Sunshine Connections overview
Teachers need more time, information, and support. Sunshine Connections, the centerpiece of a five-year partnership between the Florida Department of Education and Microsoft, gives them all three. With this collection of Web-based tools, Florida's K-12 teachers in all subject matters have immediate access to a comprehensive view of individual student performance as well as classroom resources and ideas. The ability to look at this information together eases decision-making about curriculum and instruction.
Educators taking part in Sunshine Connections connect to real student and classroom data and on-going collaboration, through a password-protected restricted site. However, everyone can see how these tools work at the Sunshine Connections public Web site.
On This Page
What does Sunshine Connections do?
The online tools provide access to five essential kinds of information:
| • | Student performance data |
| • | Curricular resources |
| • | Instructional strategies resources |
| • | Training/professional development resources |
| • | Support resources |
Sunshine Connections provides teachers with browser-based dashboards of student achievement metrics, giving them a comprehensive view of individual student performance and the information they need to make decisions about curriculum and instruction.
Tools for teachers
Because today's tools were developed by teachers for teachers, Sunshine Connections comprises exactly what teachers want most, including:
| • | Classroom management tools |
| • | Student performance data |
| • | Instructional strategies |
| • | Ability to collaborate with other teachers |
| • | Curricular and coursework materials |
| • | Professional development opportunities |
School districts participating in the Sunshine Connections program have complete autonomy of their content and are the primary role players in future development. This allows each district to use the program to best meet their unique needs.
Tomorrow's Sunshine Connections
The primary goal of Sunshine Connections is to foster learning that is continuous, relevant, and adaptive. To that end, during the project's five years, the development never ends. Microsoft, the Florida Department of Education, and the teachers creating Sunshine Connections conduct focus groups, analyze district input, and work with a state-wide advisory council to determine which features and functions should be modified or added in the next release.
Technology
After two successful Sunshine Connections "Back to School" releases (in 2005 and 2006), the partnership team continues to incorporate data systems and tools to expand the system's capabilities and offer access to more teachers.
To support iterative releases, Sunshine Connections was built on a strong foundation and framework developed to integrate and protect data from multiple sources. The Sunshine Connections platform is comprises of the components described in the table below.
General architecture | Framework that enables using information from multiple data sources | W3C standards for XML Web services | Accepts and combines data from multiple sources without requiring major changes to established data systems |
Database Management | | • | Relational and dimensional databases | | • | Extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) |
| Microsoft SQL Server | Allows data to be structured according to user requirements without direct queries of other sources |
Identity Management
| Protect personally identifiable information
Allow access for select users of other district systems | Microsoft Windows 2003 Server Active Directory
Active Directory Federation Services | Contains accounts synchronized with local directory services via XML
Creates a trust relationship between Sunshine Connections and other Active Directory environments |
User Experience | Collaboration features including: | • | Document management and sharing | | • | Shared workspaces | | • | Threaded discussions | | • | Alerts | | • | Surveys | | • | Calendars |
| Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 | UI components are displayed in Web parts which allows: | • | Customized reports and views | | • | Locally-created components | | • | Potential sharing of components between districts |
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