Please Add My New Students to Data Director! (Data Director FAQ)

It's time to resurrect my long-neglected SEPData blog! My goal is to update it at least once each week for the rest of the school year to help answer some of the most frequently asked questions I receive as Southeast Polk's data and assessment coordinator. If you want to follow these questions and answers on Twitter, I'll use the hashtag #DataDirectorFAQ.

One of the most common questions I receive from teachers is "Can you add a new student to my class roster on Data Director?"

The short answer to that question is no, I can't.

The longer, more helpful answer is that teachers' rosters are updated weekly by Southeast Polk's information technology systems administrator Keith Lyles. Once per week, Keith extracts from Infinite Campus a massive spreadsheet containing scheduling and demographic information for all Southeast Polk students and the teachers with whom they're rostered. This spreadsheet is then uploaded to Data Director, and all of the user information for both teachers and students on Data Director is updated to match their user information on Infinite Campus.

Unfortunately, Data Director does not automatically sync with Infinite Campus, so when a new student is added, or a student's schedule is changed, her information won't be correct on Data Director until Keith's next update.

You can see when the last update was under "What's New in Data Director," on the left side of the dashboard.