{"id":6269,"date":"2020-08-24T16:10:06","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T15:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/?p=6269"},"modified":"2020-08-24T14:50:50","modified_gmt":"2020-08-24T13:50:50","slug":"how-luck-beat-lockdown-a-history-of-the-tech-behind-magikats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/how-luck-beat-lockdown-a-history-of-the-tech-behind-magikats\/","title":{"rendered":"How luck beat lockdown: a history of the tech behind MagiKats"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 4<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

Jan has been writing worksheets for decades. In education since the early 70s, she has always had an enthusiasm for creating work to help specific children, teenagers and young adults in her classes and on her courses. Almost twenty years ago, her attention turned to helping school pupils across the local area to improve their maths and English \u2013 and the basic programme that later became MagiKats was born.<\/p>\n

Jan always had a problem though \u2013 finding the right worksheet, when she needed it. Sheets from the 70s were handwritten (no word processors in common use then) and more recent sheets were stored in seemingly random places on her hard drive (she had a system, she just couldn\u2019t always remember what it was). So, she kept writing sheets, losing sheets, writing sheets, until eventually she had a large number of sheets of a similar style \u2013 and the next steps were taken towards MagiKats.<\/p>\n

THE \u201cBIRTH\u201d OF OUR SYSTEM<\/h4>\n

One evening, sitting with Rick (her husband and, conveniently, a software developer) they began to discuss how she could better organise her sheets so she could find them when she needed them. The first KATS system resulted. It was a basic idea \u2013 organise similar sheets into units and put them all in the same place. Register a student into the KATS system and then use that to find the right unit and assign a particular sheet to that student. The KATS system would then print that sheet and its associated answer sheet.<\/p>\n

\"SarahOver time, the number of units grew and so the next stage resulted \u2013 modules of work \u2013 made up of units of a complementary level of difficulty. Modules used the framework for the National Curriculum as their basis \u2013 making life easier for Jan. Jan was always looking for how to improve things though \u2013 both for her and for her students. She continued to suggest \u201ctweaks\u201d and this led to the next major development in MagiKats \u2013 the randomness of it all.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s MagiKats students are assigned to a module and a unit chosen from within that module. That unit may contain anything up to around 40 individual worksheets \u2013 but the student won\u2019t necessarily need to complete these sheets in a specified order. Indeed, they often won\u2019t need to complete all 40 sheets before they have mastered that topic. So, when a unit is assigned to a student for a particular day, KATS chooses a suitable sheet at random and that is the sheet the student completes. KATS \u201cremembers\u201d that sheet has been done and does not assign it the next time that unit it selected \u2013 so a student will not be given a sheet for a second time \u2013 unless the system is over-ridden.<\/p>\n

Add in other functions like work history and classroom management tools, and KATS gradually evolved to fundamentally the system we still have today.<\/p>\n

GROWING PAINS<\/h4>\n

There was one big thing though \u2013 KATS was locally installed. This meant that the system and worksheets were installed on a PC\u2019s hard drive and updates were delivered by the web and had to be manually installed. Macs could not be used and smaller laptops had issues with displaying the system. This had never been an issue when it had been just the family involved \u2013 but by this point the system was in use across the world, through what was now the MagiKats franchise network. Have you ever tried sending software through the post to the Middle East?<\/p>\n

Technology advances at a frightening pace \u2013 and nobody gets younger. By the mid 2010s, so much was moving to online delivery and KATS would be a perfect candidate for that. But things were not quite right \u2013 the internet was not reliable in all locations, it was hard to protect intellectual property once things were online, and not everybody was \u201ctecchie\u201d enough to cope with change. By this point, the KATS system was mature and worked, but the programming language behind it was obsolete and Rick was not keen on taking on a complete rebuild \u2013 he was looking towards retirement. It took a few years of waiting for the time to be right, but eventually the decision was made in early 2017 to start moving the KATS system to a new platform \u2013 one which would see it available online for the first time.<\/p>\n

Without going into too much detail, this was a massive task. The system by this point contained over 30,000 individual documents \u2013 each one of which had to be changed and then converted to pdf for the new system. And that was the easy bit \u2013 at least we knew how to do that! The new KATS had to \u201cwork the same, but better\u201d. With franchisees across the world all using the same system, we could not fundamentally change how it worked as far as they were concerned \u2013 it had to be new but familiar, all at the same time.<\/p>\n

In mid-July 2017, we started working with the company that would eventually partner with us to create the new KATS \u2013 but it took a further two years of discussion, debate, prototypes and \u201cwaiting for the time to be right\u201d before active development of the new system started.<\/p>\n

The green light was given in March 2019 and eight months on, last October, the system was launched at our MagiKats annual conference. We thought the next twelve months could then be spent \u201cbedding in\u201d the new system, helping franchisees to get familiar with the \u201csame but different\u201d functions and planning for future enhancements once the system was 100% stable. How wrong we were.<\/p>\n

IT\u2019S ALL IN THE TIMING<\/h4>\n

The first warning signs of problems delivering workshops face to face came in early March, when the news was getting worse and other countries were starting to lock down. When the schools closed there was a debate \u2013 should we stay open? Within what seemed like minutes, however, it became clear that answer was no. Close down now \u2013 do not deliver any more face to face workshops for \u2013 well \u2013 days? Weeks? Months? How would we keep our business running? How would we get work to our students (at that point, we didn\u2019t even know if the post would be running)? Would any parents even keep their kids enrolled with us?<\/p>\n

We had previously considered offering online workshops and chosen not to \u2013 but now there was no choice. To keep our business running, they suddenly became a necessity. We now had a system that was agile \u2013 hosted online, updated centrally, accessed from any web browser and any device. Within days we had devised a way in which our teaching materials could be accessed by our mentors and displayed on Zoom using screenshare. Within four weeks, we had a system where parents could log in and print work for their kids to complete.<\/p>\n

We still wanted to keep the essence of MagiKats \u2013 pencil on paper work alongside skilled mentoring \u2013 and our new system of online workshops and print at home study packs meant that could continue. And that is where the luck had come in \u2013 had we delayed the decision to develop our new system and\/or had our franchisees not embraced the change, then we could not have continued during lockdown. So, we have to thank the technology, the people, the timing \u2013 because we are still here!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jan has been writing worksheets for decades. In education since the early 70s, she has always had an enthusiasm for creating work to help specific children, teenagers and young adults in her classes and on her courses. Almost twenty years ago, her attention turned to helping school pupils across the local area to improve their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6270,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[829,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-magikats","category-childrens-franchises"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/KATS-System.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}