While planning a personalized learning lesson, a teacher turns to a smartphone application (APP) and asks, “Give me the status for Jimmy,” and the APP responds “Jimmy is not on track; current grades are below passing level; attendance is seventy percent.” This is how, Ask School Data (ASD), an education tech firm helps teachers and administrators monitor academic achievement, drive professional growth, and develop a cycle of patterns and feedback that deliver successful instructional results using the power of Artificial Intelligence. By providing teachers with quick and easy access to student information, ASD eliminates the daily frustration and wasted time that teachers encounter while searching for student data. “ASD is a virtual data coach providing teachers with simple access to status, actions, interventions, and goals for a student.” states Dr. Rich Contartesi, CEO, ASD.

According to Dr. Contartesi, teachers ask how they can spend more time on planning, teaching, and learning; and less time dealing with cumbersome technology and difficult processes to access student data. Current systems used for accessing student information, require the teacher to work with data files scattered across different instructional applications and eventually noting the results down on paper. ASD’s technology enables schools and educational institutions to access student information in one central location gathered from multiple applications and data sources. ASD automatically generates student reports based on available student data and is presented either by voice, app, or email on your mobile device. This allows the teacher to get instant and up-to-date access to the students’ statuses including attendance percentage, grades, extracurricular achievements, and performance to name a few.

Elaborating more about the current data reporting systems followed by many educational institutions and the time-consuming processes they go through, Dr. Contartesi explains that teachers sometimes approach school-based technology support personnel because they may not have the time or the skills to create meaningful reports from the data. Moreover, teachers are often required to use multiple instructional and assessment applications to evaluate student performance, which consumes a considerable amount of time.