[sims] SIMS Teacher App - What is it like?

[GREED]

what news would that be @GREED

 

Well, as you asked: Emerge now supports AD integration, so you can login with your Windows UN/PW. One less password to remember, and teachers will always have one and probably remember it too.

 

A link to the news item (mods, if this is a step too far please edit and remove, though it is just a response to a direct enquiry ):

 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/groupcall-emerge-now-active-directory-integration-graham-reed

Edited April 27, 2015 by GREED
Trying not to get reported...

[enjay]

Thanks @GREED I'll raise a call with the helpdesk.

 

As for your linked news article, does that work for schools using a remotely-hosted SIMS, e.g. county-provided, or only for those with a local SIMS server?

[GREED]

Officially it is in beta as we are wanting more scenarios to test against (obviously, as there are many many different setups of AD and SIMS scenarios too). It works for single school (local AD local SIMS, local AD remote SIMS (as in LA hosted)) as well as I believe remote AD remote SIMS. It even works if your LA hosts the Emerge Server too, typically where SIMS is hosted as well. Its gone through a lot of testing (as above!) which is why we have delayed it a bit and also released as a beta so we can continue to monitor with customers and their different setups. Edited April 27, 2015 by GREED

[enjay]

As for your linked news article, does that work for schools using a remotely-hosted SIMS, e.g. county-provided, or only for those with a local SIMS server?

I've just realised I might have been talking nonsense (not for the first time!). Even though the main SIMS is hosted externally, Emerge and the SIMS instance which it references are on a domain-joined server on our network. Doesn't that mean that Emerge will work for us too, regardless of the location of the SIMS database, since Emerge itself is on a local server?

[GREED]

Put it this way... does Emerge work now? Then it will work with AD logins too!

[enjay]

Thanks @GREED

 

And now back to the matter which actually started this thread - what do people think of SIMS Teacher App??

[pete]

I'm disappointed it doesn't support phones for non-fiddly stuff like registers. The justification I've had from pre-sales is that it makes assessments look horrible, but so? - include a disclaimer to that effect and let me take registers on something that fits into my pocket.

 

Any chance of adding support in the future @PhilNeal? £2/student is doable. £2/student and buying a tablet for each staff member because of a design decision really isn't.

Edited April 27, 2015 by pete

[enjay]

I'm disappointed it doesn't support phones for non-fiddly stuff like registers. The justification I've had from pre-sales is that it makes assessments look horrible, but so? - include a disclaimer to that effect and let me take registers on something that fits into my pocket.

 

Especially true if you are a PE teacher...

[RLR]

We've just signed up to start using this app. We have too many issues with emerge. It's one of our biggest walk-ins from teaching staff.

 

Always having to clear the database and re-load. Teachers say they can't login and it sits there loading for about 15 minutes. We've been told from groupcall support that this is when xporter is running the sims/emerge update job. This job takes 20 minutes so makes emerge unusable for 20 minutes. We've contacted groupcall about this and they trialed us on a pilot script which only made things worse. Teachers started saying they took a register but it never came through to SIMs. So we reverted back. We're hoping the SIMS teacher app will be better.

 

I think if the xporter update job didn't take so long we would carry on using Emerge as it has served us well for a few years.

[winng]

We've had no joy in using the teacher app here so far. Very frustrating for the teachers and the techies, I.e. me!

[GREED]

9

We've just signed up to start using this app. We have too many issues with emerge. It's one of our biggest walk-ins from teaching staff.

 

Always having to clear the database and re-load. Teachers say they can't login and it sits there loading for about 15 minutes. We've been told from groupcall support that this is when xporter is running the sims/emerge update job. This job takes 20 minutes so makes emerge unusable for 20 minutes. We've contacted groupcall about this and they trialed us on a pilot script which only made things worse. Teachers started saying they took a register but it never came through to SIMs. So we reverted back. We're hoping the SIMS teacher app will be better.

 

I think if the xporter update job didn't take so long we would carry on using Emerge as it has served us well for a few years.

@RLR can you please PM me your school details and I will get this looked into, this very much should not be happening and I'm sorry you have been having these issue.

[enjay]

We've had no joy in using the teacher app here so far. Very frustrating for the teachers and the techies, I.e. me!

 

Could you expand upon that a bit. What sort of problems do you experience?

[winng]

Despite the services appearing to be running okay on the server and the online admin site, the teachers are getting 'the services are offline' message

[RLR]

9

@RLR can you please PM me your school details and I will get this looked into, this very much should not be happening and I'm sorry you have been having these issue.

 

We've had this looked into over the last couple of weeks. We do externally host SIMs which slows it down a bit but we had similar issues when SIMs wasn't externally hosted.

It was left for us to contact our External hosters to see if network resources where being limited.

 

I was wondering if there is any way to make emerge work for just the registers. That way the database will only be for the Registers which will make it smaller and quicker to update?

[GREED]

We've had this looked into over the last couple of weeks. We do externally host SIMs which slows it down a bit but we had similar issues when SIMs wasn't externally hosted.

It was left for us to contact our External hosters to see if network resources where being limited.

 

I was wondering if there is any way to make emerge work for just the registers. That way the database will only be for the Registers which will make it smaller and quicker to update?

 

If you read up a few posts, you will see mentioned some improvements to performance that we are looking at at the moment which will address some of this, particularly getting the attendance piece running as soon as possible for staff. We've known the current situation isn't ideal for a little while and are listening to this feeback.

 

However I'd still like to look into your case because it sounds particularly acute.

[enjay]

I was wondering if there is any way to make emerge work for just the registers. That way the database will only be for the Registers which will make it smaller and quicker to update?

 

Kind of like "Emerge Lite" you mean? Interesting idea. That said, it might be a bit limiting - we find most staff started out just using Emerge for their registers, and then started using the other features over time.

[GREED]

Kind of like "Emerge Lite" you mean? Interesting idea. That said, it might be a bit limiting - we find most staff started out just using Emerge for their registers, and then started using the other features over time.

 

It's going to be more the case that the app would open and download just the registers (perhaps just for the day or even the next lesson) and the rest of the data would happen in the background. We have to identify what information is needed to achieve that task and isolating that without breaking other data records, do you can do registers and the test of the data happens while you are taking registers.

[Marshall_IT]

We've been using it for almost a month now and teaching staff have found it really good.

 

We have moved from them only using SIMS Learning Gateway though so anything was going to be a massive improvement.

 

I did have some issues with the services to begin with but i have found Sims Services Manager to be a massive improvement on the VPN services.

 

The app itself is a little slow to load parts, like photos for the first time. Registers each time.

 

It is loading the info everytime and not caching so that's better for security.

 

Logging in with a MS or Google account everytime (4 hours?) is a bit of a pain but a pin lock is coming I'm told. Overall this is a very good product for something that has only been on public release for a few months.

[PhilNeal]

@Marshall_IT you'll be pleased that any latency will go in the release that has been submitted to the App Store although photos will take a while the first time they are loaded. The PIN is available in the same release. (It might take several submissions to get it approved so we expect end of May)

 

@pete There aren't currently plans to format it for a phone although if there is sufficient interest we'll consider it. The Teacher App is designed to be a complete replacement for teachers and as such assessment mark sheets are a key deliverable. There is no way a mark sheet (with formulas due later this year) would render properly on a phone - at least I don't think it can be done. Perhaps the iWatch

[Steve21]

Out of curiosity will this ever be web-based? Just seems nice if you roll it out on certain devices (tablets etc) etc that teachers can have a flow across any device again (Thinking Win7 here mainly)

 

Thanks,

Steve

[Marshall_IT]

@Marshall_IT you'll be pleased that any latency will go in the release that has been submitted to the App Store although photos will take a while the first time they are loaded. The PIN is available in the same release. (It might take several submissions to get it approved so we expect end of May)

 

@pete There aren't currently plans to format it for a phone although if there is sufficient interest we'll consider it. The Teacher App is designed to be a complete replacement for teachers and as such assessment mark sheets are a key deliverable. There is no way a mark sheet (with formulas due later this year) would render properly on a phone - at least I don't think it can be done. Perhaps the iWatch

 

That's great news, thank you.

The marksheets on a 10 inch screen is still only just usable, maybe we have too many columns!

 

Some ability to move and lock columns would be great though.

[PhilNeal]

@Steve21 unlikely that we will produce a browser solution. Some of the latest tools that we're using would allow us to build new apps in that way.

 

It does however work really well on W8 & W10 is going to be free for a year - would you put W10 on your PCs?

[Steve21]

Ah that's a shame Ok thank you.

 

Win10 wise I doubt for a while tbh as this workplace only just upgraded to Win7 before I joined But guess we shall see!

 

Many thanks,

Steve

[JordanT91]

I have the same issue as posted earlier - out of 15 classes, 2 or 3 registers do not make it to SIMS every AM and PM. They are always random so it's not to do with a particular iPod or version of Emerge. A stripped out register version of Emerge would be perfect for us. We don't care about all the other features - teachers take and return the iPods to the office when not in use for registers. A lot of the time teachers get frustrated because it takes ages for them to log in or it simply times out. When I've been there to see Emerge do this it's synchronising all the different databases. I'm the first to admit our wireless coverage is patchy, our broadband connection is terrible (and a lot of the time completely maxed out) and our SIMS is hosted at County Hall but the problem appears to be with Xporter.

 

We are looking into the possibility of getting iPads for all teachers so they can use the SIMS teacher app - this would cover us for registers and they might also start to use the other features.

[GREED]

I have the same issue as posted earlier - out of 15 classes, 2 or 3 registers do not make it to SIMS every AM and PM. They are always random so it's not to do with a particular iPod or version of Emerge. A stripped out register version of Emerge would be perfect for us. We don't care about all the other features - teachers take and return the iPods to the office when not in use for registers. A lot of the time teachers get frustrated because it takes ages for them to log in or it simply times out. When I've been there to see Emerge do this it's synchronising all the different databases. I'm the first to admit our wireless coverage is patchy, our broadband connection is terrible (and a lot of the time completely maxed out) and our SIMS is hosted at County Hall but the problem appears to be with Xporter.

 

We are looking into the possibility of getting iPads for all teachers so they can use the SIMS teacher app - this would cover us for registers and they might also start to use the other features.

@JordanT91 please PM me your school details and I will get this looked into, just this morning we are looking into this for another school (listed above!). There are a couple of options we can put to you that may improve things significantly, particularly given the parameters you have mentioned.

 

It would be interesting if we could solve the connection issue on registers, would that encourage using the other features too (you mention only needing attendance for Emerge, yet want to encourage use of other features if you move elsewhere)

Edited April 28, 2015 by GREED