New Online Talos System Goes Live at Stuyvesant

The new Talos website, created by developer Rodda John (‘17) on behalf of the Program Office, went live for Stuyvesant students in the early spring. It was originally launched on March 20 specifically for AP course selections, but was relaunched on April 30 for elective selections. Talos was originally built to replace Datalyst, a system that used to program schedules until it was no longer maintained. Talos has since expanded to cater to other student and faculty needs, such as program changes, document uploads, and internet connection requests.

Since its launch, students and staff alike have used Talos for its services. Students mainly use Talos for course selections and programming changes, and many have experienced the advantages as well as the disadvantages of the new system.

Junior Alan Bunyatov appreciates the time-saving digital transcript feature that aids students in selecting classes. “I personally find it really convenient,” Bunyatov said. “Having all your grades available for selecting your electives and APs is a really nice tool.” With the digitalization of transcripts, students, parents, and faculty can now easily monitor student academic progress.

A significant function of Talos is its effect on program changes, a tedious and tiring experience as well as a common source of stress for both students and administration. Though in-person program changes are inevitable, Talos’s approval interface will now efficiently address most program changes online. “Hopefully, a lot of the headache is reduced, because I feel like a lot of students spend time running around the building getting approvals from various people,” John said.

Though students benefit from the various tools of Talos, they only have access to about 10 percent of the system’s capabilities. Talos programs schedules for the student body, manages AP requests for assistant principals, and allows administrators to access data efficiently in real time. “The system is not really for the students. It's going to be helpful for the students, [...] but it’s not saving the students that much time—it’s saving the administrators a lot more time,” John said.

Assistant Principal of English Eric Grossman reflected on the increased efficiency that Talos provided during AP course selections in the spring. “[Talos] was really helpful in AP registration. It allowed me to add kids to AP courses, [...] see their selections, filter their choices, and add them without having to do it manually—without getting a printout and going to eSchoolData, looking at transcripts and grade point averages, and then writing down names and handing those names or e-mailing those names to the Program Office,” Grossman said. He believes that Talos will continue to serve Stuyvesant administration and students well in the upcoming school year. “It’s going to help streamline program changes. [... It will] be useful to have one system to serve all of those needs and functions,” Grossman said.

Assistant principals can see a student’s current and previous courses, grade point average, and eligibility for a class all in real time through the site. In addition, they can also apply the grade point limit for AP courses, a requirement that administrators were not able to put in place before. “[The grade point limit] is very unwieldy to enforce if you have no system by which to check it,” John said.

Computer Associate Sydney Lindsay has taken advantage of Talos’s capacity to enforce regulations on the entire student body by integrating Argus, a new feature on Talos that guarantees access to school Wi-Fi for all students. Previously, students needed to connect to the school Wi-Fi before first period in order to have access for the rest of the day. Argus now allows each student to connect one device to the Wi-Fi. However, only devices such as laptops and tablets will be permitted.

Argus, which was originally created by Lindsay as a separate program, was incorporated under Talos in an effort to centralize all of the school’s management systems. “We keep having systems that do little things, [...] but the problem is none of these systems talk to each other, and none of them talk to the DOE,” John said. Talos allows for data to be available in one place instead of scattered among several. “It's a general centralization of information by a lot of people that will integrate many systems,” John said.

Despite the positive feedback that Talos has received, some have issues with certain aspects of the system. Argus does not allow phones to connect to the Wi-Fi, which sophomore Vincent Gao found issue with. “Over 40 percent of the school is on reduced or free lunch, [...] so a lot of people can’t afford tablets or laptops that are the only beneficiaries of the Wi-Fi program,” he said.

Argus is not the only Talos service that has received criticism from students. During course selections, students flooded their respective Facebook groups with different technical and individualized concerns. The comments regarded errors students encountered when they tried to fill up their list of seven electives. At one point, the Class of 2021 encountered a minor bug in Talos that caused every student to have Biology and Chemistry Teacher Gilbert Papagayo listed as their chemistry teacher. After enough students noticed the discrepancy, it was quickly resolved.

Others, particularly students who have experience with computer science, have criticisms of Talos from a programming standpoint. Reflecting on the developer choices of Talos, senior Raunak Chowdhury said, “The website overall could have been implemented better. […] Talos’s kanban board [...] while I applaud it for its creativity, it’s really not going to be effective overall.” Chowdhury was referring to the kanban board, or drag-and-drop columns, in Talos’s elective selection page, which he found was prone to unintentional resets and inconvenient to maneuver around. As an alternative to how Talos could have executed AP and elective selections, he alluded to the drop-down selections that Google Forms uses.

Regarding the development of Talos and the addition of new features such as course requests over the summer, senior Bill Ni said, “I’m definitely sure that if the CS department had some input, the site would be more organized and the backend data output would be more streamlined towards the Programming Office.”

As one of the developers of Talos, John said that he strives “to be responsive with people when they come to me with reasonable [requests for] change. But, I have to make a list of priorities as to what gets accomplished.” With that established, John maintains communication with faculty and students in order to understand how they are using Talos and how to improve the system for future use.

Students have ideas for how Talos could further develop as the sole system that Stuyvesant uses. Gao believes that Talos has the potential to become a universal grading platform utilized by all teachers—an idea that many students advocate for, but has never come to fruition. “When we have the opportunity with this new website, I think we should totally seize that,” Gao said.

Chowdhury recommends creating an anonymous survey form so users can voice their concerns and suggestions for Talos. “That way, you can get feedback instead of running marketing [or] feedback runs [on Facebook],” Chowdhury said. “Instead, you could just have [the survey form] activated throughout the year so that the website can be adjusted based on what seems to be the problem.”

Grossman provided a different perspective on the process of incorporating administrative and student feedback into the development of Talos. While he and the rest of the Cabinet have already discussed their suggestions for Talos with John, “it doesn’t even feel like a question of suggestion, which is a good thing. [...] Each step of the way, [John]’s asking for our feedback,” Grossman said.

While Grossman is satisfied with John’s work and his receptiveness to administrative feedback, he has one concern about the future of Talos.“Hopefully, [John] will be around for a long time to come, but he’s a sophomore in college, and his life could take him in any number of directions,” Grossman said. “If he does go abroad [...] what does that mean for Talos? [We’d need to make] sure it continues to run smoothly.”

John has been training the administration to use Talos, which Grossman hopes will help Stuyvesant maintain the website as its central management system in the future. “The best thing that somebody who builds something can do is render themselves superfluous, and not have the success of the system rely solely on their presence of actions, but make sure there’s others who can step in. [...] [John]’s on the road to doing that,” Grossman said.

In order to successfully maintain Talos, Rodda John intends to reach out to the Stuyvesant community throughout the school year. “A lot of the problems with the systems already in place is the developers tend not to be in contact with people who are actually using them,” John said. “I’ve been trying to short-circuit that by keeping in contact, talking to them, making sure the system is doing what they want it to do. Let’s see what happens in the first few years.”