Capita get into bed with Uniservity

[conehead]

UniServity - Capita partnership delivers great news to schools

 

Alan Wood, CEO, UniServity commented: “This partnership unites two leading education partners who are both passionate and committed to supporting teaching and learning, and more importantly the way people learn. The new partnership will see the development of the most integrated solution for managing pupil data, supporting learning, and sharing information with parents and other key stakeholders

 

Get a room:D

 

UniServity, the leading BECTA Learning Platform provider, and Capita SIMS, the market leader in Management Information Systems to the Education and Children’s Services Sector, have announced a landmark partnership which will accelerate the realisation of the Government’s vision of a fully integrated Management Information System (MIS) and Learning Platform for the benefit of schools, learners, parents and carers.

 

Local Authorities (LAs) and schools will benefit from the simplified management and reduced workload of integrating ‘real-time’ Capita SIMS.net pupil data directly into the dynamic teaching and learning environment of the UniServity cLc (connected Learning communities) Learning Platform.

[alan-d]

UniServity, the leading BECTA Learning Platform provider

since when???

[penfold_99]

Uniservity is a very poor VLE for Secondary Schools, it is better suited for primary schools. Moodle is currently head shoulders and a large ladder ahead of uniservity.

 

As for the "Local Authorities (LAs) and schools will benefit from the simplified management and reduced workload of integrating ‘real-time’ Capita SIMS.net pupil data directly into the dynamic teaching and learning environment of the UniServity cLc (connected Learning communities) Learning Platform." This will be available when i find the end of a piece of string, uniservity use this as a major selling point and it isn't available until the earliest September but no guarantee!

 

We have been able to get hold of the SIMS.net IMS integration documentation and hopefully look to implement a moodle module to allow write back to sims in the months ahead, once ready we will release to the community. If this happen uniservity will be hard pressed to get people to move from moodle to uniservity.

 

sorry rant over.

[penfold_99]

Just to clarify the integration we were told about by uniservity was that we would be able to write back data into assessment manager in about septemberish at the earliest but http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/18217-moodle-smis-2.html#post184662 a capita bod has confirmed that this is not currently possible as the feature hasn't been created in IMS.

[TechMonkey]

Uniservity is a very poor VLE for Secondary Schools, it is better suited for primary schools. Moodle is currently head shoulders and a large ladder ahead of uniservity.

 

Being in East Sussex, have you signed up for the LEA Uniservity system then?

[HodgeHi]

Does uniservity run on all platforms or just the ones you pay through the nose for?

 

SIMS.net should be supporting Open Source as well as commercial products.

 

Why do education sector businesses seem to think that schools have never ending wads of cash?

 

With all of the licensing and software (with additional add ons) that schools now have to buy into because LEAs don't want to use anything else its beginning to get to the point where your budget is used just for licensees alone.

 

Or is it just me?

 

[penfold_99]

Being in East Sussex, have you signed up for the LEA Uniservity system then?

 

Yes we are in the first phase of the roll out (our head signed us up), but we are finding that uniservity is falling short of what we need it to do in the future.

 

Has your school signed up?

[tech_guy]

Capita get into bed with Uniservity...

 

oerrrrrrr....which one is wearing the strapon.....!

[Domino]

 

SIMS.net should be supporting Open Source as well as commercial products.

 

 

 

they SHOULD be

 

 

 

but they won't

[Geoff]

You're presuming they have a choice?

[TechMonkey]

Yes we are in the first phase of the roll out (our head signed us up), but we are finding that uniservity is falling short of what we need it to do in the future.

 

Has your school signed up?

 

Yep Think we are going for the second stream. Let you lot find the bugs but have enough time to get ready for Sept (read yell at county to get a better system).

[webman]

There's no financial incentive for Capita to support open source; open source counters their money-making priorities. Unless forced to by law, they probably never will do.

[PhilNeal]

So there is absolutely nothing to stop Open Source fans from using IMS to link to Moodle. We don't charge extra for the IMS links and they are fully documented.

[CyberNerd]

There's still something to stop OS 'fans' (or teachers for that matter) from using OpenOffice and SIMS - capita hard coding the xml so that only MSoffice can open it !

 

Do Capita publish 3rd party interface documentation (TPID) to allow write back directly to the database? Currently the IMS documentation doesn't cover writing back to the database - yet Uniservity claim this functionality (or is it vapourware>?

 

Pars allows writing directly back to the database for attendance, are Captia willing to publish this to OSS developers?.

[Edu-IT]

Does uniservity run on all platforms or just the ones you pay through the nose for?

The VLE is hosted by them, if that is what you're talking about. Each school then gets a URL to their VLE installation.

[PhilNeal]

There is nothing put into our XML outputs to stop OpenOffice from working and as far as I am aware the majority of SIMS outputs can be opened by OpenOffice. The exception is graphs in Assessment Manager where we haven't done the extra research to see how to achieve it. We have also made sure that the MS free viewer can be used to stop teachers having to purchase MS Word.

 

There is a comprehensive third party interface for SIMS and there are a large number of companies using it including Pars. We don't charge for using it to extract data but we do if you start to write data back into SIMS. David Grashoff is the person to contact at Capita.

[Oops_my_bad]

oerrrrrrr....which one is wearing the strapon.....!

 

Probably Capita if their support contract shafting is anything to go by

[penfold_99]

There is nothing put into our XML outputs to stop OpenOffice from working and as far as I am aware the majority of SIMS outputs can be opened by OpenOffice. The exception is graphs in Assessment Manager where we haven't done the extra research to see how to achieve it. We have also made sure that the MS free viewer can be used to stop teachers having to purchase MS Word.

 

There is a comprehensive third party interface for SIMS and there are a large number of companies using it including Pars. We don't charge for using it to extract data but we do if you start to write data back into SIMS. David Grashoff is the person to contact at Capita.

 

Hi Phil,

 

i believe your statement

here is nothing put into our XML outputs to stop OpenOffice from working

is incorrect, as all the xml files generated with SIMS.net have this

 

 

hard coded into every document. The line forces Internet explorer to open the xml in word.

 

I have tried to change the association of word.document in the registry

 

From

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Filter\text/xml

Word.Document = application/msword

 

to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Filter\text/xml

Word.Document = application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text

 

this would allow xml file to be opened in open office but this doesn't work as internet explorer displays a blank page, it doesn't work with any other Microsoft product even write or notepad.

 

I have even changed xml files to be opened in firefox but as

 

 

is non-standard html firefox ignores it.

 

The only work around is to open the file in word and save as a doc/odt file then this can be open office. But there is still a reliance on Microsoft word.

 

We don't charge for using it to extract data but we do if you start to write data back into SIMS.

 

How is it possible to charge as the documentation is free to enable writing back as per your website?

 

Also this documentation is incomplete we have requested from David, the reason given the documentation is incomplete captia are awaiting the becta report in june to finish the documentation. We have requested the original documentation as it was written in sept 2007 but this also apparently doesn't exist.

 

Can you shed some light on this appearing (for companies that flash the cash) and disappearing (if a school asks for it)?

 

We have also given the lea and capita assurances we will cover costs in regards to data corruption caused by the custom interface but still nothing.

[PhilNeal]

I'll have to get some help to answer your points around XML. I have realised that it is probably the .doc outputs that I have seen opened through OpenOffice.

 

I'm afraid that supporting third parties does require an expensive infra structure that we do charge for.

[webman]

So are open standards now classed as third parties?

[penfold_99]

So are open standards now classed as third parties?

 

I think phil was talking about the TPID documentation.

[webman]

Ahh okay, my bad then

[PhilNeal]

Also this documentation is incomplete we have requested from David, the reason given the documentation is incomplete captia are awaiting the becta report in june to finish the documentation. We have requested the original documentation as it was written in sept 2007 but this also apparently doesn't exist.

 

Penfold I have spoken to David about this and think there must be a misunderstanding here. We aren't waiting for Becta but what is true is that with the push to SIF we are questioning how much further we take IMS. Please contact David again as he can't trace any record of the dialogue.

[Ravening_Wolf]

We don't charge for using it to extract data but we do if you start to write data back into SIMS.

 

Being that SIMS sits on a standard MS SQL database, how can you justify this charge to access and manipulate our own data?

 

P.S. Having sat through a VLE demo day with four vendors, I can safely say that Uniservity had the worst product available. The product is so bad, I think Capita risk further besmirching their name by advertising the partnership.

Edited May 7, 2008 by Ravening_Wolf

[kxv2020]

I am quite disappointed with Capita that they haven't chosen to go to bed with the right product. Being an avid Sims.net supporter, I believe this is a bad decision and totally agree with Ravening_Wolf. Sims.net has turned the corner, and this is only going to set them back!