![]() Illuminate released its API, yet Walls realized this wasn’t a perfect solution. This would save the company from having to spend time transferring data between systems themselves. Through Illuminate’s API, schools and other product vendors could, using a few lines of code, collect the data they want. ILLUMINATE EDUCATION HOW TO(Think of an API as a mall directory that people use to figure out what data points are available and how to find them.) In 2011, the company decided on the third option: building its own API that would allow other vendors to get data from Illuminate whenever they wanted it. ![]() However, since each tool reported data differently, the amount of time it would take to provide this custom service for each customer’s unique suite of products would quickly become too costly for the team to sustain. Theoretically, the company could work with each customer to set up custom processes to pass data files between Illuminate and the other tools used by a school. The second option would be a costly compromise. “What we were seeing was that districts were asking their teachers and administrative clerks to fill these roles.” Since schools and districts didn’t have the right personnel and resources to use SIF effectively, he believed the initiative wasn’t worth investing in. “Districts had to have IT staff with the appropriate skill level to do all of these things,” says Walls. ILLUMINATE EDUCATION MANUALFor instance, in order for data to transfer between SIF-aligned systems, a district needed a specific server, specific software, and manual coordination of all the products to determine which information needed to flow in which direction and at what time.Ī highly trained staff was required to pull off the technical feat. According to Walls, SIF proved too complicated for administrators and educators to use. Yet the issue with SIF was less about getting companies onboard, and more about its adoption in schools and districts. In theory, if every edtech company invested the time and resources to do this alignment, data could flow between products seamlessly and require little additional investment from developers.
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