Willing to share experience?

[kcain]

Hi @loridwyre

Yes, we have made the decision to widen our options regarding our SIS and LMS. I'm happy to talk more, if you'd like. Feel free to message me through this community or email directly: kcain@mountvernonschool.org.

Thanks,

Katie

[DanM3]

For some reason I didn't see this thread when it first started.  We transitioned to the Unified Classroom in August after being told by sales of how great of a product the UC is for its customers. It was a nightmare from the day they turned on the UC. Now I understand why the sales people were unable to provide us with a single reference last year. The pressure they put on us to "close the deal" before Christmas last year was amazing. Promotions and promises were what eventurally was sold to us. The implementation and training was awful and after the UC went "live" neither group would hardly respond.

This was the toughest transtion to a new product I've experienced in my 39 years of secondary education. To our teachers it was just another thing the administration was forcing them to use. Almost all of our teachers who use(d) Google Classroom still use it for their curriculum and classes. They basically just provide a link to their Google Classroom account.

All of that being said, I'm still a fervent supporter of PowerSchool's SIS. As principal I purchased the product at two school where I worked and have served as the primary PowerSchool Admin for many schools since 2000. When our customer satisfaction person asked my ratings for PowerSchool I quickly answered the SIS a 10 and the UC a 3.

Have there been improvements in the product since August, defintely. The product is starting to work better but is far from perfect and frustration free. Knowing what I know now I would have delayed our decision to implement the UC as our school-wide LMS until this summer at the earlies but most likely the summer of 2020.

Brother Dan Morgan

Saint Mary's College High School

Berkeley, CA

[kcain]

Hi @DanM3

Thank you so much for this thoughtful response. Unfortunately, your experience sounds similar to the schools I've connected with, on this forum and through Twitter. I agree with you about the strength of PowerSchool SIS and the sense of optimism regarding UC in the future. 

For now, we have decided not to move forward with Unified Classroom, based on this kind of feedback that I continue to hear from schools. Thank you again for sharing your experience.

Sincerely,

Katie

[loridwyre]

Dan,

We would love to speak with you regarding your experience.  We tried Unified Classroom rollout last summer.  It failed miserably.  We are coming from PowerSchool LMS and Power Teacher Pro.  

If there is a time that you are available to speak with us, that would be great.  We are here from 7:30 to 4:00 every day.

Thank you for your response.

[econleyshannon]

This is exactly our experience.  I am constantly checking for updates and they sem to be rolling out very slowly.  We need more communication for which updates are coming so we know if teachers should put forth time and effort into developing content in their LMS or stick with Google Classroom or Canvas and just focus on the SIS portion.

[jamiem7]

Thank you for your feedback!

I have relayed your feedback to the PowerSchool Product Team.  I have added updates that were covered in the April 24 webinar and will be released soon.

• Smart Text is now available for teachers, allowing them to enter personalized comments. Teachers enter the comment for one student, then using the Fill Comment feature, the correct name or specified pronoun for each student is automatically detected and entered.
• Fixed an issue that will now allow users to apply themes to Class Pages in Unified Classroom.
• Fixed an issue where students who changed sections in the same course in the SIS were not getting properly linked to the appropriate Master Class in Class Pages.
• Fixed a known issue where users were not receiving updates to Class Page Content if the page had multiple Roster Sections.
• Fixed a known issue where expanding the view for Recent Grades or Grade Summary for students would not appear correctly.
• Fixed a known issue that created errors in the PowerSchool Learning Gradebook when updating scores for assignments that had been weighted in PowerTeacher Pro.
• Fixed an issue where students were signing in to Unified Classroom and the reporting term did not update to the last selected term.
• Fixed a known issue where a Student Groups button appeared but was not authorized for some users.

[loridwyre]

PowerSchool needs to add the Google calendar to UC.  Those of us who have been using the LMS have had this option and moving to UC we lose this, which is unacceptable.  This along with many other shortcomings has made the decision to move forward off the table for this year.  We will review this again next year.

[jamiem7]

Thank you for posting your suggestion in the Community!

I have submitted a feature request to the PowerSchool Product team on your behalf to enable a Google calendar with Unified Classroom. We thank you for your suggestions to improve Unified Classroom for all users.