what is the roadmap for PSL now that powerschool is buying Schoology?

[jhanlon]

@Dan 

Your question is pretty to the point.  Mine was more a frustrated rant just wanting direction for the UC product so we can evaluate our options.

[rpsb]

Hi DANM3

They must have been running several question threads yesterday. I posted two questions that were not acknowledged and have not had a phone call from anyone either. It is beginning to look like those moderating the webinar question board were instructed to ignore questions related to PowerSchool Learning's future. Our school waited a year before switching to Unified Classroom hoping to avoid some of the early pain of the incorporation of Haiku as PowerSchool Learning. I don't think it is all bad, but there are serious issues with it. It was especilally frustrating to me that we were recomended specifically to watch this webinar by the PowerSchool moderators of this board with the promise that we would get answers to the types of questions we have all been posting since the event. I suppose they were as much in the dark as we still are about the future of PowerSchool Learning as the LMS function. It doesn't make us or PowerSchool look good when all you can do is shrug your shoulders when the principal asks us what is PowerSchool's plan for next year.

[DanM3]

@rpsb Upon further research last night I discovered the phone call was from the SALES department. 

[rpsb]

I too got a phone call today from sales following up on a conversation about the registration module but still nothing about the questions we have raised on the site in the last 24 hours.

I just received the link to the recorded webinar. This was the reply I sent.

Hi Michael,

I am not sure if you have been following the PowerSchool Community comments that have blown up on the site from customers like us who are PowerSchool Unified Classroom schools using PowerSchool Learning. I most emphatically did not enjoy the webinar as it was a complete waste of time for us. PowerSchool Learning was, literally, not mentioned one time during the entire nearly one hour webinar and the questions posted by me and other PowerSchool Learning customers are being ignored although there were promises that all questions would be answered either during the webinar or offline. I have not had any written response nor a phone call.

I was extremely disappointed and frustrated after the webinar and don’t know anything more to tell my principal now that before the webinar. Which is to say, I still know absolutely nothing about the future of PowerSchool Learning or how PowerSchool intends to transition us to Schoology Learning now that PowerSchool Learning no longer even appears on the info graphics of the PowerSchool Unified Classroom family of products. Our principal was going to watch the webinar using the link below but I have told him not to waste his time.

[jhanlon]

@DMFermiPhysics 

Its always great to hear how other people use the product.  I am sure one of the challenges for PS is that schools all value different features.  Everything you say I agree with.  The big thing for us is the assignment and activity list only shows categories as classwork when you do something in learning even if you change the category in PTP.  Also restricted learning assessments dont show in the assignment activity list.  We have brought this up many times and the attitude just seems to be... 'Yeah we know.  Use UC Assignment Submission"  Having the PTP gradebook and assignment activity list both be the same should be a high priority for developers when using a "Unified" product. The moxtra annotator in Learning is very valuable.  The UC Assignment submission with MS Handout just is still limited and that window is so small for grading. 

With Schoology Learning it says "Formative Assessment" and it looks like they want customers taking district benchmarks in Performance matters.  Schoology has the AMP add on https://www.schoology.com/k-12/assessment-management      So............. what is the role of this?  Can a UC customer use it?  Will it be supported?

With high school students especially the lack of push notifications through a mobile app in UC is a huge fail.

[rpsb]

Dear jbidk

Is there any comment you can share as this message thread's moderator from PowerSchool regarding the issues that have been mentioned in all the posts in the last 24 hours regarding yesterday's webinar? Since you encouraged us to attend to find our answers, I can only guess it was not what you were expecting either.

[jbidk]

Hi @rpsb,  

Thank you for reaching out to me on this. I have shared the questions from this thread with our PowerSchool team. The goal for the initial webinar was to address what PowerSchool’s acquisition of Schoology means for the entire K-12 community, and then to have follow up communication based on the specific solutions that are currently in use. With that in mind, we are planning additional information sessions where we can specifically address questions from our PowerSchool Learning and Unified Classroom Learning users. The details and invite for those sessions will be shared with you in the near future.

Jbid

[DMFermiPhysics]

@jbidk    Thank You...  we look forward to future sessions addressing both UC and "Schoology" Learning...

[hernick]

Got two email - first from sales wanting to pitch Schoology to me as I attended the seminar.

My reply to him was not very positive.

Second email came in as I was writing my response to the sales pitch - it was inquiring re: my questions... and they also followed up with a voice message (which I did not get due to teaching this afternoon.)

Left a voice message back, referring to this thread on the discussion boards and looking for some basic answers re: Learning product.

>>>>>Update<<<<

got a call from client rep as I was tying this reply.

Reps don't know what the roadmap is, they don't have any answers re: Learning in the suite going forward. Rep is following up w/ the powers that be at PS & will get back to me next week re: anything she can find out. Sounds like they have a lot of unknowns in their world.

[rpsb]

I received the same set of calls and voicemails from a Schoology rep, my PowerSchool sales rep, and my PowerSchool customer success manager. I didn't get to talk to my sales rep as I didn't get to his message until late this afternoon. Our customer success manager promised to forward our concerned to the product management team and said they were working on a roadmap specifically for how PowerSchool Learning customers will be moving forward. He implied they were hoping to have more details some time next week. It is a bit mystifying to me that a PowerSchool Learning roadmap forward isn't already in place.