SIMS Teacher App and Groupcall Emerge

[Archipelego1]

Hey all,

 

I've had a look through the forum and although this question has been asked, it was a few years ago.

 

We're currently looking at how our PE department access SIMS, take registers etc. We've tried normal laptops, netbooks and ultrabooks but the department hasn't found them to work very well.

 

One of the options we're looking at, is some form of SIMS app on a 4G iPad,

 

Has anyone any feedback to give on either SIMS or Groupcall, as to whether they preferred one over the other? We can get a trial of Groupcall, however Captia won't provide a trial of the teacher app.

 

Thanks for any information

Edited February 26, 2019 by Archipelego1

[supportman]

We used to have Emerge but it wasn't really a success, it was very expensive for what it was and needed a very old fashioned exporter program that kept crashing on the server.

 

Not tried the Sims solution...

[bobsmith]

groupcall exporter is very robust in my experience, can't remember the last time it flaked out.

 

sims teacher app is actually ok, I prefer it over proper SIMS for the standard things that teachers do.

 

Our SLT are using it on iPads quite happily using out Wifi - I'm still working on getting the PE department some equipment so they can benefit too.

[DrBeaker]

We used to have Emerge but it wasn't really a success, it was very expensive for what it was and needed a very old fashioned exporter program that kept crashing on the server.

 

Not tried the Sims solution...

 

I know in my last school we used SIMs and tried similar for the PE department to take registers out on the field etc using some Android tablets, some were the Nexus 7 ones. I didn't have much direct involvement with it myself, it was my manager at the time. But seeing as they ended up sitting on a shelf for months afterwards, I'd gather it wasn't a success at the time.

 

As the for the Emerge app it does seem all of the advertising online etc. is pushing the mobile app angle, but how much did it cost out of interest? It's good to hear that experience as it's something that someone mentioned as a possibility, but now maybe not so much it it's gonna cost a fair few £££'s!

[vikpaw]

We had Emerge, can’t remember the cost but it wasn’t too bad. Staff really liked it.

 

I even helped test a number of new developments.

Offline cache timeout was my idea.

 

We had to stop as we moved to a different MIS and it wasn’t compatible at the time.