The Source/Fusion: Likes, Dislikes, Confusion?

I noted that at the strategic plan community meeting I attended at Hale, several parents said they (and some teachers) have frustrations with using The Source/Fusion.

One reader replied:

As an SPS teacher I would love to hear what parents like/dislike about the Source & Fusion. Is it limitations in the tool (and if so exactly what aspects)? Is it that teachers don't update the Source? With Fusion is it particular tools not working, limited teacher usage, inconsistent styles of teacher usage, errors in posts, etc? Some families may be able to make comparisons to tools in districts they've moved from and/or private schools they have their children in.

At least the Source allows grades to be posted more timely than the traditional gradebooks. What else do parents want/need to see in the Source (this could help those of us who read the blog some be more aware of changes to lobby for in the future... well, if teachers ever truly had any input into district technology decisions of this magnitude). Similarly with Fusion, what specifically is the good, the bad and the ugly?

The "good" is important to note so those of us teachers who read this can maybe implement more of the suggestions as we're apparently contracted with Fusion for 2 more years.


Readers?

Comments

Mark Ahlness said…
I'd like to comment as neither a parent nor a teacher, but as an interested citizen of Seattle. The Source and Fusion have the capacity to do SO much more than just post grades and assignments for parents.

The public deserves to be able to see what our kids are working on and producing in our schools. Please, please, please do not trot out the privacy song and dance thingy. So old.
Anonymous said…
As the parent of two teens in SPS, I am BEYOND FRUSTRATED with the lack of professionalism exhibited by so many teachers who think communicating with students and parents is optional, beneath them, or somehow outside their core duties.
Students and families should be able to easily review updated course curricula, materials, and homework assignments on the Fusion pages, and to see frequently updated grades on the Source.
I'm 9 years into SPS, and precious few teachers are committed to using either tool. Some only use the Source at semester's end. That's not helpful.
The union shouldn't bend to all of the MBA widget factory ideas that motivate reformers, but it really needs to embrace this technology and fast.
Grouchy
n said…
Maybe you would all contribute to a secretary for teachers? Hmmm?
Eric M said…
I post a word doc list of what we did in class every day. I don't post specific assignments. My reasoning is that too many students & families seem to think attendance is optional, and I fear I am a short step a way from being required to run a parallel online class. Really.

Plus, as another person noted, teachers really don't have enough time to do a great deal of file management, or anything else. I definitely could use a secretary. Some few of my colleagues use the Fusion page for more (online quizzes, etc, etc), but I'm already working 10 hours a day without a break, so I don't feel a great motivation to add more to my day. I have plenty of to-dos that provide better value to my students.

As far as grades posting - as a parent and a teacher - I remain very frustrated with those of my colleagues who do not post grades regularly. I consider it a bare minimum requirement of the job of teaching. And it frankly helps a lot with managing students and parents. It's all pretty crystal clear, no surprises.

Current common practice presents teachers to parents as disorganized, and it undermines the parent/teacher partnership. It is baffling to me that district administration has not partnered with SEA to make a push for this. It would only make teachers look like pros. But who among us hasn't seen this in their work? Roll out a shiny new software toy, do a short training, and then essentially forget about it: no "How's it going?", no "Let's get together and share best practices."

mirmac1 said…
Mark Ahlness, "privacy song and dance thingy"? Ugh. "The public deserves to be able to see what our kids are working on..." Why?

The Source is great for communicating between teachers and parents, if used as intended.
I, too, am baffled.

Why buy this technology if the district is not going to support teachers in its use? Why buy this technology if teachers won't do the bare bone minimum so that parents can see how their student is doing?

The info that teachers put on their pages IS data but I guess data is only for district headquarters staff.
Po3 said…
I think the UI of the new Source is worse than the old Source and don't see a lot of added benefit overall.

For example,the old Source would display a red bar across Late/Missing assignments. The new Source is supposed to display small icons for collected, missing, late - but so far, they are not used so I have to scan every entry to see if it is late or missing. I also see an error on Assessments, for one of my students. It shows passing an EOC exam (level 4!!!) but I know that test has not been taken.

So my complaint is why did we have to spend money on a new Source, when the old one seemed to work just fine. Maybe it is easier now for teachers to use, so if that is the case, then the money was well spent.

Fusion baffles me - I was getting emails with HW assignments, then they stopped after the break, do I have to resign up?
Eric B said…
My experience with the Source and fusion pages is that both were basically useless in elementary, marginally useful in middle and very useful in high school. In middle school, the grades were posted on a much more hit and miss level, but enough were posted that we could track down missing assignments before it was too late. High school is much better, although there were a couple of teachers who don't post grades on a consistent basis.
Eric B said…
Mark Ahlness, do you expect to be able to log on to Boeing's website and see all of the reports and calculations generated by Boeing employees? Or see draft legal briefs or medical reports from lawyers or doctors? Of course not. Why would SPS be any different?
Anonymous said…
I would second Eric B. I have found the source immensely useful. Although it depends on whether the teacher posts assignments and grades. There were several times when one of our teachers either lost or otherwise failed to post a grade for a completed assignment. I was able to confirm the item was completed with my student and then the problem could be cleared up in a timely manner.

There was one situation where one of my kid's teachers adamantly refused to use the source. It was terrible. Like groping blindly in the dark. Fortunately with pressure from parents and the principal, the teacher came around and began posting grades there.

I think reasonable teachers realize that support at home is the best method to get kids to excel and the source can be a huge aid to parents.

-parent
robin said…
This is such an issue for me at my child's middle school and with seemingly no resolution. I don’t have any preference for either Source or Fusion, but for crying out loud could we just have one system. The process doesn’t work if everyone has the option to either use it or not or use one system over the other. Again, I don’t care but having to track my kid’s progress on Source for one class and Fusion for another gets extremely confusing, particularly when there is no requirement for a teacher to use it either system. So for one class I might be able to see that all the homework/quizzes my kid has been assigned and completed, however for another class it looks like my daughter is failing because all the assignments are up but none have been entered as completed, in another class there might not be anything at all. This process of not having some standard expectation is extremely frustrating. I understand there is a lot of hard work going on at school and I certainly don’t want to add to it but I would think a teacher would much prefer for me to access a database and get the answer I need than a daily email from me or, what I have decided to do going forward with my kid, write your homework assignment down in your planner and get your teacher to sign it.
Anonymous said…
My child is an 8th grader at Hamilton. Most of her teachers are pretty good about updating grades regularly in the Source.

I rarely check out the Fusion pages. It was an incredible hassle to get the emails to work (notifications about upcoming homework assignments) - and then they suddenly stopped. I decided it wasn't worth trying to figure out how to get the homework notifications - in large part because my kid stays on top of her homework. When my younger kid (who's not as organized) hits middle school, I may need to use the Fusion page more.

Jane
Anonymous said…
I can't figure out from the SPS website how to log in to Fusion pages. I think the Source is great and my kid's teachers do a good job keeping it updated.

Gen Ed Mom
TechyMom said…
Number 1 gripe: Elementary assignments and report cards aren't available online. It's pretty much useless except to look up test scores. I have a kid who can't hold onto paper, and would really benefit from being able to track assignments online. The syllabus for the whole quarter, with due dates for projects and test dates, in a format that we could consume on in our calendaring software of choice would make her school experience so much smoother.

Question for teachers: Is it harder to post assignments online than to create, print, and hand out a document? If so, that is a major problem with the software that should be addressed.
LH said…
For any HIMS parents out there...

HIMS had some sort of web site failure towards the end of the semester, so most of your settings could have been wiped out. I got the opposite and ended up with administrator access. Check your settings and then email the PTSA Communications person to fix your settings if you can't do it yourself. That's what my kid ended up doing.

Now that being said, I agree with Robin. The disconnect between teacher usage of the Source and Fusion pages and parents' ability to keep track of their kids' assignments is enough to drive us crazy. If it's not mandated and enforced, it's the wild west out there. And, heaven forbid your child should have an issue/learning disability. No one is accountable, but your child's grades will suffer.
Anonymous said…
At the elementary level, the Source is practically no value to me. I only use it if I need to look up my student's ID# without going to the file cabinet, or if I need to look up a past MSP/MAP score--for those we didn't opt out of, that is. I don't know if they even have Fusion pages for elementary level.

In middle school, having two separate sites, accessed different ways and with the need to sign in separately, is a big pain. Teacher use is inconsistent, and we even have one teacher who apparently never got a Fusion page so created a separate website for tracking the course--meaning a whole other website to check. Why does a teacher have to resort to that? And how many parents even know about it? Crazy.

Personally, I rarely use the Fusion pages, and only occasionally access the Source to make sure things are on track.

Granted it's probably not a Source-related issue, but one of my biggest gripes is that when I do log in to look at grades the assignments and grading seem to be pretty easy. Kids often get points for turning in permission slips, not speaking English in their advanced world language class, etc. Getting 100% (or higher) on an assignment is the norm. On the surface, it doesn't look very rigorous. I'd expect that even the strongest students would show room for improvement, but grading doesn't seem to reflect that.

In terms of wishes, ideally I'd like to see the Fusion pages provide an outline of the course overall, not just a record of what's already been done. Are teachers working on a day-by-day basis, without a curriculum plan? Assuming they know the units planned for the year, it would be great if the Fusion pages showed it. We are so in-the-dark re: the haphazard curriculum in this district, that having a general sense of what will be covered in each class would be great. (Then again, folks might share them, and discrepancies would be highlighted--probably NOT something teacher's/schools want to happen).

HIMSmom
Patrick said…
The Source is useful, but confusing. Different teachers mark it differently and the cryptic symbols aren't explained on the page (this might be part of why different teachers use it differently). So situations like assignments not due yet, due but not turned in, turned in but not graded, late and not turned in, turned in late but graded since are all indicated in different ways by different teachers.

I don't understand why Fusion and the Source need to be separate. Neither of them is a shining example of what software should be.

Fusion pages are used pretty rarely. Half the teachers don't use them at all, the other half only put assignments on them once in a while.

A good software package should be saving the teachers work, so that they want to use it. If the software is so bad that it makes extra work, the teachers who aren't using it are probably wise to spend their time doing lesson planning and grading with feedback for the students and other things that actually help the students.
Anonymous said…
I think the bigger problem is that when SPS needs to buy software they seem to always go with whichever product is destined to be the Betamax of the field.I don't like that there are *two* websites that parents need to use. I don't understand why union and SPS can't come to an agreement regarding minimum standards of use for online reporting. Most of my children's teacher use it weekly. I find it helpful.

I was talking to a counselor last week, and I was surprised that she couldn't easily access my student's assessments - I logged in and showed her the necessary information through my Source account.

I was told 2 years ago that there was some software/online site that SPS had bought for college planning/applications, but I never saw mention of it again. I wonder how much it cost, and why it was never rolled out.

tami
Josh Hayes said…
Admittedly, I am only a student teacher, but I find that Fusion is quite useful. Every handout I use, every powerpoint, a link to any web video or other stuff - it all goes on the fusion page. No kid can say he or she couldn't look at the powerpoint (well - yes, there are kids without internet access, but not where I teach, and that's a WHOLE 'nother issue).

But yeah, let's GET on that issue: how useful can fusion pages be for families who have spotty access to the web? It's simply not equitable to expect students to have access to it, and so you can't use it to the exclusion of other supports.

I do not use the Source directly, but when I put grades into the in-house gradebook (the usual Pearson junk), it automatically updates the Source. That's it. I find it useful to automatically mark missing assignments as zeros: it sure energizes kids to find those missing papers!

Putting stuff up on Fusion is a time sink if you only do it now and then, but once you get used to it, I have found that since I already HAVE all my powerpoints and worksheets and such in a directory, I just take thirty seconds and drag it all into the class fusion page. It seems to work fine, and before I was so assiduous about it, my students complained that the powerpoints didn't get put up for TWO DAYS after the class! Now I put 'em up before class even starts.

I guess my point is, it CAN be useful, but it is yet another little thing that teachers are supposed to take care of, another ball to keep in the air. I can see why it'd be difficult for some teachers, and in some disciplines.
Anonymous said…
I lead a middle school homework club and can attest to the difficulty the kids have in understanding what is due and when, especially if they've missed class for more than a day. These are kids committed to doing their work. They have time, space and support. All that's missing is clarity! Seriously? It can't be that difficult for any teacher to find a system that works. What are best practices elsewhere? Meanwhile, kudos and gratitude to the teachers who post due dates and grades, and answer emails. To the others, enough excuses. Don't shame the kids who ask for clarity as if self-advocacy is whining, and you aren't accountable.
Grouchy
Just say No to Fusion said…
Robin,

you said: I don’t have any preference for either Source or Fusion, but for crying out loud could we just have one system.

This seems to be the most common complaint I've seen from many parents, as well as some staff. The problem is that instead of using a single system that does everything the district wants, they have attempted to glom on a completely different system (Fusion), from a completely different vendor (Blackboard/Edline), and make it kinda sorta look like the grading system (PowerSchool).

The reason they require different logins is that they are completely different systems, unrelated to each other and managed by different organizations!

The Source (PowerSchool) supports grades and assignment management. It's run by our district, though it is a Pearson product, so it's possible Pearson has access to the data (can any insider verify this?)

Fusion is a service hosted and managed by Blackboard/Edline Inc., in Washington D.C. When your kid signs onto Fusion, they are signing into a 3rd party server managed by Blackboard Inc. Any information your kid posts on Fusion goes to Blackboard Inc. Conversations or messages through Fusion are being shared through and with Blackboard, Inc.

If you'd like to know a little more about Blackboard, Inc., you should check out this link: Blackboard For Military - Learning transformed for today's generation of warfighters. (current lead article, so may change). These are the folks that SPS has connected our kids with, via Fusion. Not cool.

Huge Gripe:

Teachers, please make sure that assignments and data are available to your students without requiring them to use a 3rd party web site (Fusion)! As a backup or second source, fine, but it should NEVER be the only place for any material or information. You might just as well be forcing them to create Facebook or Twitter accounts and requiring them to sign in to get their assignments! This doesn't even touch on the fact that there are still many kids without easy online access from home.
Michael Rice said…
Hi

I have to say that I have found the fusion pages to have some value. I have a SmartBoard, so all my class notes can be posted to the Fusion page. I also post all the assignment, notes templates, answers and whatever else I hand out. This the students have access to it if they miss class or misplace something (What??? A teenager unorganized????? Not possible!)

I only update grades once or twice a week. I don't like grading, but one thing I try very hard to do, is grade any quiz or exam the day I give it. Kids (and parents) want to know how they did, and I take that seriously. I will admit that I don't take recording homework grades quite as seriously.

Anonymous said…
As a teacher, I really tried to love Fusion tools. I actually used them more than anyone else at WSHS. But it just doesn't work properly. Posts don't happen, students are randomly kicked off class lists, etc. Students who saved work on Fusion files lost their data in a big crash in the early winter. I abandoned all the interactive parts of Fusion.

That said, Fusion folders are still pretty handy and I do use them a great deal to get maps, worksheets, etc. to students.

The gradebook side of Fusion is a disaster. Any history on the site after any data change of a student becomes suspect. As a teacher, I can only get to my gradebook from home through bizarre work-arounds (running an old version of Java, installing certificates, using Firefox, etc.). Since I don't bother fixing home grade book every couple of weeks, this makes communicating with parents difficult. I can't even see my own students grades while I am talking to parents.

I'm also a parent of a student at Hale, so I can see how lame "The Source" looks from the parent end as well. Thankfully, I know as a teacher where it is misleading and how it works.

I did make some youtube videos to explain the various workings for Fusion and The Source for parents of my students. Perhaps they will be helpful. They were some of my first youtubes, so forgive the amateurism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJV20dnGqzI
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBaflxlWcKQ

- James Couture
Anonymous said…
@Just Say No To Fusion

I skimmed the Blackboard for Military whitepaper you linked, and I'm having a hard time understanding your 'not coolness' with it.

Perhaps you could elucidate.

--FremontDad

No Fusion said…
FremontDad,

Perhaps that link was pandering a bit to the anti-war crowd (though "warfighters" is certainly not a target audience you'd expect to see on a site where student data is held!).

However, the main point is that this is a 3rd party site that is disguised to look like a Seattle Schools web site. Most people don't understand this, and both parents and kids use the site as if it was part of SPS. There is a LOT of confusion about this throughout the district - HamiltonMS even has a fairly detailed announcement about it on their web site, but even their article says "are two separate software applications", rather than pointing out that the Fusion pages, data and conversations are managed and hosted by a separate company.

There is so much student data sharing happening right now, including the fiasco mirmac1 recently unearthed with ConnectEdu, and I think it's important that everyone understands more about where our kids' data is going when they do anything online, especially when it's happening in a somewhat covert fashion, like Fusion. Make sense?
Mr. Couture, thank you for your efforts. That you wanted to make the effort to help parents in this way is great.

I plan on passing ALL these comments onto the Board and staff.
mirmac1 said…
No Fusion,

I just this morning have come to your same conclusion. Here is the ConnectEDU agreement.

I was expecting to see a data-sharing agreement that would require the mandatory clauses required by FERPA (data destruction, audit etc) but since it just "hosts" data, there may not be one.

You can see in the agreement that the student-data is prepopulated. All that is required is activation. Although I saw certain items uploaded in my child's account, what other eSIS info do they have? How does CDU "customize each user experience", particularly "those in underrepresented populations and within large urban districts"?
TechyMom said…
When I was in college, at the beginning if each course, the Prof would hand out a sheet of paper listing all the assignments and tests, the dates they were due, and what percentage of the grade the accounted for. Does this happen in high school or middle school? It sure as heck doesn't happen in elementary school. It would really help. It would be even better if that was in a subscribable calendar, but a piece of paper and a PDF on a website would be a huge step forward.
Anonymous said…
I know this comment is going to come across as naive or just plain ignorant but here goes. For a typical student (not SpEd or on an IEP, etc...), is something like the Source/Fusion really necessary for parents to access? Shouldn't students, at least HS students, learn to manage their own homework and not have their parents hovering to make sure everything is done? This is the sort of helicopter parenting that is hurting our children. Kids need to learn these types of mistakes at an early age, when the consequences are far less severe. I get the "fear" about not getting it right to get into college or something but parents need to let go. This is what is disturbing to see. When college kids, or worse, graduate students don't know how to go about getting their own internship or job and expect the school career services to do it for them, you know that sense of entitlement started when they were much younger. At what point do parents stop checking on their kids to make sure they have their homework done?

grounded
Lynn said…
It's possible that the only parents posting here are the ones whose kids haven't yet developed the necessary executive function skills. That would be my guess. I'd count mine in that group.
dw said…
I was expecting to see a data-sharing agreement that would require the mandatory clauses required by FERPA (data destruction, audit etc) but since it just "hosts" data, there may not be one.

I haven't read through the entire contract yet, but what I've read is not comforting, and gives me a lot of questions.

Just quickly, ConnectEdu has options for districts to run their systems "in-house". Do you know for sure that SPS is not doing this in-house?

Whether it's ConnectEdu, Fusion, RoadMap or whatever else, it seems the district is happy to send our kids' personal information to any company that has interest or can at least fein some kind of "educational value". Just because a company can make data management easier for some district staff doesn't mean we should be allowing our kids' data to be shared with all these organizations. Where does it stop?
Anonymous said…
@grounded - I think the Source/Fusion can be useful to all parents, those with self-starters and those with the late maturers. I'm lucky: neither of my kids have ever had a problem with time management or getting homework done on time, but I still log on to the Source every 7-10 days or so to see what the story is, and I like having the Fusion e-mail so I know what the upcoming work load will be like and to make sure that I don't schedule a family event when my kid has a heavy workload. Unless there is something that grabs my attention, I don't mention it to my student. However, I would hate to discover that at the end of the semester that things have gone irreparably bad.

It sounds like you are thinking watching a student fail a class and not intervening might be a good learning experience. I see it as a lost opportunity to teach a student how to ask for help and figure out how to minimize damage. Surprisingly, quite a few kids don't know how to ask for help from a teacher.

I know kids who didn't have an IEP or weren't SpecEd, whose learning curve for time management was very long, and if their parents had not spent the seven years of MS and HS saying - "hey, i notice you have a big project assigned, what's the plan?" those kids might not have learned the planning skills they needed. Some kids really do not know how to calculate how long it will take do an assignment and figure out when they should start work, some kids really don't recognize that they can't do 2 things at once. Some kids need to hear, "A movie on Saturday afternoon? Wasn't that when you were going to finish that report?" And a lot of those kids take several years to develop those skills.

tami
peonypower said…
A common comment I see is not understanding comments and marks on the source for grades. You can thank Pearson for a system that does 1/2 of what the old source did. For example, under the old system if you put in a "m" it meant missing and the student had a 0 grade for the assignment. Now if you use the "m" for missing in Powerteacher it has not impact on their grade. So if I want the grade to say missing and have it count against the grade I have to enter both m, and 0, and everything in the grade book is like this. Old system took 1 click, new system takes 2 or more. Printing out a student report is non-sensical and takes about 5 clicks. As to why we switched- Pearson bought our old student system and pretty much told the district they would only support ESIS if we would then use their grade book system (power teacher) when the time came to switch to a new system. Essentially the district was forced to go with the new grade book. As a parent and a teacher I appreciate teachers who update grades often, and really this should be agreed on be everyone in a building. As to fusion, I use it, but I do not put every assignment up. I have a file cabinet in my room with copies for every assignment in order by date available to students. I do post notes, test reviews, rubrics, etc, but students rarely check for work there, and it is a huge time suck. So really we have 2 systems, neither of which work very well and this leaves everyone frustrated.
Anonymous said…
I am not impressed with either tool, really. Half of the teachers at my son's MS don't bother or when they do they "dump" assignments weeks late and too late to become engaged and follow-up. If my child goes from an A to a C in a class and yet they teacher has not bothered to share this, what good is the system. Others don't bother to activate their Fusion pages at all. My experience with these tools is that for all the professed desire to involve and communicate with parents, my experience has been it is all talk. Teachers and administrators would much prefer we didn't check these sites, not communicate about them and keep it zipped. -Greg
mirmac1 said…
I am perplexed. Why is SPS paying Pearson and ConnectEDU to host our data? The latter is set up so that our children add MORE data (resumes, online college apps, financial info) We spent tens of millions on hardware and software upgrades. The State has a K-12 Network to support districts' cloud computing needs. OSPI also already has our data.

dw, I'm not sure it is in-house. Let me know what you find. I'm still trying to get my child's account de-activated.
Anonymous said…
@ Tami - I think your approach is the one I would take and do currently. Maybe I was reading too much into the comments and wondering if parents log in every day to keep tabs. I think the email alerts are definitely helpful and I don't need to log on really unless I absolutely need more info...the email can serve as a conversation starter with my child about what's going on at school. Providing a little oversight and guidance is a balance point and one that allows the student to learn on their own and the parent is able to help. Again, maybe my own misreading of the comments (not necessarily on just this thread), which sound much more like micromanaging than just basical parental supervision. I guess that is also up for interpretation. To a certain degree though, kids do need to learn from failing. I think it depends on the kid and there are psychologists who will tell you that kids need to experience that in order to learn from it. Even my own kid said to me the other day that he should get the grade he deserves based on the work he did not what I wanted him to do. I need to heed that, too.

grounded
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