EduLinkOne - Singing Praises

[bfelton]

We're very interested especially as it could potentially replace 4 systems here, but one of those 4 is SMHW and given SMHW's features/embeddedness we might not want to use EduLink's homework feature yet (or possibly at all, depends) - does EduLink allow you to turn particular features on and off, so for example we could leave its homework feature hidden to avoid confusion?

 

We are trialling it at the moment, each feature can be enabled or disabled through the admin portal, it's worth using the free trial to see how it will behave with your data.

[pooley]

We have recently bought into EdulinkOne and Teaching & Admin staff love it. It's simple to administer and use, it's great for parental engagement.

 

We don't use it for registration at the moment as we need a dinner register and I haven't seen an option for recording lunches (although I haven't asked either)

 

Currently using the Parents Eve bookings and its gone down a storm, a great way of forcing those last few parents to get on board.

[BKGarry]

Currently using the Parents Eve bookings and its gone down a storm, a great way of forcing those last few parents to get on board.

 

We are actually looking at moving away from Parents Evening System to this one in there too.

 

Although Parents Evening System is awesome, and has done exactly what we wanted for many years, being able to have it all in one place is amazing for us. Also it means the administrator doesn't have to keep on synchronising themselves for it.

 

Oh, and I have just paid our Cashless Catering Company the £60 they wanted for the license to allow EduLink One to show the information of what balance is left and what everyone has been buying

[jonrose]

We have the trial set up and everything seems to be working as we'd hoped. We are having problems getting tablets to connect via our wifi though, did anyone find they needed to do anything extra to get tablets to connect via the app? We have the tablet and URLs whitelisted on meraki but it only displays a connection error message. When we look in smoothwall there is no log of it trying to connect. Any ideas?

[bfelton]

We have the trial set up and everything seems to be working as we'd hoped. We are having problems getting tablets to connect via our wifi though, did anyone find they needed to do anything extra to get tablets to connect via the app? We have the tablet and URLs whitelisted on meraki but it only displays a connection error message. When we look in smoothwall there is no log of it trying to connect. Any ideas?

 

Are you connecting to the website or the app? The app seems to work fine with us.

[jonrose]

This is on the app

[mthomas08]

Hi All

 

Does seem like a ton of positives for ELO. We are currently reviewing our options to cut costs and provide a more simple integrated system.

 

Parent Evening

Some have said there are functions not available? what kind?

 

Cover

Is this on it? I can't see it on the demo

 

Could I get a list of every little negative people can think about?

 

I think for us this is a definite no brainer because of the costs it saves annually.

 

Are there any schools in Kent/South East signed up to this?

[BKGarry]

@mthomas08

 

The only function I cannot see for Parents Evening is the ability for a central person to set a break, it has everything else that our current Parents Evening System does.

 

Cover and registers, although nice, I cannot really see a reason to push staff to using this over SIMS.

 

BTW, I am in Kent, so give us a PM and I will send you my details

[supportman]

@mthomas08

Cover and registers, although nice, I cannot really see a reason to push staff to using this over SIMS.

 

This is the biggest reason for us testing this software. Out of interest why do you think using the full fat Sims client is a better solution that on a web page or smart phone? I would have thought personally it would be much easier for a teacher to take the register on their phone or laptop using the web version than launch full sims. Maybe i'm missing something...

[BKGarry]

With me, it is the task of retraining everyone to use something else.

 

Also, if you want the full functionality of your MIS, use your MIS (I know I know, very old way of looking at it)

 

Teachers can open up other teachers registers, but I have not given any test with Cover.

 

I can see the use for PE staff etc, but for the day to day secondary use, with assessment manager, profiles, lesson monitor, checking linked documents etc. I think SIMS is still the best place to do it.

 

Saying that, I am not telling people they cannot use it for their lessons.

[supportman]

Interesting, I kind of assumed that teachers only used it for registers and not all that other stuff and it was just habit.

 

I've rolled it out to a few staff and they haven't launched Sims since but it was only a very small set of users I must admit.

 

My idea was to totally remove Sims from teacher laptops and desktops and just use this app but maybe I was a little premature with this idea.

[ClaireAmes]

Hi all,

 

I've recently been looking at this, as Parents and Students are so fed up of SIMS Apps. We can't get the majority signed in and working.

Can I ask a few questions:

 

1: Could you give me an idea of the products you no longer need from SIMS, so I can make a cost saving for the SLT

2: Any extra costs you've had to incur adding this

3: How are the parents finding it?

4: do you need any extra things set up in SIMS, i.e it just pulls through normal exam entries, where does the Behaviour/Achievement come from

5: Do any of you have it used in a Primary?

 

Thank you!!

I really appreciate the help, as I'm trying to put it forward for us to use, I think it would be good.

[mthomas08]

I've recently been looking at this, as Parents and Students are so fed up of SIMS Apps. We can't get the majority signed in and working.

 

Glad we are not the only ones. Main reason we are looking else where is the password nightmare in SLG.

 

1: Could you give me an idea of the products you no longer need from SIMS, so I can make a cost saving for the SLT

 

We pay for SLG and Parents Evening. These two can be replaced with EduLinkOne. It can potentially cut costs to our SMS usage because it includes a basic messaging system added witht he App notifications this could cut down texting needs. The attendance section seems pretty good. It also has the option to link up to SMS systems but we've not looked at that yet - one of our next steps to test.

 

2: Any extra costs you've had to incur adding this

 

Still waiting for a response from our cashless catering system on this note. A school mentioned a one off cost to link the cashless system. I don't see any forseable costs except this one and maybe connecting our SMS system. Only because some companies don't like being linked to without a cost... but we shall see.

 

3: How are the parents finding it?

 

Our parent/teacher seems happy "very user friendly" she is singing praises.

 

4: do you need any extra things set up in SIMS, i.e it just pulls through normal exam entries, where does the Behaviour/Achievement come from

 

The software to connect SIMs/AD (LDAP) is very simple and EduLink provide instructions and assistance on making sure everything works a treat. We didn't spend much time making sure the settings worked. They also provide documentation on creating an account that has write access to a field in their AD accounts (for those of us that totally forgot).

 

It can take all the data you need like the behaviour, achievements (negative/positive), timetables, detentions. You can also choose what section is enabled for each user type. So you can enable timetables for staff but remove it from parents/students.

 

You can go to their website and click on the DEMO. You can even ask for a Live Demo and get your systems connected. You'll be able to see your SIMs data live and can get your staff/students to play with it.

 

I am just waiting for more staff volunteers to test ours. We are at the point where I want a fussy approach because I can't complain at all so far and that doesn't happen often.

[tobyhacker]

Does anyone have any recommendations for SMS provider for use within EduLink One? Also, has anyone found any issues with the messaging functionality?

[ClaireAmes]

Does anyone have any recommendations for SMS provider for use within EduLink One? Also, has anyone found any issues with the messaging functionality?

 

I believe we use ClickSend.

[pooley]

Does anyone have any recommendations for SMS provider for use within EduLink One? Also, has anyone found any issues with the messaging functionality?

 

We use clicksend, integrates well with edulink and was actually recommended by edulink.

 

Works well for us and we haven't used many texts are we tend to send email for most comms.

[BKGarry]

We use PageOne, as we still use SIMS InTouch for Registers and Lateness (A battle not worth fighting) and that is the provider they use, so it all goes against the same provider,

[DavidYoung]

We use ClickSend too which has the advantage of being about 1/2 the price of things like ParentMail, T2P, etc at around 2.5p per message.

[saggu]

What is the assessment and reporting on Edulink?

[ClaireAmes]

What is the assessment and reporting on Edulink?

 

The Assessment is basically a grade summary table. Made similar to individual reports in SIMS.

[howartp]

Can you expose SIMS "Individual Reports" via EdulinkOne?

[bfelton]

Can you expose SIMS "Individual Reports" via EdulinkOne?

 

Yes, you can bring through linked documents based on their type.

[ClaireAmes]

Can you expose SIMS "Individual Reports" via EdulinkOne?

 

What do you mean by expose?

Edulink has a full demo so you can have a look.

[TDupont992]

Yep just adding up the messaging, parents evenings, parent portal, room booking we probably spend 5k a year on all that currently.

 

Looks good for the 2k cost and cloud based. Hmmm...

 

Could you not look for a different MIS that has most of that included?

[mthomas08]

Well our deployment of edulinkone went very smoothly.

 

Didn't take long getting the mis/ad sync setup and using our exchange to relay allowed us to send out parent accounts by email. Not only did they sign on quickly, we even have parents wanting to update their details on our mis so they can get it too..... This helps email addresses for attendance and other letters we send out....

 

Complaints? None so far. Some parents have not read through the email correctly which is fine (about 15 out of 450 so far). Some need updated details (parental responsibility etc)

 

Our next step will be to look at the parents evening and enable one or two other functions. The fact we can quickly turn off a function has helped (we need to tweak a few things internally).

 

Compared to the annual SLG deployment nightmare................. I have to say.... edulinkone has been better deploying to everyone compared to just new year 7s with SLG or other platforms.

 

This really has been the smoothest deployment of anything system wide. And it just worked.