Frog Parental Engagement

[u8dmtm]

We're on the verge of buying SIMS Learning Gateway and I have just discoverd Frog Parent Engagement, which from a users point of view looks a lot nicer:

http://www.frogtrade.com/index.phtml?d=360661

Has anyone got this or got any experiences of using this? We're not using any of their other products and we've got SIMS.Net.

[Simcfc73]

I applied for a trial account for this to see what its like but they are redoing the test server or something.

Agreed it looks much better then Sharepoint.

[Connect]

might want to try Concept247
we have it can let you see ours if you want

[howartp]

We're on the verge of buying SIMS Learning Gateway and I have just discoverd Frog Parent Engagement, which from a users point of view looks a lot nicer:

Frog Learning Platform - Parental Engagement

Has anyone got this or got any experiences of using this? We're not using any of their other products and we've got SIMS.Net.

I might be a bit late for you here, but we have Frog (without the parent portal at present) as our VLE. We spoke to Frog last week about their Parental Portal - we were asking them what they were doing about 'realtime' access as per a document my manager showed me. Their response was currently everything is done on whatever schedule you set, so for us it's overnight, but they are working on realtime access.

However at a meeting of Network Managers within our county council yesterday, it was pointed out (and I've since found the BECTA toolkit documentation which states it) that the interpretation of 'realtime' is up to the schools to decide what is appropriate. Therefore it doesn't matter if Frog don't manage true realtime by 1st September 2010.

We are going with the Frog portal as it is one system to update for our communications officer, and it looks far better than SLG as you say.

Peter.

[Tonyoung]

might want to try Concept247
we have it can let you see ours if you want

I would certainly be interested in seeing your portal - can you post or PM log in details. We were put off the product last time we looked by it's lack of interoperability with SIMS. Has this now been fixed ?

[Sam_Brown]

Concept 24\7 came up to us a few weeks ago and I was nothing but impressed with them. If we do decide to go with Moodle as our VLE I think we'll almost certainly be looking to use ParentPortal supplied by "4\7.

[Sylv3r]

I might be a bit late for you here, but we have Frog (without the parent portal at present) as our VLE. We spoke to Frog last week about their Parental Portal - we were asking them what they were doing about 'realtime' access as per a document my manager showed me. Their response was currently everything is done on whatever schedule you set, so for us it's overnight, but they are working on realtime access.

However at a meeting of Network Managers within our county council yesterday, it was pointed out (and I've since found the BECTA toolkit documentation which states it) that the interpretation of 'realtime' is up to the schools to decide what is appropriate. Therefore it doesn't matter if Frog don't manage true realtime by 1st September 2010.

We are going with the Frog portal as it is one system to update for our communications officer, and it looks far better than SLG as you say.

Peter.

As the Government recognised that all schools wouldn't be in the position to offer realtime data and the number of companies been able to offer this was quite small they soon backed down from "True" realtime and no longer require up-to-data minute by minute.

[humbug1873]

Pretty plain simple .. forget Frog.

They promise a lot in their nice shiny sales presentations but they don't deliver. Once you've payed lots of money you'll only have lot's of questions. The documentation is a mess (or completely lacking).

Last but not least once you are on Frog the way back is almost impossible, as they don't offer exports in a standard format like SCORM. The only thing they have is a FRG file format, and even that only in beta.

If you are not already into Frog save the money for something more useful. Hire a programmer that builds what you need for you as a Moodle block for example (and then share it with the rest of us

--- Frog the other 4-letter F word

[howartp]

As the Government recognised that all schools wouldn't be in the position to offer realtime data and the number of companies been able to offer this was quite small they soon backed down from "True" realtime and no longer require up-to-data minute by minute.

Thanks for that - I'll mention it to my boss when she's in tomorrow.

It's her that gave me the original spec which implied true realtime, so it will be good to know we're not in the wrong by staying with custom realtime.

Peter

[dsm]

We're a Frog school and we have the Parent Portal.

We've already launched portals for staff, students, sixth formers, governors and two local primary schools that we have connections with. The next step is PP.

We've been wholly impressed with Frog, their product and especially the support they have provided us with.

I can honestly say that after lots of research last year (we purchased in June last year) Frog were well out in front of any of the other VLEs.

Frog is very flexible, unlike many other VLEs. We, like most schools, did consider moodle but decided that we wanted the professional support and upgrades that come with a commercial product. I'm not moodle bashing here, we just decided it wasn't right for our school. The other secondary in our area have gone with it and their site is very impressive.

Humbug, I'm not sure what you issue with Frog is I'm just sorry you didn't get on with it. Every member of staff from Frog that I have met have been incredibly helpful. Their product, in my opinion is fantastic and is really moving our school forward in a number of ways.

Regards

[jenny_urey]

TASC INSIGHT ... worth a look!

[humbug1873]

From the INSIGHT homepage:


Where does INSIGHT get its data from?

INSIGHT displays the data held in your SIMS.net database.