Video Transcript
Two examples, one is what we do today. Like I mentioned before everyone came in on the call, that Wednesday in Williston has become the day that we test everyone, we do Covid testing on everybody. In order to do that we need to leverage the data and the mechanisms that we have in-hand.
So it starts on Friday, the Friday before the Wednesday, the event gets created in Veracross, and all the students are required to sign up for time slots. And then our Dean of Students can go in there and access that data and start pinging the kids and their advisors who haven’t signed up yet. So we can make sure that all the kids have signed up to take the test. And then as the kids are coming through the tent to get tested, we have them come through, and actually, they make one-minute appointments, so we end up testing a total of about 700 people over about 6 hours so we need to make sure that we’re getting everybody in there. So as the kids are coming through we do it on the other end. Like okay, this kid has come through, we check him off on attendance, then we can send out a text to the kids who haven’t come through and say hey you need to get here and if you don’t get here well you’re going to be in quarantine for a week.
And then related to that is the daily covid attestation that we’ve taken advantage of which Veracross built over the summer. So as a faculty member, every morning I need to say yep I’m feeling okay and I can come to campus and we can track them down that way. So from a logistical standpoint of just keeping everything running, we wouldn’t have been able to do that if we weren’t able to leverage the data that’s in Veracross.
And as far as making information available I think that’s become difficult, information overload, so something as simple as, now when I take attendance in my class, there is a notes field that tells me not just that these students in my class are remote but it tells me how many hours ahead of me they are which can help me with my planning. A little thing but it really goes a long way not just for me as a teacher but now I can relate to the kid on a better level and that builds a relationship between me and the students.
– Andrew Shelffo, Chief Technology Officer – Williston Northampton School