is mostly straightforward to use and enter data into and you have a couple of different methods to enter the grades. There are a couple of peculiarities that you have to be careful about "right clicking to post grade", ensuring that the numeric is selected in lesson planner and a couple of other "things" that you find out about when grades or progress notes are due and Guidance is breathing down your neck to get the data in so they can process the data.
Student and parent access is a great feature that allows them to track the work they are missing, what the current grade is, upcoming events, etc. It alleviates much of the routine questions that teachers used to get regarding those issues.
What I don't like:
Infinite Campus is a Student/School data management system that appears to have grown from separate modules, that attempts to do everything that someone wanted at one time or another. At this point in time Infinite Campus appears to be in transition from a tree based database to tab based (which is not available in all the modules). In my opinion it has grown bloated with far too many features "that some see as necessary, but are they really? I personally would prefer to have a program that provides the basic data that teachers are required to input and have access too and then can be manipulated into higher level reports for those further up the food chain, but is much more user friendly than it is now.
There are some days when Infinite Campus is snappy and quickly gets you to where you need to go and there are other days that it is slow and/or unresponsive. When you have those days it is frustrating to use.
Another issue is that sometime you will hit save and it doesn't - it is a pain to have the secretary call and say "Did you do your attendance yet?" When you did and it didn't, like they believe you when you say, "Yes I did", but you have to do it again. Or to have your grades entered and then have to go back and redo them "again."
The lesson planner section is next to impossible to use effectively to help plan your activities. It seems it is there more to provide documentation to the grade book than it is to help teachers with lesson planning. You can not add images, videos or anything other than text into your lesson plan on Infinite Campus and in today's multi-media rich world, it just isn't enough to only use text. The copy lesson plan/lesson function is byzantine and is it the lesson planner, lesson, activity, the nomenclature is a little confusing at first It warns you to not copy and paste from Word into the lesson planner.
You have to input into your lesson planner before you can use the grade book - there is no quick add feature to the grade book.
I personally do not use this module any more than I have to, basically just in order to be able to input my student's grades into the grade book. Which is unfortunate because there are other lesson planner software that allow you to really plan your lessons, this module is it is a duplication of work that I do elsewhere and cannot use that data here.
Something that really bothers me a lot is on general student information screen, the lack of Special Education information available to regular education teachers. There is a small flag that indicates that a student is Special Education
actual sizeand no other information as far as classroom accommodations, goals, etc. I know that there is supposed to be a separate Special Education Module, but the regular educators need much more information than a small flag beside the word Special Ed for the students who receive those services.
Maybe it will all be integrated and regular education teachers will have access to the Special Education module when it becomes available. Until that happens there must be a way to give those teachers more information about what they need to know to provide better instruction for those students who receive special education services.
These are my biggest gripes for me at the teacher level.
The reality is that I hear a great deal of grumbling and complaining from other teachers and office staff (and others) about how difficult it is to use Infinite Campus at our level. I personally find it to be cumbersome and difficult to use at times and I have been using data base programs since the 1980's, it reminds me of a program that was state of the art in 1990's and has had new features or updates added to as the need arose and is a very powerful tool that due its difficulty of use, is not used as effectively as it could or should be..
I fully see the need and want to have a student data base system available to input and have access to student data. However, I want that database system to be intuitive and easy to use and on that requirement Infinite Campus does not succeed. I don't know if any school-wide data management system will ever be completely intuitive, but Infinite Campus does need to work on this - a lot.
I find myself avoiding Infinite Campus unless I have to use it, instead of it being a product that I want to use (which is the way it should be), because as I have said a good student data management system is necessary and the data does get used by everyone from the student to the Superintendent of the District.
I fully see the need and want to have a student data base system available to input and have access to student data. However, I want that database system to be intuitive and easy to use and on that requirement Infinite Campus does not succeed. I don't know if any school-wide data management system will ever be completely intuitive, but Infinite Campus does need to work on this - a lot.
I find myself avoiding Infinite Campus unless I have to use it, instead of it being a product that I want to use (which is the way it should be), because as I have said a good student data management system is necessary and the data does get used by everyone from the student to the Superintendent of the District.
Recommendation: If I was on a data base search/purchasing committee and dependent upon how the RFP was written, I would have a difficult time giving a thumbs up for Infinite Campus to be a District's choice for a School-wide data base system; strictly from my perspective as a Teacher and Special Educator, due to the reasons I have listed above.
I believe that Infinite Campus needs to be re-designed from the ground up (and there are rumors out there that Infinite Campus is doing just that), to get rid of the bloat, create a more intuitive experience and a tighter integration of the software as a whole. If so I look forward to their "new" Infinite Campus, because the old one, is tough for me to use at times, even though I do use it when I have to.
What have you done to make a difference today?
LINK: http://www.onefootinreality.com/2011/02/infinite-campus-review-february-2011.html
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