jon_d Posted October 21, 2015 Posted October 21, 2015 Can anybody recommend any parent portal or parent/pupil engagement systems worth looking into? We have SIMS as a MIS system, and we want something that will be able to pull information from this and hopefully allow parents to update their details. Other things on the checklist include: Attendance/Conduct Pupil Reports Timetables We also want to push out our exam board results from SIMS directly to pupils – so it would be useful to provide pupils with logins as well. Ideally it would also have some form of homework option as well. SLT also want it to have a "wow" factor – Web 2.0 was mentioned, which probably means it needs to look like facebook... So far we have looked at: SLG (Basic and horrific AD integration method) Firefly+Parent Portal module (Pretty, but expensive and doesn’t meet all our requirements) BromComs MCAS (Not bad, but no pupil homework/exam results) TASC Insight (Ticked a lot of boxes, but visually very unappealing) Suggestions gratefully received! I’m starting to suspect we might need several products to deliver all the different elements.
jmak Posted October 21, 2015 Posted October 21, 2015 The school that my kids attend uses go4schools It seems to offer most of what you're after. When I log in, I see their timetable, behaviour, attendance, teacher assessment/progress, exam results and homework tasks with status (due date, complete, late). The teacher can add attachments to the homework tasks. The behaviour part shows me merits, de-merits, the person who awarded them and why. The end of year report is available as a PDF download. I also get an email at teatime on a Friday with their behaviour summary for the week - a great ice breaker for dinner table conversation! The kids also have logins - they can see progress and homework tasks - probably the rest too, but would have to check when I next see them
Rebelgirl Posted October 21, 2015 Posted October 21, 2015 Bromcom has both a Parent Portal (MCAS - which we use) and a Student Portal (which we don't use at the moment). MCAS can do Attendance/Behaviour/Assessment/Timetables/Reports etc. Our parents prefer MCAS to SLG for it's ease of use. I'm sure the Student Portal does Homework/Quizzes etc. - give them a ring, I'm sure they can demonstrate it. 1
Bromcom_John Posted October 22, 2015 Posted October 22, 2015 Bromcom has both a Parent Portal (MCAS - which we use) and a Student Portal (which we don't use at the moment). MCAS can do Attendance/Behaviour/Assessment/Timetables/Reports etc. Our parents prefer MCAS to SLG for it's ease of use. I'm sure the Student Portal does Homework/Quizzes etc. - give them a ring, I'm sure they can demonstrate it. Thanks to Rebelgirl for the mention but I do need to clarify that while the full version of MCAS (which works off of our own MIS) does include homework and exam results function, the SD (Sims Direct) version of MCAS does not. And, if I am understanding the OP's request correctly they are looking for add ons to SIMS rather than a replacement MIS.
Banjo Posted October 22, 2015 Posted October 22, 2015 Have a look here Products - see how your school can benefit from Schoolcomms 1
pastymaster Posted October 22, 2015 Posted October 22, 2015 Tasc's Insight is actually really quite good and would cover everything that you need. We've used it for a number of years and it's proved very stable and the uptake from parents is good. We've also purchased the 'Parents' Evening' Add-on which works really well. It doesn't look that modern as you say, but it depends if you're after style over substance. Maybe you could create your own skin for it? That's something that I haven't looked into though.
Max_Power Posted October 22, 2015 Posted October 22, 2015 +1 for TASC Insight - been fully deployed to all students and parents for about 10 months now after wasting time and money on SLG for a couple of years. Insight does what it says on the tin, and the feedback has been very good indeed.
SovietRussia Posted October 22, 2015 Posted October 22, 2015 We also want to push out our exam board results from SIMS directly to pupils – so it would be useful to provide pupils with logins as well. Exam results are held under Data Protection and only students can be issued their results (For example, a Parent without consent of the child cannot view their results) Basically we tried to add the same to our in-house built Parent Portal and came across this issue, so dropped it immediately and just focused on attendance, detentions, achievements, reports, timetable, payments, uniform and questionnaires.
jon_d Posted October 22, 2015 Author Posted October 22, 2015 Thanks for the feedback, please keep it coming! TASC Insight - As I mentioned we already looked at this, I quite liked it, but it got the thumbs down on the visuals by everybody in the meeting, a real shame as I think with some minor tweaks to the graphics and colours on the demo site they would have swung it. Unfortunate first impressions. MCAS - We also looked at this, and as John says, we need to bolt onto SIMS rather than replace it so we would be using the SD version. Otherwise it looked promising. It would be nice to have some form of AD link up though, and also a direct URL that embeds your school code rather than having the parents remember this too. SchoolComms - Spoke to them yesterday, very appealing product, waiting for them to get back to me with some technical queries. Not too impressed the "Trial" evaluation modified my live SIMS Server without asking.... Again no AD link up too. Regarding pupil exam results – we envisage pupils will have their own logins, and thus results would only be delivered directly to them. This also seems to be the approach we have seen so far in those products that do have this feature. We have scripted this in the past to be sent out via email, but it is still a manual export procedure from SIMS.
ajg Posted October 22, 2015 Posted October 22, 2015 We have been using TASC Insight for both parents and students for a few years now and would definitely recommend it for both reliability and cost. Support from TASC is good too. Agree it could do with a facelift but looks aren't everything! [emoji3]
SouthCoastSaint Posted October 23, 2015 Posted October 23, 2015 We use Insight (previously SLG). I was talking to a parent yesterday and she gave me unsolicited feedback - she said she is getting used to all the systems - Tucasi, Frog and Insight. Insight was the one she uses all the time, she loves it, and most of all she said how clear and easy it was to navigate. It's all good to have an all singing all dancing look to a site, but the whole idea is for parents and students to use it. If they can't navigate easily round the site, they will give up which rather defeats the object. Insight's side menu is so clear and straightforward, it's pretty much idiot proof. (We rename our menu items to our own titles).
FragglePete Posted October 23, 2015 Posted October 23, 2015 We've been using Schoolcomms since September - so far the feedback has been pretty good. Primarily using it for communications for parents (emails, text, app messages) and payment for school meals, trips, etc. We are showing attendance info but are planning on showing reporting to parents next academic year (we're still stuck using a particular product for reporting until then). Generally it's been we received, but the initial work load of getting decent data of parents e-mail addresses and mobile phone numbers was quite high; however, during our data collection exercise it was a great way of knowing that your really get parental contact information up to date. It's amazing how many parents moved house and neglected to tell the school!!! It's turned our Data Admin staff into a customer service department as parents have a direct messaging feed into the school and we deal they are dealing a fair number of enquiries on a daily basis. You also have to deal with parents yourself a bit more giving technical guidance on how to do things on the gateway. It is however settling down nicely. Pete 1
LosOjos Posted October 23, 2015 Posted October 23, 2015 Questions for Insight and Go4Schools users: - do your SIMS marksheet link up? (i.e. can teachers enter data in to SIMS marksheets online?) - can parents reset their own passwords via the website? We're currently using SLG but the simple fact that parents can't reset their own passwords is making it an administrative nightmare. However, our teachers do use the marksheet entry part of SLG a lot so we don't really want to lose that functionality.
SouthCoastSaint Posted October 23, 2015 Posted October 23, 2015 Insight - parents can set their own password first time of using and then there is a button to click to reset it automatically (lately for us I do get a few parents reporting this doesn't work for them but as my children are no longer at school I can't check that). Insight doesn't allow marksheet entry, we give access to Sims for staff via remote apps. 1
jenny_urey Posted November 16, 2015 Posted November 16, 2015 Can anybody recommend any parent portal or parent/pupil engagement systems worth looking into? We have SIMS as a MIS system, and we want something that will be able to pull information from this and hopefully allow parents to update their details. Other things on the checklist include: Attendance/Conduct Pupil Reports Timetables We also want to push out our exam board results from SIMS directly to pupils – so it would be useful to provide pupils with logins as well. Ideally it would also have some form of homework option as well. SLT also want it to have a "wow" factor – Web 2.0 was mentioned, which probably means it needs to look like facebook... So far we have looked at: SLG (Basic and horrific AD integration method) Firefly+Parent Portal module (Pretty, but expensive and doesn’t meet all our requirements) BromComs MCAS (Not bad, but no pupil homework/exam results) TASC Insight (Ticked a lot of boxes, but visually very unappealing) Suggestions gratefully received! I’m starting to suspect we might need several products to deliver all the different elements. Hi Jon Please also note that INSIGHT is 'true' realtime presenting SIMS data and not overnight / every few hours update as many others are. The log in screen can also look dull if you leave as default setting however you can personalise. If you do a google search on TASC INSIGHT you will see other schools login pages and also guides for their parents they have added displaying their own themes/colours/icons. Jenny
jenny_urey Posted November 16, 2015 Posted November 16, 2015 Questions for Insight and Go4Schools users: - do your SIMS marksheet link up? (i.e. can teachers enter data in to SIMS marksheets online?) - can parents reset their own passwords via the website? We're currently using SLG but the simple fact that parents can't reset their own passwords is making it an administrative nightmare. However, our teachers do use the marksheet entry part of SLG a lot so we don't really want to lose that functionality. - do your SIMS marksheet link up? (i.e. can teachers enter data in to SIMS marksheets online?) YES -- it is an add-on. Please PM me or contact office for details - can parents reset their own passwords via the website? YES. INSIGHT creates passwords for parents (Active Directory for Pupils and teachers log in using their SIMS username and password) 1
jacquij123 Posted December 15, 2015 Posted December 15, 2015 In Insight, for something like Exam Timetables or reports does it send a copy to the parent or do they need to go looking for it on a website?
Edu-IT Posted December 15, 2015 Posted December 15, 2015 In Insight, for something like Exam Timetables or reports does it send a copy to the parent or do they need to go looking for it on a website? I think they would need to login to the portal to view it. 1
ajg Posted December 15, 2015 Posted December 15, 2015 Yes as far as I know (and we use Insight) they would have to login to see this info and to be honest I would want this info password protected anyway. We just use Pars to then send an email/text to let the parents know when a new report has been uploaded.
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