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Why K-12 Districts Need Middleware to Bridge Data Silos

Michael Nutter

May 17, 2017

Schools are finally breathing easy after working for years to build digital infrastructure. However, much of it will be useless without a final touch: Middleware.

U.S. schools have spent the past 25 years building the physical and virtual infrastructure needed to prepare students for a 21st century economy immersed in digital technology. From WiFi access to learning management systems to end-user computing, building a tech-friendly learning environment has been a costly and lengthy process for most educators.

Unfortunately, these challenges only make the news we’re about to break all the more difficult for supervisors, administrators, and teachers to hear: all the infrastructure that has been built won’t stand on its own. The technology in use today collects troves of data, but then contains it in dozens of silos that make it all effectively useless. The only solution, as you might guess, is buying more technology that will connect your data silos.

But while it’s true that implementing this connecting software, or Middleware, will take plenty more budget, sweat, and tears, it’s an absolutely essential investment. Districts already face immense pressure to get control of their data, and they need to decide now whether they’ll work to do that immediately, or over the course of another painful 25 years of updates and adjustments.

How it Works

As IT resource TechTarget refers to it, Middleware is “software that serves to ‘glue together’ separate, often complex and already existing programs.” For school administrators, these existing programs are the many software products they use to track and manage data being generated across every aspect of the educational process.

Everything about students — from grades to curricula to dietary restrictions –is tracked by various software programs, and most of these aren’t capable of communicating with one another. Middleware would connect these applications through concurrency, transaction management, threading, or messaging, the primary methods through which data created by one program can be made comprehensible to another.

Why It’s Needed

But if you’re already using software to collect and/or store all the information you could need, why do you need even more software just to make it all fit together? Why can’t educators take a look at the information they collect and analyze it themselves?

The biggest problem with manual analysis of educational data is just how much of that data exists in any one district. The information being analyzed is often incredibly granular — a student’s GPA consists not only of their grades in individual classes, but for particular assignments in those classes, segments of those assignments, and so on. With incredibly large and thorough data sets like these, it’s nearly impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions that might influence administrative or teaching decisions.

What’s more, Middleware is absolutely necessary if you hope to implement mobile devices in your classroom. Technology like tablets and cloud-dependent laptops like Chromebooks will need to communicate easily with a teacher’s learning management system in order for collection and grading of assignments to continue seamlessly. The advantages of an interactive and intuitive device like an iPad may well be outweighed by the difficulties if these devices don’t create documents that teachers can easily open and assess.

How to Implement it

The trouble in actually installing Middleware isn’t just a question of money, but one of complex logistics, as well. Just like with any other software, one has to consider the costs of the program being bought, what it’s compatible with, and whether to migrate bit by bit or all at once. Most importantly, Middleware has to be set up in such a way that it knows which data sets specifically need to be communicating at all times.

Some companies are hoping to create platforms that will do at least the last bit for you. IBM is utilizing its artificial intelligence platform Watson for Education to try and automate the creation of insights from different data streams, providing teachers and administrators with real-time access to actionable information.

Indeed, automation and rapid deployment will be absolutely necessary if Middleware is going to be effectively installed across environments. But any solution to the data silo problem is going to take proactive, concentrated thinking, and should be done with the input not just of administrators, but also of teachers, staff, and even students.

Big data is meant to make the work of education easier, but that goal can’t be accomplished if the data silo problem is left to compound and continue. By doing the work now and investing in Middleware or other data storage solutions, you can get your district in front of the next big trend in educational tech.

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