Show My Homework

[timbo343]

I have been asked to look into a piece of software called Show My Homework. I've done the usual, quick search on google and there seems to be a fair few schools using it. I was wondering (if you are reading this post) if your school uses it as i would i be interested to find out more about it - how it works, how it pulls timetable information, cost, ease of use..... etc.

 

Thanks

[timbo343]

I think ive just found a massive problem with the site.. anyone can view homework, list of teachers, classes etc and can download homework sheets from the site without logging in! I have just found a showmyhomework site online and managed to get an idea when their subjects are running.

 

Should this be a site we stay away from? Also, they are asking students to sign in with a twitter or facebook account. I thought students had to be over 13 to have a facebook account?

Edited September 29, 2014 by timbo343

[pooley]

Maybe it's a feature?

[sparkeh]

Oh wow, yeah you are right! I can see everything!

 

I would give this a wide birth :-S

[mb2k01]

Its a feature. They say that it prevents the student from saying they forgot their password, as well as enabling the parent to easily check whether their child has homework without having to log in.

[Meldrew]

It does allow anyone to view homework, so you need to be sure that teachers don't put anything sensitive on there, but I suppose there's not that much that a teacher is likely to put in a homework description that's confidential, but still I don't like the idea of it.

 

I've heard from another school that you can setup user accounts for your students, but they have the facility to change it. A student had changed this to a very inappropriate alternative, then the student's parent, who went to look at the homework that had been set of course saw the inappropriate username and complained to the school.

 

Also show my homework is expensive.

 

Meldrew

[timbo343]

Its a feature. They say that it prevents the student from saying they forgot their password, as well as enabling the parent to easily check whether their child has homework without having to log in.

 

So what's the login button for at the top then?

[sparkeh]

Don't worry its all done over https

[timbo343]

*They* being who?? students? It would seem that the students have too much control over this. It looks like the site is setup per school per subdomain so each school should be able to set their own user logins. I wouldn't want to use SSO at the moment but i would like to use the same username format for the students and have the option so students cannot change their username. If this cannot be achieved then its a no go for us. The very basic security levels leave me questioning the site.

 

Even if the student had to put in their username for the site and no password, surely that would give more of a security policy rather than been open to everyone :S.

Edited September 29, 2014 by timbo343

[ozydave]

A member of SLT cam into my office the week before summer hols and said we are going to be using Show My Homework next term. Someone from SMH will in touch to get you to set it up. As you have done tombo343 I started looking round the net as found the same things you did, home work public, facebook twitter etc.

Went back to the SLT member and pointed all these things out who said "ah well we are doing it anyway so get it setup" found out they had already paid!

 

I set it up, installed the SIMS link software, then problems.

 

Our SIMS data has always been all over the place. so we have staff personal email accounts were syncing with SMH as the admin staff do not put staff work email address in SIMS. they do now. it took them an age to get it correct.

Also

Student emails (the ones we give them) have never been in SIMS. In SIMS on the student details, admin here have always put the parents email accounts so when the synced to SMH the students have the parents email address. you need the student email address so they can reset their own password, etc.

 

I pointed out data protection, copyright, heaven only knows what teachers will upload!

 

SLT wanted me to administer SMH, I was told SMH do everything, creating the letters to distribute to parents and students. They don't they give you a template with mail merge and let you get on with it.

I have refused to get involved with SMH beyond what I have already done. (not sure how long I can refuse though)

 

What really makes my blood boil is We have been using Moodle for a good few years and last year brought it inhouse to integrated with SIMS and Active directory. No need for teachers to create classes, courses etc. Students can view there own timetable. The students use the same login, parents will be able to access the VLE very soon. A one stop shop for everything SMH don't even come close to what an integrated VLE can do, but oh no SLT knows best.

 

In one of my rants to SLT, it turned out this SLT member never logged into the VLE and didn't know it can do so much! AAAHHHHH.

 

We have a few teachers who uses the VLE a lot and been setting homework on for a long time using it for a teaching tool in lessons all their resources are on it the students know it. He has been told he must use SMH. SO students have to look in two places now one to work during the day and one for homework with a different login.

 

If I have rambled and nothing makes sense above its because I am angry at the waste of public money and time of staff and students on an SLT whim!

[timbo343]

Thanks for the input @ozydave. A very interesting read and kinda makes sense, if they [sMH] cant get the security right what help have us Admins got.

[WingnutKid]

Hi folks,

Just wondering if anyone has tried getting SMHW logins synchronising with AD? Apparently only two schools in the country have managed to get this working, ours NOT being one of them! This is a feature that SMHW provide but it seems that they don't really know how to get it set up! If you are one of the two schools that have managed to do this, please let me know

[torgo_uk]

Hi folks,

Just wondering if anyone has tried getting SMHW logins synchronising with AD? Apparently only two schools in the country have managed to get this working, ours NOT being one of them! This is a feature that SMHW provide but it seems that they don't really know how to get it set up! If you are one of the two schools that have managed to do this, please let me know

 

Why not just sync with sims? Works OK here

[JJonas]

So what's the login button for at the top then?

 

The login button at the top provides the students with their homework timetable and also allows them to answer quizzes and tests their teacher can set up

 

Students can still drill down through the data to find their homework without needing to know their password but they will need to know their year, subject and teaching set.

[naimishgohil]

Thanks for the comments above, hopefully we can answer a few of these queries about the site that have been highlighted.

 

The ability for anyone to be able to view the calendar is in place so that pupils don't have the excuse, 'I forgot my password', and will always be able to access their homework details and deadlines.

When they log in, rather than seeing all homework, they'll only see homework relevant to them, and as JJonas said, are able to take online quizzes and spelling tests and view their gradebook with their grades and comments.

 

For the login details, we offer multiple ways to allow easy access for students, but the majority of schools do so by using their SMHW login details. Many schools have a preferred username format / email addresses which we import for them, so they can continue to use the same details for many services.

 

We also integrate with Google SSO, Active Directory and RM Unify.

 

The login details can be printed as a PDF, or exported to excel for a mail merge if more/less information is required when distributing these. We also have a CSV of the login details to be as flexible as possible.

 

Student name fields are now also locked for our users so they cannot edit this.

 

In terms of VLEs and their functionality, we would also be the first to say that we are not trying to do everything that a VLE does, and rather just focus on homework setting, tracking and monitoring for teachers students and parents. Although VLEs can be great for a number of areas, homework is often an after thought, and this is what we really focus on.

 

 

Kind Regards,

Show My Homework

Edited October 28, 2014 by Dos_Box
Contact detials removed

[dezt]

We have just had this setup, staff have had their accounts for 1 week, students since Friday, I got a few phonecalls on Friday from staff telling me students had forgotten their passwords, after about an hour of having them. We never got the option to sync with AD, all the user accounts are set up on SMH so it's another password for students (and staff) to forget. Also when I was answering the question sheet they sent us they asked us if we used Office 365, which we do, when I emailed the answers back I was told they didn't support Office 365, bit pointless asking me if we used it then.

 

Hopefully it will get used here, our VLE (moodle) never got used because everyone kept forgetting their passwords (students) or couldn't be bothered adding content (staff). It was externally hosted by the LA so we couldn't link AD into it either.

[ChrisS]

I have been asked to look into a piece of software

 

Thanks

 

Me too. Not filled with much confidence by the replies but I'm aware that a few months have passed. I wondered if you and went for SMH and what your experience of it was. Has anyone else got any more recent feedback to give?

[Wubbalubbadub]

Hi folks,

Just wondering if anyone has tried getting SMHW logins synchronising with AD? Apparently only two schools in the country have managed to get this working, ours NOT being one of them! This is a feature that SMHW provide but it seems that they don't really know how to get it set up! If you are one of the two schools that have managed to do this, please let me know

 

I am in that exact boat! I have been trying to get show my homework and AD sync to work for the past month. It is so hard to get set-up! I am struggling beyond belief with it! Compared to most services which just seem so much easier! So i second this! if your one of the schools who managed to get this set-up then please please please!! let me know how!!

[mb2k01]

Hi folks,

Just wondering if anyone has tried getting SMHW logins synchronising with AD? Apparently only two schools in the country have managed to get this working, ours NOT being one of them! This is a feature that SMHW provide but it seems that they don't really know how to get it set up! If you are one of the two schools that have managed to do this, please let me know

 

I've got this working here following the instructions below - though please note I already had uploaded users via CSV, so it was a matching exercise... not sure if this is what they would get a new user to do if they didn't have cloud users provisioned already?

 

(First you would need to arrange a public facing LDAP server with port 636 for SSL LDAP or 386 for normal LDAP open and pointing to their server - see below - so if you are on SWGfL it will mean a change request being submitted for firewall ports to be opened on your selected server...)

 

To integrate we need to match accounts by either email address or MIS ID. One of these needs to be in both your AD and SMHW. It's easier to do this with email addresses so we suggest this first.

 

1. The following attributes need to be set by the school admin (Settings > LDAP/Active Directory Settings).

• The IP address or hostname of the server to connect to

• The port to connect to (usually 636 for the secure connection)

• The LDAP / Active Directory base :

• If you have all users in 1 OU : ou=people,dc=example,dc=com

• If you have more than 1 OU : ou=teachers,dc=example,dc=com|ou=students,dc=example,dc=com (notice the | separating the 2 OU)

• The (bind) user name to use to connect to the server (this user should only have read only rights)

• The (bind) secret to use to connect to the server

• The name of the AD attribute storing the username on the ActiveDirectory server (usually 'sAMAccountName' or 'userPrincipalName' or just 'mail')

• The name of the AD attribute storing the email on the ActiveDirectory server (usually 'mail')

• The name of the AD attribute storing the MIS id on the ActiveDirectory server (optional)

 

The last 2 are used to find the users in our database. It's quite likely that you have the email address stored in AD for all your users, so this should be sufficient (when we have all email addresses for users in our database).

 

2. You will need to authorise our Production IP address to connect to the Active Directory server for security reasons.

 

 

How will the login happen:

- your users would need to access the login page using your school's subdomain (https://school.showmyhomework.co.uk/sign_in instead of https://showmyhomework.co.uk/sign_in)

- They will then type in their ActiveDirectory username and password and click login

- Login happens

 

Users that are not using Active Directory can use the same login page without a problem.

Edited March 17, 2015 by mb2k01

[Wubbalubbadub]

I've got this working here following the instructions below - though please note I already had uploaded users via CSV, so it was a matching exercise... not sure if this is what they would get a new user to do if they didn't have cloud users provisioned already?

 

(First you would need to arrange a public facing LDAP server with port 636 for SSL LDAP or 386 for normal LDAP open and pointing to their server - see below - so if you are on SWGfL it will mean a change request being submitted for firewall ports to be opened on your selected server...)

 

To integrate we need to match accounts by either email address or MIS ID. One of these needs to be in both your AD and SMHW. It's easier to do this with email addresses so we suggest this first.

 

1. The following attributes need to be set by the school admin (Settings > LDAP/Active Directory Settings).

• The IP address or hostname of the server to connect to

• The port to connect to (usually 636 for the secure connection)

• The LDAP / Active Directory base :

• If you have all users in 1 OU : ou=people,dc=example,dc=com

• If you have more than 1 OU : ou=teachers,dc=example,dc=com|ou=students,dc=example,dc=com (notice the | separating the 2 OU)

• The (bind) user name to use to connect to the server (this user should only have read only rights)

• The (bind) secret to use to connect to the server

• The name of the AD attribute storing the username on the ActiveDirectory server (usually 'sAMAccountName' or 'userPrincipalName' or just 'mail')

• The name of the AD attribute storing the email on the ActiveDirectory server (usually 'mail')

• The name of the AD attribute storing the MIS id on the ActiveDirectory server (optional)

 

The last 2 are used to find the users in our database. It's quite likely that you have the email address stored in AD for all your users, so this should be sufficient (when we have all email addresses for users in our database).

 

2. You will need to authorise our Production IP address to connect to the Active Directory server for security reasons.

 

 

How will the login happen:

- your users would need to access the login page using your school's subdomain (https://school.showmyhomework.co.uk/sign_in instead of https://showmyhomework.co.uk/sign_in)

- They will then type in their ActiveDirectory username and password and click login

- Login happens

 

Users that are not using Active Directory can use the same login page without a problem.

 

Can anyone provide any info on setting up a bind username and password? is that just a user account that has permission to AD?

[mb2k01]

Can anyone provide any info on setting up a bind username and password? is that just a user account that has permission to AD?

 

Basically yes. Just create a standard user and place then in AD.

For LDAP users I tend to do "ldap-serviceuser" (replacing the word service user with something reasonably identifiable!)

In the SMH area for bind user just type the username and in bind secret type in the password.

[JayDog]

We use it, yeah the log in feature is for kids with mobile phones etc. that want to access their homeworks, normal PC's don't need a login as kids will moan that they've forgotten their username etc.. I tried writing something using our old VLE but it was nowhere near as sophisticated as what they've got.

[spoonz]

can anyone be kind enough to help with alternatives they may have seen at BETT 2017? we are getting rid of SMHW for number of reasons, and i stumbled upon this thread and from the above may look like some schools maybe looking for change just like us.

[2ilent8cho]

can anyone be kind enough to help with alternatives they may have seen at BETT 2017? we are getting rid of SMHW for number of reasons, and i stumbled upon this thread and from the above may look like some schools maybe looking for change just like us.

 

Firefly maybe? Does a lot more than SMHW

[timbo343]

Student folder?

Foldr?

Ruler if you have O365.