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Panorama, Data Filters, and Groupings

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

Infinite Campus vs Schoology vs Panorama

Between these three systems, it can be confusing to pinpoint what their strengths and weaknesses are relative to each other. Let's find out more about how we can leverage each system to fit our many needs as we support our students. So, what exactly are the differences between Panorama, Infinite Campus, and Schoology?

• Infinite Campus is a Student Information System, or colloquially referred to as a SIS. In this capacity, IC is our main information hub for collecting, tracking, and reporting student data. Most, if not all of our secondary systems like Schoology, Remind, Panorama, and Google products pull their data from IC. Simply put, student data lives here and we use other programs to extract that data.
  
  
• As we well know, Schoology on the other hand is our main academic system that supports our curricular and pedagogical goals. It's the primary way we interact with our students online via assignments, assessments, calendars, updates, and more. 
  
  
• What Panorama attempts to do is make sense of the raw data from IC and Schoology to support our RTI, MTSS, and SEL goals. It does a really nice job packaging and presenting student data in an intuitive and visually pleasing way. I'm not going to lie, whenever a teacher asks me to help them pull Ad Hoc reports for data in IC, I cringe knowing that for all of my strengths, creating filter data is not one of them. Thus, Panorama has so far filled that niche by giving staff more regular access to filtered student data.

Panorama Filters

As most of you should know by now, you can filter your students' data by adding filter criteria on Panorama. So instead of creating individual Ad Hoc reports in IC, you can quickly adjust your search results by toggling your options. 

So let's say that I needed to find out which of my senior students are considered academically critical (failing at least one class) in let's say Social Studies, I can filter through my students to find exactly who I need to focus on:

Panorama Groups

In addition to easily filtering your search criteria, Panorama has a pretty solid system of keeping tabs on progress by allowing us to create two types of student groupings: Smart and Static Groups.

A Smart Group is a way of tracking a particular population of students by identifying relevant criteria. So let's say that I wanted to keep track of all Freshman boys who are receiving either a D or an F in at least one of their classes. I would simply search using those filters to get my results. But to keep tabs longitudinally, I can convert the search results into a Smart Group. The group will be dynamic, meaning once a student no longer fits the filter criteria, they will "graduate out" and will be automatically removed from the group. Consequentially, students who newly fit the group criteria will be added to the group.

A Static Group on the other hand is based on manually choosing a specific list of students. Regardless of their academic, attendance, behavioral, or SEL data, they are permanently fixed to this group unless you manually remove them. So let's say for example I want to keep tabs on the JV Volleyball team. Regardless of how each individual student-athlete is doing, you'd like to be able to group and keep tabs on them throughout the season/year. Luckily those groups are automatically created for you from IC, but you can create as many unique static groups as you'd like. You can add students to a static group by merely checking the box next to their name and choosing "add to group."

So while it is yet another system to learn and to utilize, I personally believe that Panorama is a highly effective way of leveraging student data to pursue our school goals. Tapping into the enormous utility of identifying and understanding trends and patterns in our student data has never been easier. Luckily, Panorama offers more than just filtered data and groupings. More to come! Let us know how you've been using Panorama below!