PowerSchool, a tech-education company once owned by Apple Inc, is launching new data analysis tools for millions of educators using its distance learning platform. With the learning gap growing as school closures continue because of the COVID-19 pandemic, data visualization will help educators identify and address gaps with personalized learning and resources, according to PowerSchool.
This new tool is part of the PowerSchool Unified Insights family of products and brings together data from PowerSchool’s Student Information System (SIS) and Schoology Learning Management System (LMS) to help users of these solutions better understand a whole view of their students. The analytics will help educators make informed decisions about broader gaps districtwide as well as give teachers the help they need to support individual student learning paths. “We’ve never before had the ability to combine LMS data with core SIS data in this way including ethnicity, attendance, IEP status, health information, standards mastery, and more. Being able to visualize these trends in the data with an industry leading analytics tool will be critical as we close this academic year and look toward the next, ensuring we keep kids on track,” said Tony Harvey, CIO, Muncie Community Schools. “This is data I need and would use all the time to help students reach their potential, not just in this time of the COVID-19 crisis.”
An estimated $8 trillion will be spent worldwide on education by 2025, with much of the growth in EdTech fueled by artificial intelligence. The number of students logging onto online classes has declined 43% since the start of remote learning, while the amount of students completing at least one virtual lesson decreased 44%, according to an Achieve3000 report.