Where have all the new Year 7's gone?

[FragglePete]

Rushing around over Summer getting things ready for Electronic Registration with Lesson Monitor in SIMS. Staff in today, so rushing around sorting out little problems with SIMS not running/updating/etc. Then someone notices, "hang on, where are all the Year 7's?"

 

Although the timetable is in place, the new intake are in SIMS it would appear that they havent been assigned correctly to classes even though the systems says they have!!!! WTF?

 

All this planning, selling the idea to teachers and we can't register the new intake on their first day electronic!!!!

 

BM and DH having frantic phonecalls to Capita trying to solve it, still don't know if they have yet!!!

 

Just as it was going so well!!!

 

Pete

[powdarrmonkey]

Electronic Registration with Lesson Monitor in SIMS.

 

You just found the problem. Right there. Go on, you're allowed to weep.

[Jamman960]

one thing that almost caused us a problem was having the new pupils joining the school before the first day of the academic year, they'd basically join the school one day as one year then automatically get promoted to the year above on the first day of the academic year :/

[zag]

Sims + Registration = bad idea

 

We use out own custom flash/web based software and it works really well.

[Guest Guest]

We have entered the pupils timetables and class lists no less than 8 times now but SIMS keeps losing them. Neither Capita nor our LEA IT team know what the problem is. The sooner Labour get out of power making room for the Tories to start taking back handers off another company the better.

[powdarrmonkey]

The sooner Labour get out of power making room for the Tories to start taking back handers off another company the better.

 

Hmm, that's not entirely fair. AFAIK it's your LEA who decides you're going to use SIMS. Although perhaps the conservatives wouldn't be quite so keen to sell our schools off.

[rhyds]

We have entered the pupils timetables and class lists no less than 8 times now but SIMS keeps losing them. Neither Capita nor our LEA IT team know what the problem is. The sooner Labour get out of power making room for the Tories to start taking back handers off another company the better.

 

ROFLAMO!!!

[jcollings]

Sims + Registration = bad idea

 

We use out own custom flash/web based software and it works really well.

 

Not true at all - we've been using reg and lesson monitor for ages and they both work a treat.

[plexer]

Schools are free to choose whatever MIS they want.

 

If the lea has a preferred solution doesn't mean you have to use it.

 

Ben

[Guest coquet636]

Schools are free to choose whatever MIS they want.

 

If the lea has a preferred solution doesn't mean you have to use it.

 

Ben

 

Got to agree, our school chose Facility!!! Although initially there were problems, now it seems stable, and dare i say it working ok for last two years...... Fingers crossed and touching wood....

[powdarrmonkey]

Schools are free to choose whatever MIS they want.

 

If the lea has a preferred solution doesn't mean you have to use it.

 

Ben

 

True, but I'm yet to find a school brave enough to do so (if you know of any, do please correct me). The support that they can provide is very valuable, and SMTs are often unwilling to feel that they are on their own. So in practice, the LEA's recommendation is generally law.

[plexer]

Norfolk has several high schools that I know of that haven't gone with the LEA preffered solution of Phoenix E1.

 

Ben

[powdarrmonkey]

Fair enough, of course there are some but the majority will be going with the LEA's recommendation.

[Guest coquet636]

Fair enough, of course there are some but the majority will be going with the LEA's recommendation.

 

In Northumberland, we have most the high schools on facility even though the preferred solution from the county is sims.

[Vegas]

FragglePete, are your Year7's 'Admitted' or are they still just 'Accepted'?

[rhyds]

we have the best (and worst) of both worlds, SIMS for MIS and Bromcom for registration and behioural data. They both work well in isolation, but every now and again one will bugger the other one up...

[FragglePete]

FragglePete, are your Year7's 'Admitted' or are they still just 'Accepted'?

 

Yeah, that was the problem.

 

Once a paper register was done and ran through the systems, the pupils started appearing with no problems. The School had always just 'accepted' them and no one thought otherwise.

 

All part of the learning process.

 

Pete

[tw15ns]

Had exactly the same problem. Ours was caused by a feature in one of the setup menus - I'm at home now and can't remember exactly which one - that excludes students from tutor registration lists that have birthdays before or after defined dates. If the born after date is set too low then year 7's will be excluded.

[webman]

We had many problems with Lesson Monitor when we first started doing electronic registration a few years ago. Since we switched to Lesson Register (within SIMS .net itself) it has worked fine.

[FragglePete]

Well, after a few teething issues, mainly with PC's not updating to August due to permissions (damn sure I ran simsperm on my images ), all seemed to go ok.

 

All the infrastructure improvements, planning and training seems to have worked; watched some of the most techno-phobic teachers register a whole class in no time at all.

 

We've got a very small minority who didn't do it right, or filled out wrong columns () but I would say on the first day at least 85% of teachers got it right!

 

We've got the odd issue to resolve, but generally nothing that stopped Electronic Registration working. We'll be introducing Behaviour Monitoring later on.

 

Another test on Monday during assemblies and we'll see how the Asus EEE-PC's cope with registeration over WiFi. Got 8 of these little blighters all setup and ready to go.

 

Hopefully towards the end of next week I can relax a little, take some time off myself and then starting thinking of the next phase of improvements next financial year.

 

Pete

[tw15ns]

Look in Tools - Setups - Attendance Setup - Module Setup - 3 Exclude from Attendance.

 

Either change the Exclude students with date of birth after date or simply uncheck it.

 

Hope this helps

[MsFrench]

Fraggle Pete, were your Sims issues resolved? I know what you're going through, it can be a real pain and the support offered is pretty poor

 

Also in one of your earlier posts you mentioned Mobile Sims on an i-paq. We are looking for a solution for PE teacher registering pupils on the football pitch. How do you find mobile Sims? Would you recommend it?

 

Your advice would be much appreciated

[FragglePete]

Fraggle Pete, were your Sims issues resolved? I know what you're going through, it can be a real pain and the support offered is pretty poor

 

Also in one of your earlier posts you mentioned Mobile Sims on an i-paq. We are looking for a solution for PE teacher registering pupils on the football pitch. How do you find mobile Sims? Would you recommend it?

 

Your advice would be much appreciated

 

Yeah, SIMS and Electronic Registration going very well. A lot of planning and staff training has paid off along with upgrade of network infrastructure. Feedback is positive.

 

The EEE-PC's were used in Anger during the assembly this morning, and again all seemed to go ok.

 

As for Mobile Registration, I can only describe this as very very poor. The latest release is the first that offers proper 'off-line' mode and to be honest it shows.

 

One PE Period a day is done down at a local sports centre due to lack of facilities at the school, so off-line it necessary. For PE on the School grounds, I've managed to setup an AP that reaches into both changing rooms and the Gym so teachers are registering with their laptops while the kids are getting changed for the lesson. That is working well.

 

In an ideal world, one IPAQ per PE Teacher but hardware and licencing costs have made this quite prohibitive for us. We've set up and sort of 'cover' PE-Teacher within SIMS that the PE Staff to use to register each of there classes, but it's a pain in the arse. Let me go through the steps.....

 

First Steps only need to be done once, and should be good for a while. But if new pupils or staff get added to the system you need to run through this again....

1. Delete the 'Data' folder on the SD Card to clear the local database this will force the device into On-Line Mode

2. With a connection to your network (wireless), log onto Mobile SIMS on the device and you have a Mini-SIMS in your hand.

3. Need to work Off-Line to take registers away, so select Off-Line and then you have to 'Log-On' again to download the student and teacher database to the device. This can take around 5 minutes to download, expand and organise onto the IPAQ. You think the device has locked up at this stage!

 

The following steps have to be done every morning.....

4. Right, so device is pre-loaded with Students and Teachers. So, you now need to search through the list of teachers and add each teacher you want to do the register for.

5. Sync the database by entering your own username and password (again) in this case we're using our generic teacher account....

6. Wait several minutes while you think the device is locked up while it downloads the timetables onto the device. You're now ready to register.

 

Registration....

7. Switch on device, log into Mobile SIMS with the generic teacher account.

8. Select Take register, then select the Teacher option to go to the select teacher screen.

9. Do a search (yes, you have to actually do a search!!! ) on the teachers surname you wish to register. Select this teacher and you'll get a list of their lessons.

10. Take register!!! Which is extremely clunky, slow and cumbersome!

11. Save register and then go through steps 8 to 11 again for each of the teachers group.

 

Upload....

12. Ensure you have a connection to the network (WiFi or USB), log onto Mobile SIMS

13. Go to the Sync Screen and enter Username and Password (yes, you have to enter it again!!!!)

14. Select Sync and wait again thinking it's locked up while the registers are uploaded back to the 'temporary' SIMS database held on the server the PDA connects to.

15. All registers are then essentially wiped from the device and if you don't need to update the local held student and teacher database, go back to Step 4 to start all over again.....!!!

16. Wait up to two hours for the temporary database to upload to the proper SIMS database!!!!

 

If it was one device per PE teacher, then it would be a lot simplier and almost useable. It seems to have been engineered to be difficult if you want to use multiple users.

 

 

To be honest, it's a right pain in the arse!!!! And the head of PE was not too impressed when I tried to talk him through it.

 

And, I'm not impressed either. I can see it going back to paper registers or phoning through back to the school. The Bromcom system looks interesting and is based on Smart Phones using the GPRS network to send the register to Bromcom and then to the SIMS server. But, we'll see how it goes and visit it towards next financial year.

 

Somebody could make a lot of money by putting together a decent off-line system. Capita need to polish off their system as it is quite honestly very very poor. So, would I recommend it.... errr.... NO!

 

HTH

 

Pete

[bizzel]

We use the registration feature within SIMS, not lesson monitor as far as I know. It works fine 99% of the time as far as I can see. I'm still nostalgic for paper registers though, I can remember doing the 'register run' as a student only a few years ago!

[MsFrench]

Yeah, SIMS and Electronic Registration going very well. A lot of planning and staff training has paid off along with upgrade of network infrastructure. Feedback is positive.

 

The EEE-PC's were used in Anger during the assembly this morning, and again all seemed to go ok.

 

As for Mobile Registration, I can only describe this as very very poor. The latest release is the first that offers proper 'off-line' mode and to be honest it shows.

 

One PE Period a day is done down at a local sports centre due to lack of facilities at the school, so off-line it necessary. For PE on the School grounds, I've managed to setup an AP that reaches into both changing rooms and the Gym so teachers are registering with their laptops while the kids are getting changed for the lesson. That is working well.

 

In an ideal world, one IPAQ per PE Teacher but hardware and licencing costs have made this quite prohibitive for us. We've set up and sort of 'cover' PE-Teacher within SIMS that the PE Staff to use to register each of there classes, but it's a pain in the arse. Let me go through the steps.....

 

First Steps only need to be done once, and should be good for a while. But if new pupils or staff get added to the system you need to run through this again....

1. Delete the 'Data' folder on the SD Card to clear the local database this will force the device into On-Line Mode

2. With a connection to your network (wireless), log onto Mobile SIMS on the device and you have a Mini-SIMS in your hand.

3. Need to work Off-Line to take registers away, so select Off-Line and then you have to 'Log-On' again to download the student and teacher database to the device. This can take around 5 minutes to download, expand and organise onto the IPAQ. You think the device has locked up at this stage!

 

The following steps have to be done every morning.....

4. Right, so device is pre-loaded with Students and Teachers. So, you now need to search through the list of teachers and add each teacher you want to do the register for.

5. Sync the database by entering your own username and password (again) in this case we're using our generic teacher account....

6. Wait several minutes while you think the device is locked up while it downloads the timetables onto the device. You're now ready to register.

 

Registration....

7. Switch on device, log into Mobile SIMS with the generic teacher account.

8. Select Take register, then select the Teacher option to go to the select teacher screen.

9. Do a search (yes, you have to actually do a search!!! ) on the teachers surname you wish to register. Select this teacher and you'll get a list of their lessons.

10. Take register!!! Which is extremely clunky, slow and cumbersome!

11. Save register and then go through steps 8 to 11 again for each of the teachers group.

 

Upload....

12. Ensure you have a connection to the network (WiFi or USB), log onto Mobile SIMS

13. Go to the Sync Screen and enter Username and Password (yes, you have to enter it again!!!!)

14. Select Sync and wait again thinking it's locked up while the registers are uploaded back to the 'temporary' SIMS database held on the server the PDA connects to.

15. All registers are then essentially wiped from the device and if you don't need to update the local held student and teacher database, go back to Step 4 to start all over again.....!!!

16. Wait up to two hours for the temporary database to upload to the proper SIMS database!!!!

 

If it was one device per PE teacher, then it would be a lot simplier and almost useable. It seems to have been engineered to be difficult if you want to use multiple users.

 

 

To be honest, it's a right pain in the arse!!!! And the head of PE was not too impressed when I tried to talk him through it.

 

And, I'm not impressed either. I can see it going back to paper registers or phoning through back to the school. The Bromcom system looks interesting and is based on Smart Phones using the GPRS network to send the register to Bromcom and then to the SIMS server. But, we'll see how it goes and visit it towards next financial year.

 

Somebody could make a lot of money by putting together a decent off-line system. Capita need to polish off their system as it is quite honestly very very poor. So, would I recommend it.... errr.... NO!

 

HTH

 

Pete

Cheers Fraggle Pete for your in depth analysis!! It seems as if SIMS mobile registration is not the best way forward! It's hard enough to get our P.E staff to change their practises as it is, they would kill me if we asked them to implement a system that was ineffective!! If only there was a magical way for P.E teachers to take attendance simply!

 

Have you used the Bromcom one before? Do you have to have Bromcom MIS or can it work with Sims? I've heard that the service is pretty good. Is it worth look into?