Here is the second survey for the elementary reporting pilots in BCeSIS.
With SADE coming down the pipe for Ministry reporting I’m glad to see that the BCeSIS is an acceptable tool for reporting. Certainly some issues but if 68% of staff feel it is better than other systems, 12% neutral, 20% negative, I’m inclined to listen. I’ve included all the comments and results in the survey.
One issue that is still coming up is the upside down question marks. This is because teachers are copying from word with special characters into BCeSIS and it does not understand those characters. Yes I know those characters aren’t really special, usually quotation marks, but Word does something to them to change them into “smartquotes”… The solution for this is simply to copy and paste comments from word into a text editor like notepad or textedit. Then copy and paste them again into BCeSIS. Voila!
A strong motivation for using BCeSIS will be the upcoming requirement for SADE (student achievement and data exchange). This will eventually replace TRAX and is required of the schools. Without a system to properly collect and export the marks into the Ministry’s DX2 system it will become a nightmare for teachers, clerical, and administration staff to report. BCeSIS makes that part simple.
SADE is currently required in 8-12 schools. For us it was a relatively easy process compared to other districts who are not using BCeSIS for reporting.