Homework solutions for schools

[lavanyashetty848]

Hi,

 

We are currently reviewing homework solutions for our school.

 

We have around 250 pupils. Can you tell me what solutions you have in your schools?

[DaveTheTech]

Satchel One / Show My Homework

Although with almost everyone now using Teams, why not swap over to completely using Teams Assignments?

 

At one point the school were using the above as well as a link book / diary on top!

[hardtailstar]

We were using Show My Homework but have moved over to Google Classroom.

[dhicks]

Can you tell me what solutions you have in your schools?

 

We use Google Classroom - nice simple user interface, integrates well with Meet, has an API and various tools available to sync user data with your MIS. We export user data from iSAMS to GSuite using SalamanderSoft's tools, they also support Office 365 / Teams - I'd have thought for most schools a choice of one or the other of Google / Microsoft's systems would be a pretty good choice. There might still be government funding still available to help you set one or the other up.

 

Google seem to have slightly wider support from what I've seen for third-party applications that support login-with-Google authentication for your users, making it easier to link directly from Classroom to an external resource. We're looking at Kami, which can integrate with Classroom, to support stylus / typed / audio / video annotations to static documents set as exercises in Classroom - we're finding some of our teachers are trying to exactly replicate how they would work in a physical classroom, providing a "printed" worksheet for puipils to fill in, which is fiddly to handle if you don't have a printer handy.

[Katy]

We were using MySchoolPortal (which links to our MIS, iSAMS, using Wonde I think) - for showing the pupils their timetables and setting homework etc, the parents also have logins for this.

We've moved away from that to assignments in Teams, but we're keeping MySchoolPortal and are testing their Teams integration to get assignment etc data into MSP for parents to look at. So we set the homework in Teams assignments and parents will be able to view that in MySchoolPortal

[Rob_D]

We use Teams assignments and Frog, sometimes at the same time (teachers have taken to putting up Frog assignments saying "go to teams and do the assigned work"). Once this is all over we'll get back to trying to unify one way or the other but for now we're hybridizing Frog and 365 and it's working pretty well.

[jthompson]

We were using Show My Homework (aka Satchel One) for quite a few years, but dropped it and switched to using Google Classroom once that had become our defacto tool during the pandemic. Homework posts were having to be duplicated to SMHW, just for parents' benefit.

 

SMHW did give parents a much better insight into what work was being set. Once our use of Classroom had become established, SMHW posts increasingly just said "See Google Classroom", which was no good for parents, so we dropped it in favour of rolling out Google Classroom guardian email summaries. The email summaries are pretty basic; parents can't go to Google Classroom on the web or on mobile and see 'live' info about due assigments, completed assignments, etc. They have to wait for a daily or weekly email, which is a little bit naff really, especially when a student is being tricky about their homework.

[Marcus1972]

Hi Katy,

 

Did you manage to get MySchoolPortal's Team Assignment App working?

 

Thanks

[kirbster73]

Hi Katy,

 

Did you manage to get MySchoolPortal's Team Assignment App working?

 

Thanks

 

We show our homework this way through teams too.

[TwistedHelixis]

Most of the primary schools around me use Google Classroom to set at least one item of homework a week.

[Cache]

I borrowed the idea from someone on here at one point for one school and setup a Wordpress blog, teachers were authors and either subjects/classes/yeargroups were tag's/categories and staff just needed to select the correct ones - I think whoever I borrowed it off had moved onto something more advanced/integrated (and it's a few years since I did it now and it was eventualy replaced in the pandemic with Google Classroom) but for the most part of something fairly simple, generic and easy to use it was perfect.

 

I've done a bit of searching but can't find the original posts now, if I do find it I'll post the link.

[KK20]

We use Firefly with their tasks and markbooks. We also use schoolpost for parent comms and their parent app.

[3s-gtech]

I borrowed the idea from someone on here at one point for one school and setup a Wordpress blog, teachers were authors and either subjects/classes/yeargroups were tag's/categories and staff just needed to select the correct ones - I think whoever I borrowed it off had moved onto something more advanced/integrated (and it's a few years since I did it now and it was eventualy replaced in the pandemic with Google Classroom) but for the most part of something fairly simple, generic and easy to use it was perfect.

 

I've done a bit of searching but can't find the original posts now, if I do find it I'll post the link.

 

Not sure whether it was us that you saw, but we certainly did that with Wordpress. It worked well.

 

We then moved to a self made blog which integrated into the school app, our intranet homepage, parents site and behaviour tracking. That’s now stopped being used - no idea what they use now - possibly Class Charts? Feels like we’ve taken a step back, but since Covid homework is pushed far less.

[Brimstone]

Showbie, all the way, works with very singe file type, can open Garageband/Word/Pages/Googledocs and AR projects directly in the app. Sign in from Office 365 and Google accounts, works in web browser or iOS App. Licenced per teacher not user.

 

Can be used by teacher to annotate, highlight and mark, record verbal feedback, students can upload and scan hand written work.

[3s-gtech]

Yes. Don't.

[bligh001g]

We use Frog here. It's very well embedded, averages around 2.5k log ins per day (we have around 1800 kids).

We do all homework setting, full department revision sites etc. It's more than just a homework tool for us. It also means we avoid having multiple platforms for the kids which always ends in confusion!

 

A friend of mine works in another school who uses Google Classroom and they have started to have to buy add ons to do what they need to do. Seems like Google are catching on!