[sims] SIMS report writing etc.

[redrobo63]

Hi,

New to this forum as I’ve just found it while looking foranswers to SIMS migration. We are currently using Facility and were going tomove across to progresso but with the problems they’ve had with the roll out we’renow probably going to jump ship. SIMS looks good but would like to know a fewthings first. 1. Is the end of year report writing editable or do you have touse a template? At the moment what I’ve seen is that each subject has its ownpage. We would rather have a say a 4 or 5 page report with columns for eachsubject that can be split into grades, awards comments etc. 2. Is the migrationeasy. We currently have 10 datasets and I’m worried that data may go missing ormerge to places we don’t want it to go. I have lots more questions but I’ll leaveit for these 2 for now.

Thanks in advance

John

[CAM]

I get staff to enter their grades and reports into an Assessment Manager marksheet. Then the data is fed into a Word template created in Individual Report, so you can make a template with multiple pages or your own sections. Think mail merge, it's similar.

 

There is also a report writing tool called Profiles but I have never used it beyond initial tinkering.

[Kyle]

What area you in Robo?

[redrobo63]

Thanks CAM, I'm in the Liverpool area Kyle.

[GREED]

Are you taking a look at all players in the market before you jump?

[vikpaw]

Report writing is flexible if you use the assessment module, not so sure about the dedicated reports module Profiles.

It can do all you want, the final output is in a template, so the teacher can't alter the layout, but you can configure it in advance and have multiple templates for each reporting session / year group / class or student if you really wanted to.

 

Bringing data in should be easy enough, but before you can, you'll need to create holders for all the data and set up some structure to mimic what you're already doing. It should be part of the deal with whichever supplier you choose to pull data over.

 

by the way

[Steven_Cleaver]

As Cam and Vikpaw have said Assessment Manager Marksheets you can link the data from these into Reports.Reports in SIM's are pretty flexible and reasonably easy to create, think Mail Merge where you set your letter up then Import then link the data in, with SIM's data comes from Marksheets.

 

Have been to a few schools and we all seem to use or configure Reports differently some use Profiles others aren't etc

 

What we do here is produce three Student Reports a Year two one Page reports where Staff just enter Data (Grades etc. and Comments from Phrase bank) which links into Sim's marksheets and set Reports for for this data to feed into so Staff enter data and just adjust a couple of things on these reports templatesnedneed to be altered like dates etc and print straight from SIM's once set up we don't really change them much year on year. Third and Full report again Staff enter Data as with the other two but have a free comment text box and this report is around 3 to 4 pages these are exported into a shared area then Form Tutors check these for accuarcy and enter overall statements about the students.

 

If you are looking at SIM's would personally not look at SLG for Parental Gateway due to cost and feel their is a better product out their called Insight (Parental Portal) Tasc Software TASC Software Solutions Ltd. They also have PAR's which is an alternative to Lesson Monitor in SIM's these both deal with attendance Lesson Monitor was very poor a few years back although has vastly improved now so is probably fine but just so you have an alternative.

 

As Greed said if you are deffinately looking at moving MIS and have time and haven't already look at alternative MIS systems just for your own peace of mind that you have made the right choice. I'll be honest and have looked at a few alternatives MIS systems but with all SIM's faults I haven't seen another one that covers everything as well or has as wide a base including here and SIM's SupportNet of users to rely on for support where issues occur.