Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Mac-based districts could face SIS quandary

Pearson PowerSchool will cease to be compatible with Mac-only database servers at the end of 2010.
Pearson PowerSchool will cease to be compatible with Mac-only database servers at the end of 2010.

Education industry giant Pearson says its PowerSchool student information system (SIS) software will cease to support Macintosh database servers by Dec. 31, forcing Mac-using districts to make some tough decisions.

The announcement came as a surprise to many people, especially because PowerSchool was an Apple product before Pearson bought it from Apple in 2006. Apple earlier had acquired PowerSchool, a leading SIS product for Mac-based schools, from its eponymous owner in 2001.

PowerSchool runs on an Oracle database. While Oracle issued a Windows update some time ago, Mac users are still waiting on the Oracle 11g update that would let them run PowerSchool.…Read More

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Software could ease pain of Windows 7 migration

InstallFree says their technology is less about virtualization and more about problem-solving.
InstallFree says its technology is less about virtualization and more about problem-solving.

The migraine-inducing process of migrating Windows from XP to 7 could get easier now that virtualization developer InstallFree has released InstallFree Bridge 2.0, a program that reportedly eliminates software compatibility issues.

InstallFree said this latest product should help speed up the migration of schools and businesses to Windows 7. Bridge 2.0 does this by giving users the ability to run older versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer and other applications on Microsoft’s newest operating system—a process the company calls the “application repackaging business.” (Read “School IT chiefs mull Windows 7.”)

InstallFree says its software creates isolated, modular, and portable virtual applications that can run on any version of Windows and be updated on the fly. These applications integrate seamlessly with the user’s environment and communicate with the operating system (OS) and other applications without making any changes to the underlying OS file system or registry, according to the company.…Read More

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