CMIS / EPortal Advice

[stitch]

Hi all

 

We purchased CMIS before Eportal was included with it, and now our SMT has seen a demonstration of it and are now planning to purchase Eportal with a view of switching from Bromcom and use it for electronic registration and assessment entry and have it up and running for September 06. The Network Manager and myself have opted for a PC in every classroom and to use Dekart Logon for the teachers to login with a memory stick which holds a token and a pin number. We have steered away from laptops mainly because of the problems of security and mistreatment of them. We also have a problem with a percentage of teachers just walking off and leaving PCs logged in.

 

I would be very interested in hearing from other users of this system to see which path you have taken, especially with departments such as PE and Design & Technology.

 

Any advice or information would be greatly appreciated.

 

Many Thanks

[john]

We use E-portal where I work, nearly all classrooms have a PC in them now so the registrations are done on that. It has a nice front end to it now, so staff can see what they are doing. They like the reporting feature, it works really really well. As for attendances for PE and activities, they get done after the lesson took place. The portal times out after a set period so that should help for forgetful staff.

[stitch]

Thanks for the reply John

[CyberNerd]

We are using CMIS/ePortal for registrations, it was decided that we would issue laptops to all staff rather that have dedicated pc's in each classroom.

IMO this was a political decision rather than a technical one, the laptops are often destroyed and sometimes stolen. Laptops regularly loose connectivity with the network (the building isn't suitable for 100% reliable wireless 2.4GHz) and staff constanly mess up the configuration to use wireless at home (the teachers are 'given' their 'own' laptop.

Individual PC's would be my prefered route, as they are more easily upgraded (hardware and software) and more easily secured, as the pc's age they can be turned into thin clients with relative ease.

 

I would also set a password protected screensaver.

[Ric_]

I don't know how CMIS and ePortal woork but I would have thought that for such an extensive rollout of machines (to be used just for registration) thin clients would be ideal. Cheap Wyse terminal for £120, TS CAL for £9 and maybe £700 for a beefy machine to act as a terminal server.

 

I like the idea of the key-based logon.

[stitch]

Doh

 

Sorry Ric_

 

I forgot to mention that these PCs will also be used on interactive whiteboards. The SMT are wanting to have a PC in every room, so that the kids can also get to their work on the accademic network ( Novell Netware ) and display it on the whiteboard.

 

With the laptop issue CyberNerd, thats what we are afraid of.

[CyberNerd]

Check out these Mini-ITX machines, They are cheap, but fast enough to run IWB (promethean). They also make perfect semi-thin clients.

 

http://www.icp-epia.co.uk/site/index.php

[CyberNerd]

oh, but don't go for the > PACK-BOX-A4 - IMHO the cooling is poor, they need the pci blower things.

[MrBen]

Hi Stich, I personally work for a large LEA currently supporting approx 300 CMIS schools. The general setup in our schools is as follows:

 

ePOrtal configured to use an SSL connection.

Staff use desktops to connect via the class room although wireless is used for some areas for both laptops and Palmtops.

My advise would be only to do this if your woreless connection is very good as eportal is very sensitive to poor connectivity.

Staff are generally left with the responsibility of logging themselves into and out of ePortal via the standard browser.

 

Oh yes just for future refference you can also configure eportal to allow external connections - we set up our own reverse proxy server solution for this to allow teachers to connect form home and enter assessments for end of term reports etc. This is a very usefull feature but obviousl;y schools have to be educated about the data protection issues...

 

hope this is of use to you

[eduabncs]

I work with MrBen (we often get confused for each other! ). I should also add that some of our schools are now using eportal to allow parents to log onto Eportal to check their child's attendance and assesments etc.

 

As MrBen says we use a reverse proxy SSL solution to keep everything secure both inside and outside our network, both are treated as hostile networks as far Eportal is concerned.

[john]

We are going to trial the parents logon very shortly, we have just been waiting for the stuff from Serco to be able to get it all working 100%, but its now up to us to sort out, but hopefully very soon we will roll it out.

[sunny75]

We are going to trial the parents logon very shortly, we have just been waiting for the stuff from Serco to be able to get it all working 100%, but its now up to us to sort out, but hopefully very soon we will roll it out.

 

wish my scool would do that.

[bossman]

we went for workstation in every classroom for IWB and eregistration and we got very good workstations from TGM with 17"TFT neovo hard glass front for £289.00 p4 3Ghz 1 Gb ram 80gb hdd. we don't run CMIS but SIMS so cannot comment on that.

[AndyCope]

When I was in a school we used PDA's to take registers (using eportal but requires and additional licence) in PE - worked great in the middle of the football field, and across the road at the leisure centre!

[6Foot2]

We use ePortal for moning and afternoon registration and per lesson registration. We have provided network connectivity in every room where a register will be taken and put desktop workstations in place. Staff could also use their laptops if they so wish. We went live at the start of this year [september] and we are still ironing out some little niggles. I am sure we will get there [eventually]

[sunny75]

EPORTAL is wiked every class has computas some pe teachers print out page and mark us and then do i t later or use pda

[6Foot2]

EPORTAL is wiked every class has computas some pe teachers print out page and mark us and then do i t later or use pda

 

Such an odd post! Does it add anything to the thread? I suppose we know now that [at lease some] students like ePortal?

[FN-GM]

I think you shouldn't use text language in the forum sunny, no offence by the way

[sunny75]

ok!