Rediker Software Teams Up With Visual Access Technology To Introduce LiveBook – A Better Way to Collect and Visualize K-12 School Data

Rediker Software, a leader in school administrative software, announced today it has partnered with Visual Access Technology to offer its customers LiveBook, a comparative analytics technology platform.

With LiveBook, data from Rediker’s student management system AdminPlus and other local and public data sources can automatically be merged to create comprehensive visualizations. This empowers school staff to quickly pinpoint patterns, differences, ranks, trends, and linkages in the data - leading to better data-driven decision making for evidenced-based solutions.

As schools and educators navigate the unknowns of a shifting landscape, they may be required to find new tracking methods to assess the effectiveness of in-person, remote and hybrid learning modalities. With LiveBook, schools can now create data studies according to in-person, remote and hybrid enrollment types to track the effectiveness of each learning modality by attributes such as attendance, academic achievement and discipline.

Integration with Rediker’s TeacherPlus Web Gradebook allows teachers to access the LiveBook platform directly from their gradebook. The Teacher’s Dashboard is designed to display key indicators color-coded to draw attention to students’ strengths and weaknesses.  Teachers also have access to a Student Snapshot view with longitudinal data for a specific student and can add comments to that view as a tool to collaborate with other teachers. Identifying students who are struggling with specific concepts allows the school to recommend additional help from an interventionist. The data may also be used to support a recommendation for Special Ed or 504 support.

One of LiveBook’s key components is its dashboard technology. Simple tools provide for the rapid assembly of data from different sources into a dashboard utilizing a wide range of charting options, including scatter diagrams and mapping. Dashboards are linked to a repository of documents or content linked documents and can be accessed from the district, building or individual teacher dashboard levels. LiveBook’s integrated navigational paths let school staff analyze all available student performance data for trends and benchmarks, and the powerful built-in Cohort Manager lets them create a group of targeted specifications from an entire data set or based on one value in the data set.

Where teachers once had to walk to the office to pull a student’s file, with LiveBook they can now retrieve the data themselves via a direct link with their TeacherPlus gradebook. The unique needs of the superintendent, principal, teacher, and curriculum director used to make finding the specific data they desired impossible. With LiveBook, it organizes data for the district, school, subject, grade, and student level. And where multiple sources were stored on different sites like College Board, Scranton and MAP, all assessment data is already uploaded and stored in the LiveBook site.

“In my former role as a Database Coordinator for a public school district it was my responsibility to gather assessment data in Excel, color code the achievement levels, and add other visualizations so administrators, curriculum specialists and interventionists had the data they needed for decision making and presentations, Rediker’s Business Analyst Sue Van Wyck said. “It was always frustrating that I was not able to provide the same level of detail to the classroom teachers.  Some key scores were sent to TeacherPlus via demographic fields, but they didn’t have the visualizations, assessment detail, or longitudinal data.  LiveBook provides all that and more!"

John Lynch, Rediker’s Director of Program Operations, worked closely with Visual Access Technology (VAT) to identify and realize the vision for a combined Data Visualization solution whose value is much greater than the sum of its parts. “I was frequently implementing once-off projects to send our SIS operational data elsewhere to 3^rd party vendors,” he said.

“By hosting the LiveBook platform from VAT, alongside our own AdminPlus and TeacherPlus products, we can provide several advantages to our customers,” he added. “The combination allows for near-real time operational data, minimal daily involvement by the district IT/data team and rapid turnaround for new initiatives, implemented for each site with a single point of contact here at Rediker.”

The LiveBook platform is the perfect solution for superintendents, administrators, teachers, and IT staff looking to simplify the process of collecting and merging data. To learn more about LiveBook and how schools can better spot trends, identify solutions and improve student outcomes, visit https://www.rediker.com/solutions/school-data-visualization.