Developing a management information system (MIS) is one approach to meeting the information collection, storage, manipulation, and usage needs of cooperative education. Within cooperative education, MIS can help in the areas of accountability, program planning, decision making, management of cooperative education activities, and program…

A school board member guides a tour of what is available for organizing school executives' schedules. Describes time-planner notebooks, computer software, and various academic and commercial online databases. Sidebars list the programs and products mentioned, discuss online services, and describe using a time-management planner in campaigning for…

Discusses techniques for managing documents in wide area networks, reviews technique limitations, and offers recommendations to database designers. Presented techniques include: increasing bandwidth, reducing data traffic, synchronizing documentation, partial synchronization, audit trials, navigation, and distribution control and security. Two…

Colleges and universities must find a way to streamline and integrate information management processes across the organization. The Georgia Institute of Technology responded to an acute problem of dissimilar operating systems with a campus-wide integrated administrative system using a machine independent relational database management system. (MSE)

Database Tomography (DT) is a textual database-analysis system consisting of algorithms for extracting multiword phrase frequencies and proximities from a large textual database, to augment interpretative capabilities of the expert human analyst. Describes use of the DT process, supplemented by literature bibliometric analyses, to derive technical…

In the Philadelphia Public Schools, a computer system called Data to Success has been created to assess student progress prior to end-of-year testing. The five-stage system allows a school to influence teacher decisions, identify student warning signs, and monitor important trend and analysis information throughout the school year. (MLH)

A data-management system adhering to seven principles (concerned with defining and measuring characteristics and their interrelationships) is feasible and exists in parts, if not as an integrated whole. Present data-collection and reportage systems lack the real-time, analytic longitudinal characteristics that contemporary technology promises and…

For some districts, the current obsession with data grows out of the need to comply with No Child Left Behind and additional accountability-related mandates. For others, it dates way back before the phrase "data-driven decision making" rolled so frequently off the tongues of educators. In either case, there is no denying that an integral…

This book describes the design and evaluation of a computer-based information system for secondary schools in The Netherlands. It reports on three studies: (1) a pilot study; (2) the SCHOLIS project, which designed a computer-assisted system for school administration; and (3) the evaluation of the implementation of a computer-assisted Absentee…

Discusses how to determine specific software that will provide solutions for today's requirements and probable desires of tomorrow. Steps in the process of software selection are justification for new technology; analysis of needs--today's and tomorrow's; helpful analyses tools, evaluating the options; selection and negotiation; and ongoing…

Imagine if, at the start of the school year, a teacher could have detailed information about the academic history of every student in her or his classroom. This is possible if the teacher can log on to a Web site that provides access to an educational data warehouse. The teacher would see not only several years of state assessment results, but…

Computer-assisted school information systems (SISs) are developed and used worldwide; however, the literature on strategies for their design and development is lacking. This paper presents the features of a fundamental approach to systems design that proved to be successful when developing SCHOLIS, a computer-assisted SIS for Dutch secondary…

This paper describes promising practices in developing model student information systems, with a focus on information management and administrative record keeping. Three school districts with exemplary information systems are profiled, using data derived from document analysis, on-site observation, and interviews with district and site-level…

Planned educational change tends to be imposed from the top down and increases the requirements for local reporting. This paper reports on the effects of a curriculum-planning workshop on teachers' instructional practices. Eight teachers at a Catholic college in rural Western Australia participated in a curriculum-planning workshop to learn how to…

A great deal of traditional indigenous knowledge is being irretrievably lost in New Zealand as the Maori elders age and pass away. There has been a resurgence of interest on the part of the Maori in recording traditional knowledge, particularly at the local or community level, and using new technologies to make aspects of traditional knowledge…