History

SAGA stands for Administration and Academic Management System, a tool that the Catalan Education Department offers to all public school teachers in Catalonia. This new software aims to improve Winsec, the application that up until that moment had managed the grades and student records of approximately one million students in 2,500 public schools.

The fiasco

The teacher's dissatisfaction with SAGA is obvious every time that the exam's period approaches. The difficulties when introducing grades and when updating records leads many teachers to do it manually, and often SAGA's malfunctioning does not allow the granting of certain degrees. Faced to that situation, many schools have gone back to Winsec which, despite of being quite obsolete, is more reliable than modern SAGA.

What have we learnt out of it?

The massive introduction of new technologies in the world of education is a major challenge to adequately address the transition to a true Information Society. It is not an easy challenge: it requires retraining teachers, updating educational goals and programs, providing for new equipment and designing new management models. When an application is of no use to users, teachers in this case, a faster response to problems is required.