Last year at Dougherty Valley, the student body was informed partway through the year that School Loop, a service many students used throughout their schooling career, would be phased out by a platform known as Haiku Learning. Haiku Learning was to offer a deeper integration with the classroom, allowing teachers to combine various resources into one program, such as discussion boards, blog posts and even grades. A trial program was offered to teachers in order to beta test their classrooms, but as the new school year began, the integration of Haiku failed to become a reality, as School Loop continues to be a dominant service.

Most teachers did not find a use for it, and chose to stick to the “known entity”, as math teacher Mr. Colin O’Haire put it. The gradebook was harder to access, lacking the ability for parents to check their child’s grades, which they can do with School Loop.

Chemistry teacher Mr. Patrick Estes is one teacher that chose to partake in the optional Haiku Learning program this year, but still refuses to make the full switch for applications like the digital gradebook and posting assignments because it is simply “not adequate for parents to access.” Estes is able to utilize features like the online quizzes for his chemistry class, but says it is “a good program with too many applications.”

Students, on the other hand, were pleased to discover that the Haiku project was scrapped upon returning to school this year.

Senior Kristen Chung stated that, “It’s just one more thing to remember to do.”

Senior Imon Mashayekh had more negative views. Mashayekh said, “If you were to compare them to diseases, School Loop would be a mild cold, whereas Haiku would be Scarlet Fever.”

The Wildcat Tribune was able to sit down with Mr. Hillman to get some clarification on the matter. Due to a rough pilot program, Haiku was never able to become fully adopted as the standard platform due to some of the difficulties it presents for students and teachers alike, especially with  the gradebook. A great deal of “student and teacher feedback” was taken into account before deciding that Haiku was best left as an optional service for teachers to apply to their liking. When asked what might be replacing School Loop in the years to come, Principal Hillman has said that currently the district does not have their eyes set on a clear replacement, but may investigate a service called Illuminate Education in the future.

Illuminate Education currently serves as the replacement for Pearson’s Data Director and adds loads of conveniences for teachers. Rather than having to manually input all the scores into School Loop from a scantron test, Illuminate has the ability to “automatically put the scores into School Loop” saving countless of hours of manually inputs. Illuminate Education also has a gradebook element integrated into the service, which would bring to the table the added ability of “combining class grades with district assessments.”

However, Principal Hillman said, “Currently there are no plans for switching to the Illuminate gradebook. We will be “sticking with School Loop.”

The future of new systems rests in the interests of streamlining the multiple system of School Loop and Haiku Learning that the district currently has in place. For now, School Loop will continue to remain dominant in the  lives of Dougherty Valley students and the foreseeable future.