Made a student page in Powerschool to record the PARCC pre-id stuff (mostly accommodations).
My district did not want to wait for Pearson's state reporting folks to get their collective butts in gear.
So if your in Illinois and familiar with Database Extensions you can download the page here:
http://nicktech.org/powerschool

A gift from my district to yours. Happy Holidays!
 

Been thinking a lot about data validation as of late.
If junk in = junk out, then I'm doing all I can to prevent the junk in.
I'm presenting on these really deep thoughts about data validation at the PSUG-IL meeting Thursday 11/6. If your in/around Illinois you can signup
at PSUGIL.ORG.

Took some time at the PSUG conference to update all the PowerSchool customizations on this site.
No major changes, but they all now play just fine with PS version 8.
Some of them, like List Students Auto-Loader, did not have to be modified at all.
I've used the new page fragments type of thing where possible to avoid problems with "custom page collision" (when two customizations overwrite the same page). This should also avoid the hassle of constantly having to update the custom page when Pearson makes a change.
An example of this is the Instant Family Reps customization. If you had this installed before it required you upload/overwrite the /admin/home.html page. But in this new version you can get rid of that old /admin/home.html and simply upload the included home.Family_Reps.content.footer.txt page fragment.
As I blabber on I'm realizing that page fragments are not easily described. If you'd like to get the inside scoop check out the Database Extensions Advanced User Guide on PowerSource.

On another note, I'm seriously considering starting up a podcast. I listen to an increasing amount of podcasts, and feel like it would be a fun project. My wife tells me that we already have a big new project called Vincent (pictured on the left). She is right of course.