The best school software award. The nominations are.....

[Ditto]

It's only fair given the other thread...

 

I'll nominate Google Classroom, but mostly it's because of teacher feedback - which I guess is how it should be.

 

I wonder if anything will appear in this thread and on the 'other side'.

[TechMonkey]

Planet eStream. Not perfect but does a cracking job at filling a need, the team are great and always innovating adding new features.

[dhicks]

I'll nominate Google Classroom

 

Agreed, and it's interesting just how little there is to Google Classroom - it's basically a joining table sat between the list of users and various Docs / Sheets / Meet / etc resources. It turns out that that's pretty much all the functionality that's needed.

 

I wonder if anything will appear in this thread and on the 'other side'.

 

Microsoft's .DOCX format - actually surprisingly open and easy to work with. Turns out you can rename a file to .zip, extract the files, do a search-and-replace inside the XML, then re-zip the whole lot back up again, rename it .DOCX and it will be a valid file. I didn't have to read a specification or import a library or, actually, even write a script to do that.

 

Both Google Docs and Office 365's web-based versions have more limited functionality when it comes to editing Word documents (Docs doesn't let you float images in front of txt, for instance), but that seems to be a deliberate choice to limit the amount of mangled formatting the average user can create. We have a couple of files on our Windows shared drive that Word now can't render as PDFs, quite possibly because so many people have added so many different bits of formatting to the document that the PDF engine gets stuck in a loop trying to render it.

[Norphy]

Salamander. So much time saved.

[ozydave]

Salamander by far.

Saves soooo much time. Support is excellent

[mdrabble]

+1 Salamander - staff love email groups and saves so much time especially for creating new users etc.

[synaesthesia]

Salamander and (although not strictly software) Edulink, purely for saving an absolute fortune and many many grey hairs for us poor SIMSy folk!

[paulkerton]

• Google Classroom/G Suite for Education. It's simplicity is it's brilliance. Unfortunately I do see pressure from educators, especially in the US to try and make it far more complicated, but I hope they don't.
  
• Bromcom. For me, the cloud MIS king at the moment.
  
• Wonde. Especially with their cloud MIS integrations and the SSO/QR code/Emoji login (particularly in primary)
  
• Book Creator. Wonderful creative tool for students to make their own eBooks.
  
• Quizziz/Kahoot. Seriously great assessment tools. I use it with staff as a warm-up tool when doing training, and the engagement with adults is through the roof, let alone with kids.
  
• I've not used the current software, but their older on-site install offerings made me very fond of Busy Things and their general aesthetic. Reminds me of things like Stoppit and Tidyup and The Trap Door from my youth.
  

[thebatman]

+1 Salamander, saves so much time, and reduces mistakes when making/editing users, groups ect

[SpaceInvader83]

+1 for Salamander, support is outstanding and it's so customizable , well worth the money!

[River]

Love Salamander. Great product with amazing support

[3s-gtech]

Salamander is life. Our Teams weren’t getting populated properly, emailed them once I’d figured out the cause and they fixed it within 15 minutes.

 

Saved me literally days over this last week.

 

Everything/nearly everything that their product does is possible with other tools, for free. The time and effort needed to sort that out - I’m happy to pay!

[Wubbalubbadub]

Salamander if I had my single school benefit hat on.

 

Senso if I was thinking big picture.. couldn't do what I do without that now!

[Brimstone]

Showbie/Socrative - Fantasic platform independent software works on iOS/Web/Android free or paid for tool for teachers to..

 

Set assignments with or without due dates, works with every file type you can think of

Message students and parents, set up groups of teachers to message them

Entirely cloud based, no servers to configure

Works with existing Google logins or QR codes for students.

[Linfit]

Got to be Edulink in terms of valuoe for money and the benefit it has brought to us - and very straightforward setup.

Do agree about Salamander though, makes Google Classroom so easy to manage.

[mdrabble]

Not software as such- but what about EduGeek?? Helped many us of in so many different ways and first port of call when troubleshooting issues.

[FragglePete]

I'm also going to nominate Edulink One here also - it's been a life saver for us over the Lockdown period. So simple to use by teachers, students and parents alike. And Overnet's support has been brilliant with all the questions we've thrown at them along with suggestions. And, you just can't beat value of money.

 

Pete

[caffrey]

+1 for overnet support

[fiza]

+1 for Edulink and +1 for Salamander

[kevin_lane]

Salamander - you guys are life savers

[TriggerHappyUK]

I though I'd revive this tread as the 'other' one was getting all the posts.

 

I'd like to nominate Impero as the best bit of software that I've had the pleasure to use in a long time :-)

Edited September 25, 2020 by TriggerHappyUK

[deano3693]

Salamander and Edulink +1 for both!