Marissa Naab 0:03

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for the webinar Lightspeed Analytics CatchOn Edition, so, glad to have you all joined us here today. We’re gonna give folks a couple more minutes to hop on, so if you just hang tight for another minute or two, we will start the broadcast shortly.

0:47

OK, it looks like we’ve got a lot more folks hop on so, let’s go ahead and get started. Thank you all so much for joining us. My name is Marissa, I’m the Marketing Manager here at Lightspeed Systems. I am joined here today by Kirk Langer. He is the CTO at Lincoln Public Schools in Nebraska. We’ve got April Hughes, Regional Sales Manager at Lightspeed Systems, and Chris Travis, the CRO at Lightspeed Systems. A couple of quick housekeeping items before we get started today. This session will be recorded, so we will share the recording with you post event. You are welcome to view that at your leisure, or share with your colleagues, whatever you would like to do with it.

1:25

We also do have a Q and A session at the end of the presentation. So, if you have any questions about the material discussed today, please enter those in the question box, and we will do our best to get those answered for you.

1:38

Without further ado, let’s go ahead and get started with Chris. Chris, I know that the CatchOn acquisition is fairly new to Lightspeed, so would you mind just kind of talking about why we decided to do that, and what it looks like as we’re moving forward?

Chris Travis 1:52

Yes, sure. Thank you, Marissa, and thank you everyone, for taking the time to learn more about analytics today.

1:58

For us, it was really a no-brainer. Lightspeed has been supporting schools since 1999.

2:03

We’ve seen this customer journey progress from, need to make sure kids are filtered to device proliferation, which opened up the needs for more complex filtering, classroom management, mobile device management.

2:17

Because devices were on and off campus, locating those devices and keeping those devices safe, added into our Alert product, then, not the end of that journey. But once districts are there, they need a method to report on what’s happening. That could be a visibility tool, that could be a tool that provides return on investment for the applications they’ve purchased. It could be a mechanism to bring these to the forefront, to understand where to best put their PD dollars retirement.

2:46

And you’ll hear from Kirk and April more about the way that districts are using an analytics application, but for Lightspeed, we had our own analytics product.

2:54

We had a few million students using it, and realized the product, the team, and the mission at CatchOn, was in such alignment with us, made sense to join forces, and bring them into the fold.

3:07

And so what we were able to gain collectively, as this new organization is a better product for our thousands of school district customers, and a better experience, because now, rather than competing with each other, we’re putting our heads together, and solving the same problem, we were able to incorporate this powerful team that CatchOn has and mix that with our Lightspeed team, to get the best of both worlds.

3:28

And so we have a great developers, and great salespeople, great support people, professional development resources, all of these things that came together that were really a great fit.

3:37

And what we’re seeing so far, Marissa, and I think three months since we’ve done this, is a better customer experience for end users. Our existing Lightspeed Analytics customers are happy to transition over to CatchOn Edition.

3:51

I’m very eager to get that full feature set, because we’ve been able to put these two companies together in such a short amount of time. We now are iterating on the product that you’re gonna see today, and so, rather than again competing, we’re now building those blocks together. And it’s a little bit of a cliche statement, perhaps, but in this instance, 1 plus 1 is really three.

4:12

And so great feedback from our customer base, both our existing customers and, and the prospects that we have currently evaluating the solution.

4:20

And so, we know analytics as a whole. It’s a little bit of murky water in the in the marketplace. There are a variety of people that claim they have some version of analytics, again, Kirk and April will walk us through that.

4:34

But, we know that as districts come through the situations, they’ve been dealing with the last two years as devices continues to proliferate, and as we now understand the importance of a hybrid learning environment.

4:47

An analytics solution that is cross-platform, that is scalable, that is OS agnostic makes the most sense for customers and that’s feedback we have. So, we’re excited about the partnership, again, early days, but the feedback’s been tremendous and we’re very excited about it.

Marissa 5:04

Thank you so much, Chris. And, you know, I’m also super excited about this partnership. Really excited to see what’s going to happen moving forward. With that, I would like to pass it off to April. She is going to go ahead and get started with this discussion with Kirk Langer. And Kirk, if you could just give us some more information on your experience as a CTO at Lincoln Public Schools and a little bit more background information that would be great.

Kirk Langer 5:30

Oh, thank you. Um, yeah. I’ve been at Lincoln Public Schools for a long time.

5:36

And uh, it is not always in the job now as a CTO, but over the past. In the past almost 20 years, I’ve been in an administrative role doing a lot of the things that have risen to the level of now where our districts really has moved from thinking about technology as being something integrate, technology being integral. So, the idea of whether to have it or not, doesn’t in our current situation, in particular does a great deal of sense. So, it’s really grown. And along with that, and the love that use having disability is, is really important from a student data privacy perspective, from an information security perspective, and from ultimately a teaching and learning perspective.

6:23

So, a lot has changed over the years that I’ve been doing this. We’re a district of 42,000 students, we’re about, we have, … high schools we have 8, 12 middle schools, 40 elementary schools, were a 1:1 city, one school district group. So, it’s, it would have to be defined as an urban school district. We have about 50% free and reduced lunch as a measure of poverty.

6:53

And I think we’re a really high performing school district, and I think, you know, I think we owe a lot of that to very good leadership both at a district level, as well as at the building level and then just outstanding teachers who are capable of building relationships as a base trust and, and ultimately, inspiring kids to learn. So, good school district, we’re glad to be in a position to play a part of all that goes on here.

April Hughes 7:27

Thank you so much for that time. And Marissa, thank you for getting this kicked off today. So I’m excited to be here to have this conversation with Kirk and then a little bit. We’ll show you a little more about CatchOn, but I’ve had the privilege of working with Kirk and his team now for a couple of years. And always enjoy conversations with him so, let’s just kinda get started. So, over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a very distinct paradigm shift in education, and we’ve learned that the devices have become really the truly the sender and the receiver of all the educational information and possibly even the gateway to the classroom at times. And you kind of hit on that just a little bit a second ago. But what the device is being at the forefront right now, that’s created a lot of different challenges for school districts. So, could you share with us some of those challenges that you’ve experienced and maybe a few of the ways you overcame some of those?

Kirk 8:18

I mean, devices have really taken the taking the role of conveyance, right? So, a conveyance is something that gets you from one place to another, or whether that’s a car, a bicycle, and motorcycle, vote, jetski, whatever it may be, you might have fun doing it, but ultimately it’s good value for one place to another. And really, for a lot of our students, because we’re a device assisted learning, and instruction, is kinda what we term it. Rather than putting it as a 1 to 1, We talk about it in those terms. Because 1 to 1 is a quantitative measure of something that ultimately, we believe is about something it’s qualitative. It’s about learning.

9:00

And, know, from that, from my perspective, that conveyance brings with it, you know, a lot of students that are behaving and teachers for that matter as well. And it’s learning how to direct and focus to the appropriate context. And we’ll talk about that a lot throughout the conversation. Today is really, really important. And, so, I think, you know, from my perspective, one of the challenges that we often have has had is, is you hand out devices to students. And one of the things you’ll be asked is, so, where are all of our student data?

9:43

Well, that can be a pretty disarming sort of thing to be asked. If it’s well, I think there are a lot of places, so, the better that you know where those are, the better … Obviously, you’re in a position to talk about things like student data, privacy, better position. You’re going to talk about information security and if you don’t know where your data are, it’s awful hard to do any of those things. So, what comes with … a lot of people? A lot of students having those conveyances is taking a responsible, you know, approach to making sure that we’re helping to provide them the guardrails necessary. So, they don’t drive off drive off the roads metaphorically speaking and get themselves into in places they shouldn’t be and therefore compromise their privacy. And potentially than the information security the district.

April 10:35

So, on that topic of student data. So, I know you and I are both pretty passionate about data privacy. And I know Nebraska is really working hard work towards a standard on student data. Privacy with SPC. So, what we do also know we’ve learned from the past couple of years as data, that student data, is not what it used to be. It’s not just grades and attendance and behavior. It’s truly our patterns and what we’re doing online that becomes the product.

11:03

So, how are you approaching the management of that student data and that student data privacy now?

Kirk 11:10

You know, I think you know, as you kinda mentioned, we’ve gone through the paradigm shift in education, and I think there’s at least two very traditionally, two competing ways to look at paradigm shift. One, and I think one of the most noted to be the most noted this space, Thomas Kuhn talked about paradigm shifts happening pretty much all at once.

11:37

When the theories, the theoretical precepts upon which they are founded, can no longer support the paradigm or the paradigms no longer responsive, and so, the paradigm shift happens all once. Then Karl Popper was noted for saying, no, actually it’s the case that what actually happens is they change gradually over time, until finally you realize you’re doing something different.

12:01

Well, the truth of the matter is that I think it’s maybe not this or that in a very binary census this is um because our recent change during the pandemic, one would say, we had to do it overnight. We had a whole lot of remote learners and those kinds of things.

12:17

And that’s true.

12:18

And I would say the technology, generally speaking, hung in very well. Our teachers’ ability to leverage that technology for learning when all of a sudden, it was just sort of hoisted on them in that regard, it was challenging. It was a struggle. And so, you know, when I think about how, we do the things that we need to do and when that paradigm seemingly had changed so quickly. Um, I always go back to looking at what that incremental change has been, whether it’s truly been incremental, or are we basically exposing the fact that we haven’t been able to do some of that work? So, when it comes to the student data privacy piece, you know, we’re all very much aware, due to the ransomware attacks that have gotten a great deal of exposure. And now, their current situation geopolitically.

13:11

Talking about maybe additional geo additional tax taking place, we’re very much aware of that the people are not always necessarily aware of even some basic hygiene they could be doing to, to, you know, preclude finding themselves in that situation and districts. Again, goes back to, do you know where your data are?

13:34

What those data are? Because, you know, some data on each case.

13:37

Again, it’s public sensitive, which your phone number sensitive. You just don’t want everybody to have it, but, you know, it’s not confidential in the way that other things about you are.

13:50

And so, when you look at that, and you look at that continuum, one of the things that it starts with, is the best data classification in the world can’t do any good if you don’t know all the places that the data are. And so, when we looked at Analytics, it was critical for us to understand that, and understand the role that that the analytics to play in helping us understand. Yeah, these are the sponsored apps that the district has put out there for these purposes. But what are all the other places that people are going and using, and what are the implications of that?

April 14:20

So, it’s kinda like going back to, a lot of times, like you said, you want to know how, but before you know how, you have to know what and where and being able to identify that. So yeah, so talk to me a little bit about ROI, I know you have a really creative way of looking at it.

14:36

And ROI is not always been something, an acronym necessarily, that’s been used in the education space, but we’re hear more and more about it today. So, tell me a little bit more about your perspective of ROI.

Kirk 14:48

Well, I think that, you know, ROI in a traditional sense of return on investment. The investment is something that is, you know, very much you can do, looking at other things like key performance indicators, and so on and so forth, to get a sense of, well, we bought this thing, we have all these licenses. Are we using them?

15:07

And while that certainly, as a measure of investment, people are using it, I would say that as a necessary condition. Because if they’re not using it, yeah, you probably can’t have early any impact at all. The bigger picture, though, it seems to me in a K 12 environment, is if the I stands for Instruction, what does that return on instruction? If we’re going to use this thing? How much does it actually benefit the teaching and learning process? How easy is it to be leveraged for learning?

15:42

How, you know, What’s the level of the implementation in terms of the fidelity of that?

15:47

And, so, really beginning to look at it in a way that I think is much more holistic than simply saying, are people using it?

15:55

And, April, you know, you’ve heard me say this before, but I think a lot of times, we tend to look at something, and we say, Well, you know, it looks like people are using that, are using that particular environment quite a bit, OK, well, is that alright?

16:11

And if the response as well, we kinda took a look at it, and we don’t think that poses any real security threats, or data privacy issues as nicely integrated into our, we can certainly make it possible to integrate already. And access management. So, a single sign on, that’s all good.

16:27

In the end, if what we say is, is that, well, I don’t know, it’s not gonna, I don’t think it’s gonna hurt anybody that’s roughly akin to the, you know, sir that the FDA stamp of approval on something that you might eat. They’re not saying that it’s nutritious. What they’re saying is that it’s safe for you to eat that not necessarily if you’re eating it constantly, but it’s OK, I think what some of the what happens is that’s a pretty low bar to hit. What we’re talking about investment fiscally and investment in instructional time. That’s that the bar simply is not significant enough. So, really, to look at it in terms of return on instruction means, we’re going to have to get to a point where we start to say, is the environment being used?

17:10

But then the next thing that we gotta get at is, is it being used in such a way that it’s having an impact on it in the way that we intend, on students’ learning.

April 17:22

That’s awesome, so that’s a good segue to ask on this next piece, you know.

17:26

So, I know you and your team have a great relationship between your technology and curriculum and instruction teams, but we don’t always see that across the country. So, we always see, a lot of times, they still operate in those silos. And this paradigm shift we experience has really forced our districts to really need to co-operate and work differently together. So, I know you have a wonderful team there. But would you share with us and the audience on how you really foster that culture of working together? So, you can hit some of these metrics, you talked about?

Kirk 18:01

I think, first, you know, for me, it really is always about, we have the teams that are part of the department that I lead into division, that I lead it. We have our information Technology Services, our edtech services, our technology support services group, and then our Information Security Services group. The thing that you would note in all those is “something, something” services, it starts with service and from our perspective, and try to have that Servant Leader, we ultimately see that.

18:38

whether it is if you go back to the thought of the device as a conveyance, it’s not the end in and of itself. It’s where do I want the conveyance to take me. And so, really, it’s the purpose. And having it in the first place is, because there are places that you want to go, some that you have to get just for whatever reason, or the other. Because you want to be able to get there. You want to be able to explore.

19:01

And so, I think in that case, when you start from a service mindset, when you start and understand that this is now, in many cases, a utility. It’s a necessary condition, and a jumping off point or a way to get people there. That sets the right tone for it.

19:16

And that really, then, you go and you say, OK, so, from a basic operational standpoint, this is the thing that can get us there. But then functionally, you know, what are the things that it needs to be able to do? And how do we care with you, partner with you, to make sure it can get to those? And so, I think really building a building, and establishing a culture, maintaining that culture is starting from the right perspective.

19:44

Which is, yes, this is an important thing. There’s a lot of things that we have to do to make sure that the environment stands up and can fulfill its purpose.

19:53

But there’s really no, almost no part of it that is an end in, and of itself. It serves to the bottom line, and I tell people the group that I have the privilege of leading.

20:05

We are responsible both for helping the district conduct business that’s buying things, and paying people, and all of that, as well as conducting business. We’re also very much about the business of the district, which is, teaching and learning. And so, we play both of those.

20:25

And I think if you have that, or you have that sort of culture, you can start to come around to say, we can help you find solutions. We can help guide and direct when necessary. And it turns out, because a lot of us have been doing this for years and years, we have our own opinions, about pretty much everything that said, we don’t lose sight of the fact that, ultimately, it’s defined the right mix. So, that people, so that our students have the opportunities, they need to be in an equitable format. To make sure that they can achieve the levels that they need to, to continue their process throughout their lives.

April 21:02

Awesome. Well, it’s no secret that you and your team use Lightspeed Analytics- CatchOn Edition there.

21:11

So, would you elaborate on exactly how you are using the analytics solution from us, to help really meet some of these metrics that we talked about?

Kirk 21:26

Yes, so going back a little bit. We looked at a number of different platforms. And.

21:35

They, I would say, you know, they provided some visibility, but we didn’t feel like it was safe, in any number of those cases, to draw really strong inferences from what we were seeing. And that was a concern at the most basic level. If you’ve got data, but you’re not sure that the data truly are representative of all that’s going on, then you’re going to be remiss if you do anything. Other than just say that enough, not go about making a whole lot of drawing a lot of instances from it. So, we had looked around quite a bit, and, and CatchOn was something that had no pun intended, caught our eye.

22:17

And then we had an opportunity through the work with Digital Promise and the League of Innovative Schools had an opportunity to engage in a study that used the analytics environment CatchOn to, you know, to basically form what kinds of environments we were using. How are those paying the …? All those sorts of things that were part of the study. And we just sort of elongated that study and stayed with it. And ultimately, became a customer of CatchOn. And for us, it was being first and foremost, clear that the data that we’re being presented, was what we’re actually doing. And we didn’t have any misgivings about that, on any questions we had. We were able to work through, and work with the data scientists, and folks at CatchOn.

23:14

So, I think that was really important. And then it allowed us to start looking at everything from how are we using our investment in our licenses? Different environments? What are the other environments that are being used? How do those compare those? How does that compare to what those companies might be saying we’re doing? Because I’ll give you maybe a quarterly, or they might have some basic dashboard views, and those things didn’t always sync.

23:38

And frankly, you know, what we found was it’s much more reliable. We feel, to look at what we’re getting in the CatchOn data is much more closely is aligned with our experiences anecdotally and in our observations of different environments. So, we felt that was obviously a much better look at what was actually going on. That allowed us to then do some work with our Curriculum Instruction

24:07

Folks. They were trying to look at some continuation of certain Licensing arrangements that they had. And they were considering looking at another direction, and it really provided them some insight.

24:25

They wouldn’t have otherwise had to be at the ready to say, well, look, I mean, we’re not saying that this level of usage is good, or bad, or simply presenting you with. This is the level of usage. And you can begin to drill down and see that level of usage is differential. In some cases throughout the district. And so, starting to get out those questions. I think what Analytics is ultimately meant to do is provide you that context around, OK, where things are actually happening. Do you understand that? So, you can ask the right questions. It’s not all just obviously about the answers.

25:04

And the other thing I just wanted to touch on would, you know, the question was asked earlier about looking at what makes what makes analytics such a good fit? When you talked about something like filtering, about something like student safety, and those sorts of things, what makes it such a compelling fit is in the data. In the information security environment. We talk about a product or products called Seems Secure Event Management. So, it’s this idea that you’re taking all of these data from all of these different places, in log files, and you’re mixing them together, and you have the ability to start going against that. And it starts to tell you: you may not be aware that this person who’s behaving this way over here, on this system is also behaving over here on this system. And simultaneously, they seem to be some type of very omnipresent individual, because they’re also in a different part of the world operating seemingly. And you don’t realize that’s going on, unless you begin to correlate those things.

26:06

So, I think what I really see that is exciting about this is, bringing these things together, is that now CatchOn is in a position to do all the things they’ve done. Traditionally vis-à-vis having that agent on a Chromebook and seeing, in our case, for example, and seeing all the places students are going and so on. But then marrying that up to a filtering device that also kicking out a whole lot of data that says, well, it’s not just where they’re going, but in any number of cases, what kinds of things are they searching for? What are the questions that are on their mind and whatnot? When you start to be able to bring those things together, it is a very powerful tool for providing the context in which learning is taking place, or the context in which it is not.

April 26:50

Awesome. Thank you, Kirk. And so, I’m glad you touched on that because of that as part of what we’re so excited about as being part of the Lightspeed umbrella, products and services that they offer. And so, we do know, as we move forward in this relationship, that the integration is going to become very tight, and you’re exactly right, we’re going to be able to provide a lot more information, and data, and services to our customers. So, Kirk, I really appreciate you sharing some time with us today, and as always, given us a great insight on your view to things, and we just really appreciate you very much today. So, I hope you hang out with us for a little bit longer.

Marissa 27:30

Thank you again, so much for sharing your insight. It’s always so great to hear from a district perspective on how these tools, work, and best practices, and sharing your success. But the audience, it’s just, I love these types of presentations. But, that being said, I know we are going to move into a quick demo of the CatchOn solution before we do that. However, I want to get the audiences, and we’re going to take a quick poll, if you guys could do us a favor, and not really quickly, Just so we can have a better idea of

28:05

what is going to be beneficial to you when we go through the demo.

28:08

So, I’ll give you all a couple of minutes to fill that out.

28:22

OK, looks like we’ve got a few more responses coming in. Let’s give it another minute or two.

28:41

All right.

28:42

So, it looks like we’ve got 42% are looking at Software Utilization and ROI, 33%, student engagement and motivation, 22% data privacy compliance, 4% accuracy, efficacy, and 2% other. So, with that being said, I am going to give the reins to you, April and you can go and start that demo.

April 29:08

Right. Give me just minute.

29:14

There we go. I think everybody can see my screen now.

29:18

So, awesome, so let me get this situated a little bit. So, I’m going to kind of follow through this a little differently than what I would normally do. Just a quick caveat, I don’t do the best pan demo. I really go into this from a perspective of when we are talking with districts and our customers, understanding what their exact needs are. So, that poll was really great, because it gives me an idea of what everybody’s looking for. So, around that software utilization ROI, student engagement motivation, and also that data privacy and compliance.

29:51

So, a little bit to what Kirk said about how we manage the data. So, just like your Lightspeed filter, we see every single bit of web traffic that’s out there. However, we aggregate that data specifically to educational tools. So, we have an applications library that is built currently. We have a little over almost 4400 tools there, and so these are all global profiles and have been created for all of these, what we deem as educational tools. We then aggregate that data further down to the devices based on broken down by campus, grade level, even going down more deeply into your user level. And if you’re using our Chrome or Edge extension, there were some, you know, really want to know that student engagement.

30:36

Even down to that active window timeframe, when the students are on those specific windows. So, I’m going to dive in here, just to quickly, I will do this as fast as I can. So, from a device standpoint, we give you a snapshot of what the device activity has been along with your roster users and not rostered users. So, just like some of the other tools you use, we pull in a roster from your student information system, that gives us all of the data around your courses and those individual users. And then, so we’re able to say, have those, as rostered are not rostered users, not Rostered would be. If I’m a new student. And I start today, and our roster upload hasn’t taken place, I don’t know exactly where to aggregate that data. So we quantify it as I’m not rostered user for right now than it self corrects itself, once the neat rosters uploaded.

31:27

So, you can see your active devices, and we break those down by device type.

31:31

So, we know from a demo yesterday with a district here in South Carolina that has three different types of devices throughout their ecosystem. And so, for them, it was really important to understand how those devices are being utilized. Where as Kirk … chrome. And so, he would really want to know how those specific Chrome devices are. You can pop in here each day to get a quick snapshot.

31:55

We break it down even further from, you know, looking at it by your campus information, by your grade levels. And then again, also by that device type also.

32:05

Going back to the campus’s, a great use case here is one of our districts in New York. She really used it as a checks and balance system. So, say, for example, at Adams elementary, she knew. There were 438 students. There are users, and she had deployed 450 devices, but there are only showing 403 active devices.

32:26

So, that campus administrator came and said, I need 10 more devices immediately. She’s like, oh, wait a minute. We need to understand where are those other 47 devices are before we start issuing additional ones? So, for her, it was a heavy checks and balance system. Just another place to make sure that oversight was there. And again, as we’re talking about ROI, really wanted to ensure the spend on those devices as well.

32:52

So, that’s quickly about our, how we break it down from a device perspective.

32:58

Additionally, as you guys are talking about that software utilization and ROI, one of the things we do is we have an implementation team. And so, we work with you, and work with all of our customers to understand all of the applications that have been purchased from a district level, or even by a location level.

33:15

So, we want to enter that information into our system, so you can really see the breakdown on, you know, how that return looks based on the actual users that are using the tool.

33:26

You can enter that information based on a district purchase, or again, on a campus purchase, and as you see here, you can break that information down.

33:35

So, we do that for you as well.

33:37

Yeah.

33:38

And then we can also, I apologize that Internet is lagging just a little bit here today, but we also can do it at a campus level. But then, if we want to really drill deeper into that software utilization and that ROI piece, and we show you those actual tools again. So, we’re gonna go here and click on the engineering.

33:58

But as we know, … is used mostly for credit recovery and learning loss. In a lot of districts, purchases, maybe for their high schools and so here you get a really great insight, as Kirk was saying, you know, understanding this is that data to understand how it’s been used. And then you can provide it to the necessary teams to really drill in and get, allow them to go more into that FSA efficacy and make sure it’s being used in the way they want it to align with their curriculum goals.

34:27

So, here, we give you a snapshot on the average daily users, the percentage of your licensing, licenses that have been used in the last seven days, your average cost per license, and truly if the solution is utilized at its fullest. It becomes your full repository for all of these applications, free or paid.

34:47

Here is a great example of that, we’re showing you the days until your next renewal. So, there, again, it’s really robust and really does impact multiple departments within the district. You can scroll down here and take a look and say, OK, here, only two of our four campuses are using this tool. If, by chance, again, if you have purchased … for utilization and all of your high school campuses, and only two of those are using the tool, you now, as Kurt mentioned, have that hard, factual data to say, go to those stakeholders. Open up that conversation, I’m saying, Hey, where you say you’re not use an engineered for credit recovery and learning loss. How can we help you better utilize it? Do we need to do additional PD or I can show you in just a few minutes. If there are learnt using something else, you can ask those questions around why they’re choosing to use a different tool, really engaging the stakeholders in those conversations.

35:47

So, now we’re gonna go into Trending tools.

35:49

Trending Applications, this truly, to me, is where everything takes place, honestly, and this tells us your data story.

35:59

This tells us what’s going on in your district at any given moment in time, And so, this is our demo data, so, it’s a little low. I would fully expect, on average, within most districts, this number really trends around, anywhere above 750 to 800. We’ve seen some as many as 2000 and specific districts. So, this, again, is, like what I said, your data story, you can see all of the tools on. So, we know, for example, in this district, they use … for their LMS.

36:28

They are on Google Classroom, Um, User their courts are using connected McGraw hill so that tells us how they’re being used.

36:37

If you’re using an SSO application, we would expect to see those trending high. If you’re prepping for testing statewide testing that’s coming up, we know for a lot of districts, we would expect to see some of those tools, trend to the top.

36:50

But you see here, you can see it says Licensed and Approved.

36:53

So, this is where you can identify all of those tools that may not be, that you may not be aware of. So, as we mentioned earlier, it’s really difficult to understand the how, without knowing, what and where. So, you can say these are licensed, and these are approved. So, we automatically know that we’ve worked through the platform with our teams to approve those tools. Yes, maybe they’re free, and we didn’t purchase them, but they aligned with our data privacy standards, and aligned with our curriculum standards, and we can support it from a technological standpoint.

37:23

So, we’ve approved yet, but we can scroll down, through, here, and we can see this breakout EDU is in review. So, you have the ability within our system to market, as approved, not approved, or, in review, and then you’re also able to push out that list to your stakeholders, and are really easy to access. And, I’ll show you that in just one second.

37:45

We’re gonna click here, and that Breakout Edu and it says, We give you this global profile, it shows you a little bit of information about the tool.

37:53

You can also see what it’s associated with from a tag, and also from a category system, And then here, you can also see that it’s been part of a third party review. This is something we’re very proud of, and we’re excited to be able to provide to our customers because it automates the process that for a lot of districts becomes very cumbersome and laborious.

38:15

So, automatically, we can tell you here that this tool Breakout Edu has signed on with CPC. And, if it had also been through the IMS global trust embedded apps process, it would be listed there as well.

38:33

So as I mentioned here, you can actually store this data. And I apologize, it’s looking at screens, not sure when it exactly the way It should. But you can actually take it here. So you can sort by tags. You can sort by categories. You can look at the utilization by campuses, grade levels, Funding source. We actually have a district in Oklahoma that utilized title funds to pay for majority of the solution, because they were able to tag those solutions that they had use title funds to be able to purchase X, then able to export that. And then anywhere you see the down arrow and the solution, you can export it into a CSV or a Google Sheet.

39:10

If it is also one of the, I’m sorry, excuse me. one of the table formats you can export it into a PNG or a PDF file also.

39:21

We do also have Northbound APIs for any of you that are using Microsoft Power BI or even Google Data Studio. And we can export our aggregated data into those for you also.

39:32

You can also sort here by those third party reviews, which is where we go back into that data privacy.

39:38

So, I want to take a look here at any of those that are by been through IMS Global.

39:45

And so, we’re going to take a look really quickly at news LA, and say, oh, we’re going to scroll down and take a look at the third party review. And you can see here, just as was, similarly, you can see it is GDPR or not GDPR compliant, FERPA, and HIPAA compliant, again, taking that burden off of all of you guys know, that, That’s something that one of your team members, typically would have to do. If you’re an IMS Global member, you can certainly click there and go directly into their website to get more information on what that rubric as and why they actually judged at the way they did.

40:20

So, in Trending applications, again, lots of detailed information. You can sort by tag, which is one of the … this is one of our favorite exercises we do with new customers.

40:31

So, I just sorted by student login.

40:33

So, again, this is, these are applications that require some type of credential to be created, automatically know that there’s some type of PII possibly being transferred back and forth. So, as a district, again, understanding what and where can, also, when we’re talking about that safety piece, you know, really understanding these have been accessed. So, for example, my daughter in fifth grade signed up for Duolingo. And said, Hey, Mom, I signed up for Duolingo today. And I said, great, why. I wanted to speak Japanese. And I said, OK, how do you sign up? She said, I pressed sign-up with Google, so automatically, she signed with Google, the district, and it wasn’t necessarily aware of it. But there, again, this gives you that opportunity to be able to see those tools, because we know as hard as everybody tries, these kids are really intelligent, and they somehow get around it all the time.

41:26

I’m going to cut a couple of other things very quickly here, again, privacy. We know how laborious it is to try and understand those privacy policies much less when they are. There are changes made. So, each week, we do a privacy policy scan. And in that scan, we notice, we see that any one single character has been changed. And then we said that we send out notifications via e-mail.

41:52

And then, we also have a dashboard for student data privacy, where you can see those applications that have those changes, also, I’m going to take a look here at UCLA.

42:03

And so, we automate this process for you. And you can see here, anything in red was removed anything, and green was added. And anything in blue was a formatted text change. So here, they replaced the lowercase letters and the end of cookies and replace them with uppercase letters. Then they added a link here for behavioral advertising.

42:22

So, we know now that this is something that, when it does change, it can definitely impact your privacy policies, and especially around any, you know, that data where it’s collected, what they’re doing with it.

42:37

Then, from an approval standpoint, we mentioned being able to share with the applications on how you can approve those. So, we do give you the opportunity to be able to create this approved applications list, the ones that are in Review, and not approved, so, we can actually show you. You can manage that list here, you have the ability of what you want to share with, the public being, able to share, OK, I just want to show the approved or not approved. I want to provide the attachments their terms of service! What campus or grade levels that are allowed to be using them?

43:11

We give you the link that you can embed into your website, or possibly even into an e-mail, to parents and, or additional stakeholders, and then you can see this is what it looks like to your public, very easy to use. It’s not a document that you have to go to keep updated. It is something that’s automated within our processes.

43:35

And lastly, we’re going to discuss these widgets here on the front of their ability to create these dashboards. So here, I’ve created one for a superintendent that wanted to specific information. And the story behind this district is, it was a newly 1-to-1 district, and the state had just issued a new math curriculum initiative, as well. And so, this superintendent, particularly wanted to see the seven-day district device utilization, on being able to monitor how those tools, how those devices are used.

44:10

And we also give you the ability to say in and out of school timeframe, and being able to see, you know, how are those devices being used and how the application is being used? It’s not geolocation, it is actually that timeframe. Allowing your curriculum instruction teams to understand those patterns of learning even more.

44:28

And then again, you can see, we identified all of the tools from a map perspective that have been used across the district.

44:34

So, these widgets are able to be created right here. These are already prepopulated for you, and that you have the ability to kind of manipulate those in a way that fits you best, based on your role within the district. So, these dashboards are specific to you. You can share those. You can give the people, you share them with rights to make changes or read only. So that’s all up to you, as well.

44:57

And, finally, I’m going to go to user Reporting.

45:02

So, this is where we talked about being able to get into your and see those active minutes, and what those kids are really doing within the solution. So here, you can see within the user reports, you can look at all users, Active or Inactive users on campuses, Those grade levels, course section, and device type, and even in the Categories and tags.

45:22

But this goes into that user level data.

45:24

So, we’re going to take us to peek here at Wade.

45:28

And so, as Kurt mentioned, we all know that there’s multiple different providers, and every single provider has a different definition on what they quantify as an engagement, and also what they quantify as utilization. So, we standardize add on across the board.

45:44

So, we’ve created our engagement is one unique user per hour. And then again, we can provide you that active window information if you’re using our Chrome or Edge extension.

45:54

So, I’m going to scroll down here, really quickly, and take a look at what Rate Wade was doing. We’re gonna go look on Monday, March 28.

46:02

You can see here, and the hours from 7 to 8, there was one engagement, you know, two engagements there, and that’s before school time, and then you can really see those minutes, because of that active window.

46:15

You look over here, you can, during the school day, you can see going into Gmail, Schoolology, interacting with engineered a storyboard time, Time Timer. So you can really see how the students are interacting with those different applications. So, with that, that is a very fast, quick, high-level overview of CatchOn, and it gives us a little bit of time for Q&A. And I appreciate you guys listening to us today.

Marissa 46:44

You so much, April. That was really great. It’s so exciting to see the CatchOn Dashboard in action. With that, we’re going to move into Q and A quick little bit. A quick reminder that you guys, if you have any questions about what was discussed today, please put it in the question box and we will do our best to answer those.

47:03

Let’s start off right now. This question is for Kirk. It says, what functionality of CatchOn do you use the most?

Kirk 47:12

I would say, uh, I’d say what we use most is the trends, as April talked about. A lot of things are happening there. But, we also, I would say, as we sort of get beyond looking at that, just where things are at and start to drill down. We are increasingly using it to look at what’s happening at the classroom level and understand better the degree to which are different tools are being used day in, day out, and how that maps up with achievement is going in those settings.

Marissa 47:56

Thank you. Got a question from Rickie … what kind of locally installed applications is CatchOn able to detect?

April 48:05

So, depends on the locally installed applications. That’s always a good question, so as long as those tools are actually interacting with the with the internet, so we do it on their DNS. So, if it’s anything, I always like to say, if it’s on an iPad and say Candy Crush, we’re not going to monitor or anything like Candy Crush as long as those tools are interacting with the web. We capture that information.

Marissa 48:31

I’ve got a question for Kirk.

48:34

Why did your district decide to adopt an analytic solution and how long have you had it?

Kirk 48:40

Now, I would say we’ve adopted it as formally, we adopted CatchOn as part of that work we did with, with Digital Promise in League of Innovative Schools. As I indicated, we looked long time before that and with a number of different vendors, some of whom were providers. For example, our classroom management provider was providing some analytics in the way of and we use Bara or Hopper, depending how you say it. But the truth of the matter is that what they were capturing was really specific to,

49:15

and only to the Google environment. We wanted much, much wider looked and breath than that. So, we’ve been, I would say we have been more than just moderately intrigued by having an analytic solution for, ever since we’ve had Chromebooks, and the district, which has been six years. We’ve gotten very, very interested, and have been using a lot over the course of the last 12 to 18 months.

Marissa 49:42

And kind of follow up on that, what’s the main usage of this data for your district?

Kirk 49:50

Well, I think it, I think first it’s that base level return on investment so we can understand whether or not the solutions were purchasing are actually in use. That’s, for me, though, That’s the table stakes stuff with any analytic solution. What we’re really interested in doing now, we are doing increasingly is, we’re marrying that up directly with differences in student achievement. It doesn’t always mean that he or she who uses an environment more than somebody else, just because the amount of use it’s going to be their students are going to be achieving better. In fact, it can have an inverse relationship, in some cases, but we need that information, as well. Because it could just be, it’s providing the students. instead of being engaged, the students are enticed, but they’re not, they’re not actually learning anything and so are they learning what we expect them to? So, we’re using it or we’re using it as you would expect.

50:50

At the, at that base level, to understand whether we’re getting good utilization of the tools for purchasing. What other tools that we’re not purchasing are being used out there. But then ultimately, we want to get down to that return-on-investment level and that’s where we’re headed.

Marissa 51:04

Perfect.

51:05

And then I’ve got another follow-up to this I’m really excited about, what is your best advice for new analytics tool users?

Kirk 51:13

Hmm.

51:14

Now, from my perspective I guess, the first admonition is or I guess it’s a little strong. I guess the first suggestion is, don’t boil the ocean.

51:25

Because you’re gonna be in this environment, where you’re gonna want to just, you’re gonna want to say, we can tell you all of these things now. And the truth of the matter is that the environment’s going to give you all is going to provide you a lot of data. Those data are not going to, they’re going to be right, they’re going to tell you what’s going on.

51:50

Numbers don’t lie in that regard.

51:52

But whether or not the numbers tell you, the truth is really a matter of what questions you start with and then what questions you begin to evolve into. And, so what I would say is, is that, I think you have to start from a basic business model. To some degree on, a basic implementation model of are we getting the use, and the fidelity of use that we would expect. And then you got to basically continue to evolve and gravitate along that continuum to start asking deeper questions about. Well, sure. It looks like we’re getting all the use of this tool over here. Why might that be? We saw that we have a couple of different student engagement tools, one that is sponsored, and it’s paid for by our Curriculum Instruction. And another one that wasn’t and all of a sudden, we started seeing the one that wasn’t creeping up and they were using the premium version of it.

52:37

And what we really sort of saw was it didn’t it wasn’t tied to student learning at all. It was tied to, it provided more bells and whistles and they were enticing students and it was the novelty of it more than anything else.

52:54

He said, That’s, that, I guess, maybe as a loss leader. But if that’s all that, it’s providing for you over the other environment where we’ve already have a lot of shovel ready stuff in the way of content for you to go with. Yeah. It’s probably better for everybody as you sort of find your way back over to here and really allow the students to get focused in on the things that are going to be the most important. What’s your … teach?

Marissa 53:18

 Back over to April. We’re going to a local question, what? I’m sorry.

53:24

Do you work with compliance with New York and law two D?

April 53:29

Yes, That is probably one of my favorite things to do. So, yes, that is something that we have been heavily engaged with. And, so we do actually help with that. Because it’s my understanding with … that they have to have a data privacy shared agreement signed with each of the providers, even the … agreements. So, again.

53:52

In order to be able to comply with that, you have to know what’s being accessed. And so being able to have that insight into those tools allows the districts in the state of New York to be able to go out and get that data privacy agreement signed. Even. I didn’t get a chance to show you this in the demo, but we also give our customers the ability to upload those agreements that can be shared publicly. And so you have that ability within the system effect. 

Marissa 54:15

And then another question for you, April. In the Apps View, when an app is moved from in review to approved, does that integrate directly to Lightspeed Filter rules, or is that a separate process?

April 54:30

That is a separate process.

54:35

Just, I know, but we have a beautiful roadmap coming up for the future of our platform that ours, measuring everything together and the integration, But right now that is a separate process.

Marissa 54:48

Kind of marrying Kirk’s earlier question on why he found the most valuable about the solution. What would you say your customers find most valuable? Once they start using CatchOn?

April 54:59

Oh, wow, Know, I think it’s very independent to each district. You know, like, Kirk, their goals at Lincoln are one thing, where Omaha has neighboring district might be something completely different. So I’d, it really does strongly depends. Like, for example, in New York, a lot of the districts they are finding value in, being able to comply, with Ed Law TD for I’ve got a district that I work with in Texas that you know for them they really are drilling into that our ally. I have a district in Virginia where they saved 17% of their digital spends on all of these tools, so it truly depends on what those independent goals are for those districts.

Marissa 55:49

Thank you.

55:50

Kirk, this is kind of more functionality question for you. Who are on your team, manages the solution day to day?

Kirk 55:59

I would say on a, on a day-to-day level, would be the person that are an educational technology director.

56:06

She’s the person that I wouldn’t say nuts and bolts unnecessarily, but certainly working in the environment. And then making sure that from a use of widgets, and the crafting of widgets, and so on to provide people, the type of information and feedback that’s going to be most helpful for them. She’s the person that does that. She understands the context in which it needs to operate and so she can craft the context to it. There’s nothing more disarming sometimes are getting into environment. And there’s so many things going on. It’s like, I looked in there, I can figure out what I was supposed to be looking at. What she really seeks to do is provide them.

56:43

You can look a lot of places, but this is the area of what you’re currently, currently, most interested in. This is what’s going to provide you the feedback that you need to really, you know, it’s really understand it the best that you care.

Marissa 56:54

Great. Thank you. And, if you share this information with other district, faculty members, who do you share it with the most?

Kirk 57:04

It’s funny, because I would say we share it. You know, I share, and obviously, I was just at a conference earlier this week. And it’s the kind of information that other CTOs, Tech Directors, Chief Information, you know, Tech and Innovation Officers look at. But it also very much captures what the Chief Academic Officers, Directors at C&I, those how those folks are interested in it as well. So, in our case, you know, one of the things that I encourage is, when you’re in, this goes back to the question you asked a little earlier around, What’s really important when you’re bringing an analytics tool? And it’s really important to bring it in a way that’s very transparent.

57:46

And building trust around it because there’s always that little thing that says, Well, does this mean you guys are watching everything we’re doing? And sort of that, then you hear that, you know, the BB, the Big Brother word come out. And, that’s an Orwellian sort of big brother that, you know, somebody looking over our shoulder. The truth of the matter is, what we tried to do is build it.

58:08

So that, rather than being your, well, you know, Big Brothers, to kind of the Big Brother that I had, who took care of me.

58:14

And when he was standing behind me, he wasn’t so much watching, He wasn’t so much looking over my shoulder, which is annoying. He was watching over me. And that’s really what we’re trying to provide and say, CatchOn, is just one of those things to him to basically increase our standard of care so that we know the things that we’re doing and they can be maximally useful and effective for students learning and teachers teaching.

Marissa 58:36

Yeah. Thank you, Kirk. And we’ve got a follow up question from the attendee who asked about the best practices. What was your learning kind of like when you initially adopt a touch on? How long did it take to get up and running?

Kirk 58:48

Now, I would say, you’re going to need to do that work at the outset with in the more ready you are to do your roster and those sorts of things. In … using a one roster type of environment, it was pretty quick to get to get up and going on that, but that’s, that’s the basis of it. And then it’s a matter of, when you start to move, and it’s like moving into a house. You get all the first, but in there, then you guys are hanging stuff on the walls, and so on, and so forth.

59:15

So, from my perspective, I think we were able to know, it has a fairly low entry point.

59:24

Um, but like a good low entry point tool is, you sort of walk in, and pretty soon you’re up to your knees. You’re up to your waist.

59:31

It can go all the way to the deep end and you can get there. But you don’t have to start there. So, I’d say, from an entry point, we were looking at, we were looking at data once we had the environments that we were looking at data. Basically, we were saying, can we turn it onto a chair, and I can turn it on.

59:47

And once they said, yeah, it looks like your environment is good to go, we were. We were in it and starting to, starting to ask questions about it pretty much immediately.

Marissa 59:58

Awesome. Thank you so much, Kirk and April. We’ve had great questions. I completely lost track of time, so, we are at time for this presentation. If you asked a question and we didn’t get to, we will follow up with you post event. Just a reminder, this was recorded. We will be sending you the recording shortly. Thank you again, Kirk and April for joining us. And thanks to all of you, taking time out of your very busy day for joining us.

1:00:22

I hope to see you for the next webinar. Have a great rest of your day.

1:00:27

Guys, thanks you all so much. Thanks, guys.