SIF is an acronym for Schools Interoperability Framework. According to the SIF website (http://www.sifinfo.org), the SIF Implementation Specification is based on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) endorsed Extensible Markup Language (XML) which is not linked to a specific operating system or platform.
For most people the definition is a bit technical. What it boils down to is SIF provides a way for a school’s disparate data sources to communicate. For instance, schools have a student information system that holds students, classes, teachers, and schedules. A district is also likely to have a student information system, a cafeteria system, a transportation system, a grade book, and an instructional management system. Before SIF, these systems had no way to communicate. When a student entered the district, they were hand entered in all five systems. It’s also possible that a student’s paperwork will also be processed at different sites and that one paper will list the student as Jimmy Smith and the other will list them as Jim Smith. If you are trying to run any types of reports to combine data, you can begin to imagine the nightmare this could cause.
So how could this be different with SIF? In a SIF model, all of your systems would have a SIF agent attached to them. They would then be attached to the traffic cop (the zone integration server). The traffic cop manages the flow of traffic and decides who needs what data. The other part of a SIF model is where you decide who will be the owner of data. The owner is the only application to modify its data. For example, when a student enters your district, the student is registered in the student information system (the owner of student records). Almost instantaneously, the other four systems are notified of the new student. The student, Jim Smith, is automatically assigned a lunch number from the cafeteria system. Jim’s address is sent to the transportation system where he is added to a bus route. Jim is added to his teacher’s grade book, and added to the teacher’s instructional management system. All of the records in the supporting systems reference back to the management systems record of the student since it’s the owner.
The first question out of many superintendent's mouths is naturally, “So, how much is this going to cost me”? I can understand that question in the current economic climate. My question to them is, “How much is it costing you not to use SIF”? SIF allows you to optimize your data across all of your applications. All schools report data to the state which heads to the federal department of education. If you are optimizing your data, you are optimizing the funding you receive. I was fortunate to be part of the Western Heights Public Schools technology team when they implemented their SIF solution. For a district of 6 sites and approximately 3,000 students, they saw a $750,000 increase in federal funding due to SIF. Free and reduced lunch counts went up because students were no longer falling through the cracks due to hand counting. Individual Education Plan (IEP) counts rose, and the school ran more efficiently. You can read about their case study here, http://www.sifinfo.org/us/Upload/story/15415D_SIF_Cost_Benefit_Analysis_Summary_060605.pdf.
So if you are a district, how can you start learning about SIF? A great place to start is the SIF Association website (http://www.sifinfo.org). They have a lot of good resources, even a list of SIF certified vendors. Another suggestion would be to look to other districts who have adopted a SIF model. They will likely be able to provide guidance. These schools can be found across the nation. They range from California (http://www.sifinfo.org/us/Upload/story/ZF3B48_San%20Marino[20].pdf) to Oklahoma (http://www.mizuni.com/casestudies/SIFACostBenefitAnalysis.pdf) to Massachusetts (http://education.zdnet.com/?p=3418).
BrighterLogix has adopted the SIF model. A SIF agent is available for all of our products, including the SideKick Lesson Planner. In SideKick, if a district using our SIF agent, teachers don’t have to create their classes; they are automatically populated. This simplifies the application even further for teachers. Students are also correlated to those classes. If a teacher wants to assign lessons to individual students, they have the ability to do so. As SIF moves forward, BrighterLogix is continuing to broaden our SIF integration.