Parent's Evening Software? What're you using that works well?

[saggu]

We used Google Meet last night, run perfectly, great free solution

 

did you create all individual links for all parents or a generic link for each class?

[icemonkey]

We used Google Meet last night, run perfectly, great free solution

 

What was your process for setting up and managing the meetings?

 

I'd like to explore the options already available to us before I let SLT introduce yet another system to our parents - they don't seem to understand the concept of "streamlining"

[jthompson]

We're planning to use Google Meet for an upcoming parents' evening. Appointments will be booked using EduLink as normal, but then we're going to take all of those booking and turn it into a CSV to use with GAM to create all of the necessary calendar events. Each meeting will be in the relevant teacher's calendar with parent(s) included as guest and the Google Meet option enabled for each calendar event (so a unique meeting ID for each one). Parents will receive the standard meeting request email with the Meet link included, and staff will have all of their appointments lined up as upcoming meetings in Meet/Gmail.

[gmonks]

We use https://parents-booking.com/ as our booking software, but they've now started a video call service within their website.

 

It looks promising from what we've see, and we're going to use it this year . Hopefully it goes okay.

[Danp]

I thought I had replied to this before but noticed this is another post about it

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-chat/217442-parent-tutor-open-evening-etc-how-you-doing-teams-telephony.html

[pete]

So follow-up after we did a live parents evening with Schoolcloud's Parents Evening System with the Video Appointments add-on last night:

 

Overwhelmingly positive response from staff (the science dept were described as "disturbingly happy" today) and apart from a couple of bandwidth issues/microphone issues at the parent end it went well.

 

Parent responses so far also overwhelmingly positive.

 

We had roughly half the staff doing appointments at home and the other half in school. I was around keeping an eye on them in school but only really had to hand-hold a few people in the early stages.

 

There were a handful of issues where the website threw up a "your firewall / filter is blocking stuff" message for a couple of people in-school and at home about 90 minutes in, which I think is a red herring (in-school it's explicitly allowed, out-of-school the people involved aren't technical enough to have anything beyond a BT HomeHub as their gateway). I'm waiting on screenshots from staff to feed back to Schoolcloud.

Edited October 21, 2020 by pete

[ticktock]

We use schoolcloud as well. The first parents evening was a disaster as something failed at schoolcloud's end. They admitted and apologised but there was a lot of irritation in school trying to blame our IT before this came through. The second parents evening was much improved and we had the same firewall messages as @pete (again finger waving at me from certain staff) it also threw quite a few staff out of the system at one point and they had to log back in right in the middle of calls. Staff are now positive about the system especially where they just have a fixed time for each parent rather than the evening dragging on too long.

[fiza]

Has anyone used the Edulink Video Parents Evening System yet? If so what is it like? It uses twilio too same as School Cloud.

[gh5000]

Has anyone used the Edulink Video Parents Evening System yet? If so what is it like? It uses twilio too same as School Cloud.

Just tried it on one of their test days. Went well but doesn't fit with out way of operating bookings (school does the bookings here so that the teachers choose who they see rather than the more engaged parents taking all the appointments).

 

We're going with one Google meet per family with teachers dropping in.

[pete]

NB: Anyone using WebRTC-based video chat may run into this:

 

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=218762

 

iOS & iPadOS 14.2 has stuttering audio. 14.3 beta 2 apparently fixes it.

 

It's a webkit issue, so it'll also affect desktop Safari.

[Primus]

Anyone had issues with the SAML auth and G Suite - I keep getting a 403 error app_not_configured_for_user.

 

I've followed their guide twice now but get the same outcome even after waiting for propagation. SchoolCloud are saying the issue is at Google's end but Google can't see an issue.

[AliG]

We've used School Cloud's Parents Evening System (PES) for several years now - really good product and their support is excellent. We however have just started using Edulink One which has almost identical features to PES so did give notice that we wouldn't renew.... however, the lockdown happened and School Cloud very cleverly introduced (and gave for free) their system with new Video Meetings for free - however, now costs an extra license to use. The primary school I look after used is and loved it back before the Summer holidays.

 

We're going to do our next two Parents Evening using their new video system to see how it goes - and we'll decide whether to keep it in the new year. But our basic tests so far seem really good.

 

Pete

 

Did you switch to EduLink for Parents Evening bookings? Did you miss anything?