Filemaker MIS

[Simcfc73]

Hi,

Does anyone use filemaker as a MIS solution? I was told several years ago 'Why pay for MIS when you can do it with filemaker' by a very clever ex girlfriend who wrote code for a living and would have found it a piece of cake.

I really just looked at the filemaker website as I was interested in doing a online reporting rather than using access and came across schoolmanager which is a MIS solution.

It seems to be used by some big schools including Blackpool Sixth Form College who use pupil consoles so they can access work too.

[Richie1972]

We use Filemaker here, but only for reports and assessment stuff.
We've got the dreaded SIMS as MIS and we're now going down the road of PARS for registration - well, we would be if we could get PARS to show all the registration groups

[Simcfc73]

Did you make the reports stuff yourself or buy a template?

Which product did you go for as I've seen that Filemaker Pro only allows 5 connections at a time and I wasn't sure if I needed to buy Filemaker and Filemaker server together to use more than 5 connections.

My last school used Pars but its been a few years since I used it. Have to say that the guy at Pars knew more about Sims SQL than Capita did and helped me no end.

[Richie1972]

Our head of ICT is the Filemaker expert - I avoid it completely lol
He's set up his own company and provides the system for a few other schools too

Yeah, we've heard that the people at pars seem to know how SIMS works better than capita too

[Norphy]

Surely using Filemaker would be no better than using $insert_flavour_here$SQL with a frontend? You'd still have to spend a bloody lot of time developing it to get it feature equivalent to SIMS plus should the thing go tits up you'd have to spend all your time fixing it instead of passing the buck.

OK, you'd not spend £x p/a on SIMS/PARS/CMIS/Whatever support but it would probably cost the same amount in terms of development and internal support

<shrugs>

[krb548]

At my school we use Filemaker, my boss and an ex-teacher from our school created a product for school which will allows the teachers to create on-line reports, assessment and mentoring.

It turned out so well that they created their own company and now sell this product to a few schools in the North West. The company is called PASS.

Since the teacher left my school I'm have now been given the task to look after the system for school. My job now entails keeping the system going and helping develop it further. The next phase of our development is to make the database available on the web so parents can check their childs progress.

If your school is interested in learning more about our product, let me know and I will pass you the contacts details of the guy who does the sales side of things.

[sahmeepee]

It seems to be used by some big schools including Blackpool Sixth Form College who use pupil consoles so they can access work too.

There's someone from there who posts on Edugeek - can't remember who, but I've seen it in the last few days.

[mikemc]

We use Filemaker for whole school MIS.

Head on over to www.smart-school.co.uk for more information.

Here are a couple of other websites relating to smart school that uses Filemaker to manage.

www.schoolbehaviour.co.uk - behaviour management
www.lesson-planner.co.uk - teachers lesson planner
www.report-writer.co.uk - student report writing, online version too
www.covermanager.co.uk - manages the daily cover rota (supply etc)
www.sms2u.co.uk - free sms sending software to contact parents etc

[manxdan]

All the Primary Schools here run on a filemaker MIS developed by a couple of chaps at the LEA. Many Mac based schools use filemaker as there is no Mac equivalent to SIMS etc. I have developed systems for assessment and reporting with filemaker for my secondary which have been well received and have now been in use for up to four years. Nearly all our student machines are Macs and all the teaching staff have MacBooks. The school office and administrators however are using SIMS which the teaching staff currently don't access (they are on separate networks). SIMS is good to get data out of but doesn't allow any kind of automated importing (it's good quality control I guess, but is frustrating when you have gathered lots of good data which you then have to key in again if you want to hold it in SIMS). The filemaker systems developed in house do take time and effort in development, but are great to use as they are built for exact purpose, and yet are flexible enough to absorb changing needs and methods.

[RCS_USER]

Hi Keith,
Would you like to give me some more information about PASS? Can I download trail? I want to take a look.

Tahnks
Z.Ahmad

[matt40k]

Yeah, we've heard that the people at pars seem to know how SIMS works better than capita too

Yes PARS SQL techy know about SIMS SQL then SIMS helpdesk. Why would a school want to know the SQL background when you don't need to fiddle with it?