Parent Engagement

[Chuckster]

My school needs a system whereby it can engage with its parents that can display information such as assessment data, attendance, achievements etc.

 

I have managed to find one company - Schoolcomms.

 

Are there other companies that the school can also look at for comparison?

[Meldrew]

If you use moodle as your VLE, you could look at SchoolsICT | Enabling 21st century learning ...

 

I have heard really good things about schoolcomms however. I've had a demo from them and it looks really good, but we have an in-house alternative.

 

Meldrew

[Disaster]

we use Insight - Tasc Software, does parents evening bookings as well I think...

[Overnetdata_Tim]

Hi OP, can I suggest checking us out http://www.edugeek.net/forums/virtual-learning-platforms/146652-hello-overnet-data-mobile-access-your-schools-mis-data-24-7-a.html as we offer the parental engagement you've highlighted as well as a number of other facilities that may be of interest.

[Gibbo]

Groupcall perhaps?

 

Home screen | Groupcall Parents

[Lonix]

We use SLG, takes all the SIMs information (live too I believe) and also allows the sharing of other bits and pieces.

 

Only nightmare is: password requirement which is ridiculous and a nightmare especially for those who have zero IT skills. And the default username/password is also.... annoying and can't be altered.

[Rob_D]

We've just been looking for a new parental communications provider. The ones we looked at were:

Groupcall, SchoolComms, ConnectEd (formerly Keep Kids Safe) and SIMS Connect.

The thing that put us off SchoolComms a bit was the need for a locally installed program, where all the others are cloud managed (or SIMS which is already installed everywhere).

For the sorts of things you want, Groupcall or ConnectEd have the best feature set.

All of them integrate with SIMS data to some extent and should do what you're looking for.

[RobD]

So this isnt a conversation about Parents getting Engaged? (sorry I'll get my coat).

 

I've used FireFly before which was very good.

[Garacesh]

I've used FireFly before which was very good.

 

Until they can it at the end of Season 1, anyway

 

We're using MyEd here. My Ed School App

[Duranis]

We use schoolcomms here (though it is not something I'm involved with). According to the office staff it's very good but we did have a billing issue with them. We was supposed to be on an "unlimited" texting package but because we used it too much they started charging us for it.

[Paid_Peanuts]

Tasc Insight for us - does everything you need from a parental perspective.

[crwardell]

Tasc Insight for us - does everything you need from a parental perspective.

 

Hi paidpeanuts if you don't mind can I ask you a quick question about the SSL certificate for insight. When creating the csr for the certificate do you just make up the common name field with something appropriate like http://www.insight.schoolname.com? (I presume this is the url that the end user will see in there browser)?

Thanks in advance 😀

[Garacesh]

Hi paidpeanuts if you don't mind can I ask you a quick question about the SSL certificate for insight. When creating the csr for the certificate do you just make up the common name field with something appropriate like http://www.insight.schoolname.com? (I presume this is the url that the end user will see in there browser)?

Thanks in advance ��

 

I have no knowledge of Insight, so I might just be making a useless post.. But do you not have a certificate for schoolname.com? Can you not just use that, since it will cover all subdomains?

Edit: Lol, http://www.schoolname.com is actually a real site

[ajg]

We have used TASC insight for a number of years and does everything we need it to, excellent support from them as well. As for the SSL we have a school wildcard certificate and just called it insight.schoolname.com

[crwardell]

I have no knowledge of Insight, so I might just be making a useless post.. But do you not have a certificate for schoolname.com? Can you not just use that, since it will cover all subdomains?

Edit: Lol, http://www.schoolname.com is actually a real site

 

Hi Garacesh

Our actual school website is hosted by a third party and I presume the SSL certificate would have been created and set up on the host for that.

Insight is installed on a server that is onsite in the school it is (so not hosted on the same server as the http://www.myschool.com server) recommended that an iis certificate is created and installed on the server insight is installed on. When creating the certificate signing request in the common name field I'm just questioning if I can just make something up that is similar to our school website name for example or should it be something specific.

Hope I'm making sense.

Cheers

[crwardell]

Is there anyone else can cast some light on what information you should put in the CN field when creating a csr request. Is it something specific or do you just enter what you want the url to be for user access?

 

Cheers for any info... :-)

[Jollity]

Are there other companies that the school can also look at for comparison?

 

We are currently testing MSO My School Portal, connected to SchoolPost.

[Steven_Cleaver]

Another happy Insight user been using this for a few years is easy for Parents, Students and Staff to use and navigate, great support one of the key things has a real modern fresh look which people like. Is easy to configure and maintain, links to SIM's for data and Staff Usernames and Passwords and AD for Students. Does Attendance, Behaviour, Assessment, Time Tables, Homeworks extra modules like Surveys, Parent Evening bookings, text to parents ( although we use PAR's), and more can also insert other web solutions into Insight.