Video Chat Parents Evenings - Anyone Else?

[JRA]

Just got the info - want us to do parents evening appointments over video from teacher PCs.

 

We're a Google school and no Microsoft online anything, and only got 20 days to order in 80-90 webcams and get things ready.

 

Webcams I can get, however the general "wtf" exists around the rest of it.

 

Is anyone else doing this? I'm looking at SchoolCloud perhaps. My tech suggests freebie Zoom works ok for this and for sending invites out ahead of time too but it's not something I know a lot of myself.

 

Anyone got anything they'd recommend or avoid?

 

Thanks everybody.

[Jawloms]

We're holding our first one of these tomorrow night using the SchoolCloud system. It all looks very promising!

[smurfomatic]

We used schoolcloud just before half term as our "free trial", worked really well. Just set up another meeting for next week!

[ShorehamGeek]

We're a Google school too. Just starting our second virtual Parents Evening.

 

If you've got GAM, and a way to make the bookings, you're halfway there. We use our MIS to make the bookings, then I grab the booking data, and create Google Meets for each appointment using GAM.

 

Biggest issue we had previously was the emails inviting parents to the Meets going in the parents' junk folders.

[Rob_D]

We've been using ParentsEveningSystem (I think it's the school cloud one) for our bookings so it was an easy step to using their video chat system. We've done a couple of test events and bought and installed 100 webcams and headsets for the classrooms, and so far everything looks okay. First full parents evening is looking like the start of December.

[pete]

Yup, we ran Schoolcloud's system with the video chat add-on as a 30-day trial for a Y11 Parent's Evening at one of our schools. Based on that we purchased a years subscription.

 

Their documentation was a little lacking when we began the trial (TLDR: you'll need to amend firewall rules and I recommend setting up several test parent evenings using Teacher-Parents as guinea pigs) but overall it's a pretty good system that went down well with staff and parents. The office are also pretty happy at reduced faffing / paperwork involved.

[Danp]

Some more info here

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/how-do-you-do/217183-parents-evening-software-whatre-you-using-works-well.html

[timbo343]

Parents evening system here too. We have a trail for our year 13 for a month.

 

I'd recommend a demo / webinar trail with school cloud Systems.

 

The only issue at the moment is there is no ability to have a "break" between meets but this is something they are working on.

 

Each video link is between 1 - 3 mbps.

 

You may be required to open up ports and IP addresses on your firewalls but all their support guides have this information.

 

https://support.parentseveningsystem.co.uk is what you need to read.

 

You can test your systems at https://networktest.twilio.com

Edited November 4, 2020 by timbo343

[Ratcliffepg]

Already done about six this year, using school cloud. No issues !!

[ticktock]

We use school cloud. It was a disaster the first time we used it as their servers went down and it took an age to get through to support. However, we have run 2 more sessions and they have just about been ok. We had random firewall messages which seemed to fix itself after 15 mins and the software had about 30 mins of throwing staff out and having to log back in. So it's not perfect but what is?

[paulkerton]

We are currently looking at Parents Evening System too, how has it been for everyone else?

[MattG92]

We’ve used schools cloud parents evening system this week for ours (3 form junior school) it’s worked really well apart from parents forgetting about their appointments!

[36Degrees]

We are currently looking at Parents Evening System too, how has it been for everyone else?

 

We've used it twice now and the feedback from teachers has been very positive, particularly as the sessions can't overrun. The first time there were only a handful of staff onsite but last night there were 27 using it here.

 

As others have said, a few tweaks to the firewall \ content filtering was required and I would definitely recommend running tests \ training with staff that are also parents. The main issue we found was if staff had Zoom open or various makes of visualisers connected as this stopped the Parents Evening System using the webcam.

[the_quick]

We had one for year 7 before half term. Mostly worked fine, technical problems mainly because of the user (mostly parents were bit wobbly). We used Google Meet and created calendar invites with GAM - each teacher has one long Google Meet and we just send link for the teacher, parents join for 5 minutes and left (or kicked out) - each parent had to ask to join, so one one just appeared in the meeting.

 

But, for the next one apparently most parents requested just a phone call, not to keen on video conference. So now 20 webcams just sit and do nothing.

[ed2v]

We are using School Cloud. It is reasonably priced and extremely simple for the end users. I have never had so much positive feedback from the Teaching staff about a new (to them) technology. We setup 3 test parent's evenings with staff playing the role of parents and tested it worked inside the school network and then outside. As a result we had to make a few firewall tweaks to allow everything to work okay and iron out user errors such as the software picking up the visualiser as a webcam and the teacher not working out why the "parent" could only see their desk. Well worth using the free month trial which is fully featured, there is no pressure from pushy sales staff and their support team are a pleasure to deal with.

[kennysarmy]

Good luck buying the webcams.

 

I'm looking for five logitech ones for our PE department and can't find any at the "correct" price...but plenty trying to profiteer from the lack of stock!

[ed2v]

We bought some on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08819Q7KM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 they estimated a months delivery time but they arrived in two weeks. Depends how soon you need them.

[JRA]

Just wanted to check back in as we had (shock horror etc) a SUCCESSFUL video conferenced parents' evening.

 

Went with Google Meet (as we are a Google school.)

 

Firstly thanks to @ShorehamGeek who pretty much steered me to it. Shame we didn't get to chat in the end but you got me on the right path.

 

Next firstly, THESE webcams we found were 'driverless' and just installed when teachers plugged them in. I managed to buy 100 of them from various sources in the time we needed. Sorry if that link's not allowed (eBay.)

 

The basics are HERE regarding what I actually used, although I changed a bit giving each meeting the title of "PARENTS' EVENING" in caps for staff and had to chat with Google beforehand so that they'd make it that parents would have to wait to be invited. I think you can do this by turning off "quick access" as a teacher in the meeting options, but I wanted as few steps as possible.

 

Then made a page on our website and copied out each link from the "master calendar" of that account that governs them and made links for each teacher. The page being sort of a virtual school hall, and each link being a virtual desk in it sorta. That way, booking system stayed the same (don't want to go worritin' the admin staff/parents with too many changes) and you just clicked a name when your appointment arrived, and on the other side as a teacher you could let a meeting overrun a tiny bit if you wanted, or kick out anyone you didn't want there for any reason.

 

Feedback was overwhelmingly good! A few folks unplugged their mics by accident and one MoS went full-on rogue and made their own meeting, and sat there being stood up for 90 mins before realising.

 

Anyways hope that's something of a thing in case anyone's mad desperate at some point. Concludes my story of how I did it at least and it wasn't so bad.

 

Thanks much of course everyone for helping. :)

[Sylv3r]

We've done 4 parents evenings via the schoolcloud system. Generally it's worked well but we've made a couple of tweaks to the firewall for our next evening next Wednesday to try and rule out a few issues. In the main it's worked well, but we get the occasional parent who says they were unable to see / hear the member of staff. It's difficult to work out if the issue lies with us or the parent - we've had some staff who have been at home and still had issues connecting with some parents so we think its with the end user.

 

It's likely that when (if) things eventually get back to normal we won't move back to the traditional parents evening in the main hall and will just continue to carry out parents' evenings via this method - staff love it.

[fiza]

We had our first one with schoolcloud. Some teachers at home and some in school. We did ours using Chromebooks in school. Some were fine but where teachers had joint meetings we found these didn't work so well. At least one of the teachers audio and video would freeze. Not sure if the issue is that we used Chromebooks as others on this thread seem to be buying webcams for use on wired computers.

[ticktock]

We have been using schoolcloud for a few months. The first parents events was a disaster with an outage for over an hour. Then last night we had sound issues. Parents couldn't hear staff and those that could complained of crackling noises. This lasted for around 30 mins then seemed to sort itself out. The issues always seem to be around 4pm.

[AJWhite1970]

We did our first School Cloud last night, just a small by invitation with 30 y13 students and staff spread far and wide, some 1:1 and some shared 2:1 meetings.

 

On the whole, went without a hitch, one parent had bad Internet and one of our teachers didn't read the instructions but everything else went like clockwork.

 

Only feedback I've had so far is only the primary teacher in shared appointments has the hang up button if a meeting finished early but that's just a get used to it thing rather than a bug.

 

Setting up the whole y10 one this morning, that should test it...

[mdrabble]

Did anyone experience any issues with the system last night?

 

Having staff report issues between 4pm and 6pm with connection/sound issues and I am trying to work out which if the issues were our end or school cloud.

[smurfomatic]

Third parents meeting with schoolcloud on Wednesday, only two problems I got told about - one where a parent couldn't log in (not sure what link they were using, but it wasn't for our school!) and another who had issues connecting using a Mac. Second one is strange as the same parent had used the same Mac to connect the week before and worked fine!

[MikeW]

We did our first parents evening last night using the School Cloud system, thankfully no issues at our end. A couple of parents reporting issues logging in and joining their appointments, but overall happy with the way it went. I've sent a survey out to parents to gather their thoughts.