PowerSchool, the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America, has recently announced the availability of its latest PowerSchool PowerBuddy™ AI products: PowerBuddy™ for College and Career and PowerBuddy™ for Custom AI. These newly introduced tools aim to transform how school staff, teachers, counsellors, students, families, and the community connect with their school district while helping students easily explore and take steps to ensure they are on the right path for college, career, and life success.
These AI assistants, designed using PowerSchool’s Responsible AI principles, are the latest PowerBuddy products since PowerSchool launched PowerBuddy in January 2024.
PowerBuddy for College and Career: Individualized Guidance for Future Success
PowerBuddy for College and Career is an AI companion powered by students’ longitudinal data to guide them in their postsecondary planning. Designed to engage with students conversationally, PowerBuddy offers personalized support, making career exploration and postsecondary planning simple, accessible, and highly impactful. Students can ask questions to discover their options, understand requirements and next steps specific to their context, and receive tailored guidance on which path best suits their strengths and interests, maximizing their academic and professional success.
Key Features of PowerBuddy for College and Career:
- Empowers Students: Equips students with guidance based on their individual and unique needs, such as their GPA, assessments, career interests, location preferences, academic proficiency, aptitudes, personal goals, military interests, scholarship qualifications, and more, to confidently explore career and college paths, weigh their options, and make informed decisions.
- Streamlines Discovery: Ensures students can quickly find the information they need when they need it with its intuitive natural language interface and contextual relevance.
- Maximizes Counselor Impact: This programme frees up valuable counsellor time by providing students with a self-service platform, allowing counsellors to focus on high-impact student support.
- Security and Privacy: In addition to adhering to Responsible AI principles, PowerSchool protects the application’s security and integrity, including robust cloud security, security by design, third-party penetration testing, and a responsible disclosure programme—all validated by independent third-party auditors.
PowerBuddy for Custom AI: Streamlining District Information Access
PowerBuddy for Custom AI redefines how districts interact with their communities and stakeholders by providing a secure, real-time AI assistant that can answer district-specific questions like details from the district website, policy manuals, athletic schedules, after-school programmes, student handbooks, school calendars, lunch menus, job postings, and more. The tool simplifies information retrieval, allowing users to access accurate, approved answers from district documentation, reducing the need for time-consuming searches and direct inquiries. District staff can easily manage and update the AI’s knowledge base with built-in administrative tools.
Key Features of PowerBuddy for Custom AI:
- Seamless Integration: Easily integrates into any district website, including Parent Portals, district and school websites, communication platforms, Student Information Systems, e-learning platforms, and community engagement sites.
- Secure Content Management: Manages and secures district-specific documentation, ensuring privacy and accuracy.
- Inclusive Accessibility Features: Offers speech-to-text and text-to-speech functionality, ensuring access for all users.
Commenting on the newly introduced tool, Shivani Stumpf, Chief Product and Innovation Officer of PowerSchool said:
At PowerSchool, AI isn’t just a feature – it’s a cornerstone of our mission to enhance educational outcomes and foster meaningful engagement unlike ever before. Our new PowerBuddy tools represent a significant leap forward in empowering students, families, educators, and counsellors with efficient, secure, and personalized access to critical information by providing instant, tailored, and relevant responses through natural language interactions, eliminating the need for time-consuming searches and sifting through an overwhelming amount of information.
PowerSchool offers end-to-end product clouds that connect the central office to the classroom to the home with award-winning products, including Schoology Learning and Naviance CCLR, so school districts can securely manage student data, enrollment, attendance, grades, instruction, assessments, human resources, talent, professional development, special education, data analytics and insights, communications, and college and career readiness. The platform supports over 60 million students in over 90 countries and over 18,000 customers, including over 90 of the top 100 districts by student enrollment in the United States.
