Usernames

[Iain.Faulkner]

Morning all,

 

As a few of you might have seen me mention, our school is in the process of going trhoguh a complete network replacement project - we're getting rid of Viglen....hurrah :-).

 

As part fo this, we've decided that it would be the best time to change our username convention so that we reduce the risk for potential duplicates and get a uniform convention across the school.

 

For staff we're going with the relatively simple/standard "first initial""surname" (so for me it would be IFaulkner).

 

However for students it's proving a little more difficult to put something together. We've got a number of potential solutions, involving combinations of year of entry, form group, first name, surname, register etc etc so I thought I'd see what other people are doing?

 

So as the forum title says...."How do you do it"?

 

Cheers

 

Iain

[DevilsAdvocate]

At the minute we use 'first initial'.'surname' so, s.smith, which is as you say problematic because of duplicates. We are looking to start using the CMIS Student ID though in the future.

[carnforthhigh]

we use year of entry, first initial then surname. eg. 08jsmith. we've never had a duplicate yet.

[jmcdermott]

we also use year of entry eg 08jsmith, saves having to rename them all every year, like the old classlink setup

[Jon]

I use year of enty, first initial, surname.

 

So if fred blogs is joining us this september he would be

 

09FBloggs

 

If his twin sister fredrica bloggs was also joining us she would be

 

09FBloggs1

 

This way we know which year group they are in and there is no need to alter anything when they move thru the year groups.

 

If somebody joined the school next year but was also in freds year group he would also receive the 09 prefix rather than a 10 prefix.

[laserblazer]

We have an OU for staff and each year group (leaveyy) the stadd usernames are s/n+first initial of first name. The pupils are the same except I added a sequential number to the beginning, so there's no chance of duplicates.

[elsiegee40]

Staff logons are as you describe, except for 2 office functions where it has been easier to create a logon based on the job-title (registrar and bursar). A change of postholder means that the new staff member simply takes on an existing logon with all permissions set.

 

We start all pupil logons with the year the child started in Reception Class... that makes it easy to group all similar logons together and, for example, identify Year 6 by their 02 prefix.

 

Some schools do this by the Year the child should leave their care.

 

There is a case for anonymising logons/email addresses, but here, at the moment we simply use the two digit number followed by the child's forename. Duplicate forenames are dealt with by adding the first letter of the surname.

 

We are a small prep school with classes of between 10 and 20 children and this system works fine for us. I accept this system won't work in most schools.

[Guest coquet636]

We used to use pupil name then ID but they struggled to remember there ID after the 6 weeks hols.....

 

So to make it easier we us first initial of firstname then second name year of entry then date of birth.. worked fien for 6 years until this year..... 2 sets of twins with same first initial........

[rotsak]

This template works pretty well:

year7 - G

year8 - F

year9 - E

year10 - D

year11 - C

year12 - B

year13 - A

usernames are as folow a001 a002 ... a062 ... a234 ... and so on.

Usernames are assigned randomly.

[jcollings]

Our students used to be year of entry_surname_intial (e.g 07BloggsF) but we have stopped doing that now. We now use intials and admission number (eg FB005761). We did this as that is also their VLE username and email address with @schoolname.

 

Staff are currently intial.surname but will be moving to firstname.surname in the near future.

[irsprint]

surname-initialAdmissionNumber (last 4 digits of admission number)

 

rogers-i2345

Edited May 18, 2009 by irsprint

[actech]

For staff it is surname first initial so Joe Smith becomes smithj

 

For students it is year of expected graduation _ surname firstinitial. so a student that should graduate it 2009 is 09_smithj. That way it doesn't matter when they enrol, it groups them into the year level but I don't have to change anything each year.

[stephenleak]

We just use the format "ITnnnn". We have found a fatal flaw with usernames based on the kids' actual names - a significant proportion of our new Year 7's can't spell their own name.

[Abaddon]

Entry year,Surname,first two letters of first name

 

So, for example..

 

09DoeJo (for John Doe starting Summer this year)

 

 

We had a few clashes with just the initial, so I added the next letter and that seems to have done the job.

[Diello]

Staff are firstinitial.surname e.g. f.bloggs

 

Students are 2digit-year-of-entry, Surname, First initial. .e.g. 08BloggsJ (Surname first makes easier to find in lists/email groups etc.)

 

If two with the same initial, then second letter of first name used - 08BloggsJo

[kevbaz]

Surnameadmissionnumber ie bloggs6789

 

absolutley no chance of duplicates

 

staff is surname+initial ie bloggsJ

[witch]

Entry year,Surname,first two letters of first name

 

So, for example..

 

09DoeJo (for John Doe starting Summer this year)

 

 

We had a few clashes with just the initial, so I added the next letter and that seems to have done the job.

 

Us as well although we have a fixed length so they could end up with more than two letters of first name if surname very short

[TriggerHappyUK]

For staff we use [first initial].[surname] eg j.bloggs or m.jackson.

For students we use their admin numbers eg 10101 or 9976.

 

We have had a few members of staff with the same initial and surname.

In these cases we were lucky that they had middle names, so we just added the initial of their middle name to the first name initial. eg jf.kennedy.

 

We have had no problems yet with the students.

 

Chris.

[mrforgetful]

Staff are three letter SIMS code

 

Students are as many said, year of entry, surname, first initial. All prefixed with the school initials.

 

Year7: xx08smithj

Year12: xx03smithj

 

Our biggest problems come with asian names to be honest. There are a lot of Mistry's and Mohammed's, Mahmood's, Hussain's and Ahmed's.

 

If we get a duplicate we add on the last letter of the first name too.

 

You still get the odd problem, we had three students one year with the same surname. Their first names were different but all had the same first two and last letter!

[bandgeekmafia78]

Your parents would have to be cruel to call you Frederica Bloggs!

[localzuk]

Staff here are firstname.surname, and pupils are firstnamesurname (no dot). Not had any problems. This isn't the same as their email address though, as this is year of entry + initial + surname IIRC.

[TechMonkey]

Staff are 2 initials or 3 if duplicated.

Students are year of entry, surname, initial. Optional number used if there happens to be a duplicate btu only ever had 1 of these a year I think if at all.

 

So Fred Bloggs is FB if staff (of FXB if Frederica is all ready working there) or if a student y09bloggsf (y09bloggsf1 if frederica is around again, damn her.)

[3s-gtech]

Staff are their SIMS codes (usually firstname initial surname initial eg aa), students are on a system of colours with numbers after eg blue1, in alphabetically ascending order. Avoids any form of duplication. Sixth formers are given new accounts, their login being the year of entry and their exam number. They never forget that in their exams now!

[User3204]

For staff, we go for the ForeSurn (1st four letters of forename and 1st four letters os surname), I have been told this was historically because SIMS (launcher) insisted on this, and they wanted to maintain the username format.

 

For students we currently use SurnameFIx (that is full surname, forname initial, middle names initials (as many as I get) and then a count for duplicates), but this can cause issues with SmithC5, etc.

I think the best way is to include a number, either a year of entry (although this will confuse the late starters), or when they leave (which will be something they will remember), or even their date of birth (which you will have to extract from SIMS).

The idea of using thier UPN only works if you get their names after they have been inputted onto SIMS, but we operate an induction day during July, so they're not yet confirmed (or something) when we want to test their accounts.

 

You might also want to think about what you will be doing to students (and I suppose staff) with double barrelled surnames (and forenames). A few years ago we had an amusingly named girl who had a double barrelled fornema AND surname. There has also recently been a boy who had two dutch/german names as part of his double surname, to the extent the full name didn't fit into SIMSs field, and it certainly up my user import for that year.

 

 

A good idea is to grab some names from SIMS (or whatever MIS you use) and then have a little play in excel to see what works and minimises duplicates, but isn't too difficult or them to remember. The passwords are going to be bad enough, but having an awkward username can be too much for some of the idiots that can't spell their own name.

[powdarrmonkey]

previously: ffllllyy (where f is firstname, l lastname, and y year of entry).

 

now: CMIS pupil ID; it anonymises some things, like email addresses, to an extent