Ed-Fi Alliance Releases Technology Suite to More Simply Connect Educational Systems
Community-driven technology securely unifies education data in one place, solving district integration challenges
January 19, 2016 – AUSTIN, Texas – Today, the non-profit Ed-Fi Alliance, announced the public release of the Ed-Fi Implementation Suite 2.0, a set of pre-built technology components that allow education agencies to develop and maintain integrated education data systems in their local or district-controlled IT environments. The community-sourced technology is available now through a free license.
An increase in the number of instructional tools being used can require a complex, expensive and tiresome process to synthesize them in a single data environment. The Ed-Fi Implementation Suite provides a solution. At its core are the new Operational Data Store (ODS), a central data hub, and the Application Programming Interface (API), used to add and integrate new products into a compatible IT environment that can adapt to any learning model and produce powerful insights for educators.
“Our principals and teachers are increasingly looking for real time data, in one central location, to inform instructional decisions,” said Josh Klein, Chief Information Officer, Portland Public Schools. “By using Ed-Fi technology to bring data together from all of our key systems, we’re providing easily accessible and actionable information to educators.”
The technology allows districts to:
- Connect thousands of data elements – Power applications with a single source of real-time data, making it easy to support a variety of teaching and learning models.
- Maintain local control – Since Ed-Fi technology does not collect or store student data, districts determine the most secure environment to implement the technical components, keeping data storage and management in the hands of appropriate officials.
- Support educators’ choice – Build an IT environment that frees educators to use the best tools and applications to serve the individual needs of their students.
Ed-Fi technology is a collaborative effort by a community of educators and IT practitioners who develop and test each tool to ensure it solves the challenges education IT and instructional leaders face daily.
“The new suite of Ed-Fi technology was developed based on the experience, collaboration and input from the Ed-Fi Community, meaning we’re able to broadly share practical and proven means of making data work better for schools,” said Troy Wheeler, President, Ed-Fi Alliance. “Contributions big and small all add up to play an important role in improving how education data is securely accessed and appropriately used to improve instruction and learning across the nation.”
The technology is built from the Ed-Fi Data Standard, which is aligned with Common Education Data Standard (CEDS) definitions and ensures compatibility among current and new systems or products. The technology’s free license includes this standards work. The Ed-Fi Implementation Suite also includes Ed-Fi Dashboards, helping educators make sense of and take action against the data.
Ed-Fi technology is currently being used by more than 35 states and large districts, impacting more than 10,000 total districts across the U.S. For more information, or to license the Ed-Fi Implementation Suite technology, please visit ed-fi.org/district.
About the Ed-Fi Alliance
The Ed-Fi Alliance, LLC, was founded as an organization dedicated to empowering educators with real-time, actionable education data on every student in their classrooms, schools, districts or states. The organization provides and continually updates the Ed-Fi solution, an educational data standard and flexible tool suite designed to integrate and organize raw education data and information from a broad range of existing disparate data sources so it can be integrated, analyzed and put to use every day. The organization actively solicits feedback and input from licensees and education technology leaders. The Ed-Fi Alliance is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. The Ed-Fi Alliance is headquartered in Austin, TX.
