SLG... not impressed

[dwhyte85]

We had a fairly poor demonstration from some Capita bods today, lady was very nice and trying to be helpful... some other chap was with her who was less than helpful and trying to cut me off at every question asked >_<

 

I don't think SLT were too impressed either.

 

Do any other options exist?

[laputa01]

What was his name?

[creese]

We had a fairly poor demonstration from some Capita bods today, lady was very nice and trying to be helpful... some other chap was with her who was less than helpful and trying to cut me off at every question asked >_<

 

I don't think SLT were too impressed either.

 

Do any other options exist?

 

That sounds unusual. We have been using SLG in several schools for a couple of years, give or take.

[mortstar]

Depends what you need. If you 'just' want parental Read access to your SIMS data online then we have looked at and trialled Tasc Software's Insight and found it is exactly what we need. Support is top notch.

[dwhyte85]

I didn't get names, I'm not that important :-) I honestly think the guy did not want to talk about the technical side of things.

 

He tried to 'management' speak me when I asked about how the service will create accounts or could they link to existing AD links, I don't mind being told I need to find out or I can e-mail it... I do mind when I'm fobbed off with some tosh answer.

 

My main concern is that we're having to buy into a fairly big system (WSS/Moss) for solely showing these webparts, a lot of cost is concerned and as we're upgrading our conn for this... it seems like a lot of cost for something that will get minimal use - if any [of course, I am aware of the pressure being put on us to provide one].

 

My HT rightly asked about security of logins, they tried to say we could got he RSA route which is a good... but not practical with teachers, the concern is they will change passwords to something obvious even with a policy in place and a leet hacksaw manage to get into the systems and amend live data.

 

My concerns are:

 

• Reasonable server spec required for this, should it be ran off of same server [if we didn't go hosted route].
   
  
• Security of teacher login area - .htaccess possible and I change this on a daily basis and post to teachers? No matter how many policies in place someone will have a guessable password... data needs to be truly secure.
   
  
• Accessibility... we're not all as lucky to have 20/20 vision
   
  
• Consideration for low-bandwidth... some people may be on dial up still, if they have a connection at all...
   
  
• Cost! This will severely impact any buying I do this year!
  

 

I can see the awesomeness of the idea but... this could be easily a weekly updated set of contents rather than a direct conn to Capita if hosted, or directly accessing DB, furthermore... CommandReporter could get enough information to suffice? I really doubt parents will be checking daily on progress

Edited March 25, 2010 by dwhyte85

[dwhyte85]

Mortstar: Do you know cost involved?

[morganw]

We've had it for two years (hosted), not impressed with any of it. Not easy to use, slow, just logging in to the hosted system is too complicated for most people, password changes fail with generic unhelpful messages. Currently considering replacing with Citrix remote access to the actual SIMS client and Moodle add-ons for the parental gateway.

[dwhyte85]

We've had it for two years (hosted), not impressed with any of it. Not easy to use, slow, just logging in to the hosted system is too complicated for most people, password changes fail with generic unhelpful messages. Currently considering replacing with Citrix remote access to the actual SIMS client and Moodle add-ons for the parental gateway.

 

Moodle Add-Ons exist for this? As Studywiz have gone into administration [again?] we could do with a total overhaul and your suggestion works out better for us, TS/Citrix & Moodle sounds like a plan...

[morganw]

Currently looking at this...

 

School Anywhere Moodle Personalised Learning Platform VLE for Schools - Moodle Hosting, Support and Training

[localzuk]

I thought I'd give some answers to your questions/issues.

 

He tried to 'management' speak me when I asked about how the service will create accounts or could they link to existing AD links, I don't mind being told I need to find out or I can e-mail it... I do mind when I'm fobbed off with some tosh answer.

 

As you say, the webparts need WSS to run. Therefore, the usernames are simply managed by the AD that the WSS server is set up with. SIMS provisions the AD - the idea being, if you host internally, you can set up the new users, then use the 'consolidation' tool to merge the new accounts with the existing AD accounts if desired.

 

My main concern is that we're having to buy into a fairly big system (WSS/Moss) for solely showing these webparts, a lot of cost is concerned and as we're upgrading our conn for this... it seems like a lot of cost for something that will get minimal use - if any [of course, I am aware of the pressure being put on us to provide one].

 

You may think it will get minimal use, but that is down to how the school wants to use it. When we launch our portal to parents, they'll be able to see pupil data, book parents evenings, see how their kids are doing with merits/rewards within school etc... We're making sure parents will *want* to use it.

 

My HT rightly asked about security of logins, they tried to say we could got he RSA route which is a good... but not practical with teachers, the concern is they will change passwords to something obvious even with a policy in place and a leet hacksaw manage to get into the systems and amend live data.

 

It is all down to how you set up sharepoint - it isn't a SIMS SLG related issue really.

 

Reasonable server spec required for this, should it be ran off of same server [if we didn't go hosted route].

 

Indeed, WSS will want a reasonable hosting server. Can't argue any point on that. However, you should never have it on the same server as your SIMS data, as that is a security risk. I'd say virtualise it.

 

Security of teacher login area - .htaccess possible and I change this on a daily basis and post to teachers? No matter how many policies in place someone will have a guessable password... data needs to be truly secure.

 

See above for sharepoint/AD comments

 

Accessibility... we're not all as lucky to have 20/20 vision

 

As it is sharepoint, it can be as accessible as you want, as you set up the theme for it.

 

Consideration for low-bandwidth... some people may be on dial up still, if they have a connection at all...

 

I'm afraid we're now in an age where this is a consideration which most don't take into consideration - you can't cater for everyone, all of the time, otherwise you end up with either reduced functionality or huge costs. However, I don't see how SLG and WSS would be high-bandwidth. The pages are mostly text...

 

Cost! This will severely impact any buying I do this year!

 

Again, can't argue against that - these things cost a fair packet. This is why our LEA used top-sliced funding to provison SLG as a county-wide service.

 

I can see the awesomeness of the idea but... this could be easily a weekly updated set of contents rather than a direct conn to Capita if hosted, or directly accessing DB, furthermore... CommandReporter could get enough information to suffice? I really doubt parents will be checking daily on progress

 

These systems are a tool for a job. If the school is just implementing it because they feel they have to, without a proper idea of *why* they are doing it, then it will fail. The school needs to come up with a plan as to what information they want parents to have access to, why, and then provision a solution to deal with that.

 

Remember, seeing a poor implementation of a sharepoint site, with a poor theme etc... is not a reason to dislike the SLG product. The rest of the site is as important, if not more important than the actual data connecting web parts.

[dwhyte85]

I think moreover the school want to pay for something that is 100% ready, the point being IF it was hosted would it be secure enough, kids can guess passwords, it needs an added layer of protection to protect kids from seeing/fiddling with live data.

 

This is where both the school and I disagree with your point of 'It is all down to how you set up sharepoint - it isn't a SIMS SLG related issue really.' - if this is fully hosted the responsibility then falls with Capita... Flipside, we'd pay for a setup that costs a fair chunk... we expect it to be to our expectations, not a generic install - as far as we're aware this is fully setup on your server, not just the webparts.

 

The issue of low bandwidth... sort of agree then again, our HT connects via ISDN, not everyone is up to date.. it's about allowing access to the masses, let everyone have a chance to access... we were shown slides of graphs, pie charts as well as text.

 

Accessibility... these are things that Capita should take care of, graphs/reports and the like need this consideration too.

 

 

We are paying for a full service, the install should cover these things... infact, accesibility & HCI in general should be covered pre-dev.

Edited March 25, 2010 by dwhyte85

[localzuk]

This is where both the school and I disagree with your point of 'It is all down to how you set up sharepoint - it isn't a SIMS SLG related issue really.' - if this is fully hosted the responsibility then falls with Capita... Flipside, we'd pay for a setup that costs a fair chunk... we expect it to be to our expectations, not a generic install - as far as we're aware this is fully setup on your server, not just the webparts.

 

If you host with Capita that is. I wouldn't personally go down that route - it removes too much from your control. I'd be looking at hosting it yourselves. Also, as far as I'm aware, they provide you with a sharepoint install set up with web parts. Making it look pretty, etc... would be up to you.

 

Also, password policy is up to your school to decide. If you let staff use poor passwords, then you'll have issues with every system they use, regardless of whether it is hosted externally or not.

Edited March 25, 2010 by localzuk

[dwhyte85]

If you host with Capita that is. I wouldn't personally go down that route - it removes too much from your control. I'd be looking at hosting it yourselves.

 

Also, password policy is up to your school to decide. If you let staff use poor passwords, then you'll have issues with every system they use, regardless of whether it is hosted externally or not.

 

It doesn't matter how much you enforce a policy, with AD and paper based policies stating secure passwords... you will get a few with a guessable password, if a system contains live data which is potentially dangerous in the wrong hands it needs that extra layer... whether the URL is obfuscated or unobvious... it needs that extra layer for the very reason that we can't see what a member of staffs password is through AD only that it meets criteria.

 

EDIT:

 

We had been advised to get an upgrade to 100mb connection, this was subsidised... our LA really wants us to have SLG... or should I say SIMS learning webpart... nothing more than an plug-in.

Edited March 25, 2010 by dwhyte85

[localzuk]

It doesn't matter how much you enforce a policy, with AD and paper based policies stating secure passwords... you will get a few with a guessable password, if a system contains live data which is potentially dangerous in the wrong hands it needs that extra layer... whether the URL is obfuscated or unobvious... it needs that extra layer for the very reason that we can't see what a member of staffs password is through AD only that it meets criteria.

 

So, do you have extra layers of security for all your normal teacher logins in school? ie. for accessing SIMS within school? For accessing their email, the public drives etc...?

 

I ask because it seems you are holding the SLG product to a standard that most schools don't implement within their own networks...

[dwhyte85]

So, do you have extra layers of security for all your normal teacher logins in school? ie. for accessing SIMS within school? For accessing their email, the public drives etc...?

 

I ask because it seems you are holding the SLG product to a standard that most schools don't implement within their own networks...

 

 

On a school Network it's slightly different to the world wide web... not a fair comparison. A child within school would be quickly spotted, some spotty little so - so could be doing this behind proxys/Tor guessing passwords - blocking IPs and account lockouts help, but... I don't want them getting to the point they could do that. The fact it's unlikely isn't the point, it's the principal of the web being slightly more open than my network and far harder to find who could be doing things, if they can't get to the teacher URL... they couldn't do any damage.

 

EDIT:

 

Understand your point localzuk, whether or not you'll change my POV is another matter. For the money paid this needs to be something complete OR maybe we needed a better demonstration...

Edited March 25, 2010 by dwhyte85

[dwhyte85]

grrr

 

If you let staff use poor passwords, then you'll have issues with every system they use, regardless of whether it is hosted externally or not.

 

The sad part is we don't let them use poor passwords, we enforce complexity... it doesn't stop it being a crud password... even with cycling passwords 90 days, you get variations of the same password.

 

I don't let staff eat over laptops but they still do it... point is, policies only do so much... taking the initiative and adding an extra layer of security isn't exactly a big ask and IMO something they should have considered - I'm sure they deal with enough teachers to understand why. Why risk the data?

Edited March 25, 2010 by dwhyte85

[resin1]

In terms of the OP request - will always depend on your local priorities/restrictions in terms of network setup/security concerns etc and whether you want something that just works straight off or something you have full control over and can tailor till the cows come in, but...

 

in terms of solutions that will talk live into SIMS, if you want to host something in-house, I agree with mortstar - Insight seems a really nice simple implementation that looks like it will pretty well work straight out of the box and has (to me) one especially nice feature that "they say" allows the Word .xml report documents from the DocServer (Individual or Profiles) to be displayed as html on the fly. Looks like they only support in-house approach though. Big plus - its as "cheap as chips" compared to other solutions!

 

If you want remotely hosted and maintained, Bromcom's MyChildAtSchool also have a live link to SIMS and puts SLG to shame in terms of how well the data is presented IMHO.

 

These are personal impressions based on extended demonstration or hands-on to demo systems, not a live user, so take with a pinch of salt and make your own enquiries and judgements.

 

Other systems are out there for "on-line reporting" but most I think are tied in to a vendors learning platform/VLE and I'm not sure whether any can be used in isolation.

[SilverFox]

Shame that you had a 'unfortunate' initial experience with the personnel concerned. We've been running SLG, hosted by our LA, and it has really helped engage parents.

Teachers benefit too. It really helped us out during January when the school shut because of snow, and happened to coincide with spring report writing.

I wouldn't let one bad (conversational) experience put you off.

[Sivadam]

It seems that the 'Watching Brief' I gave myself (as per thread: 'SIMS.net tabulated reg group report') has to be broken after a very short time in deed. Mind you - I did allude to responding to this sort of thread.

 

Why are people basing their opinions of SLG on the 'demos' and second-hand conversations now that there are a goodly number of schools using SLG in a variety of different ways?

 

We have been up and running for Staff & Parents via SLG virtually since SLG2 was released and I have no complaints about it whatsoever! Any issues that it may have origianlly had are being (or have been) addressed. The planned new look and feel for parents, coupled with the publishing of AM7 & Profiles Reports to .pdf format, together with the rest of the enhancements planned for the next few upgrades, will also greatly enhance the product. I advise anybody with doubts to: 'Get out there and see it in action at schools that are using it to it's full capacity.'.

 

I had to introduce SLG without any specialised technical help in the school at the time, due to a long-term illness, and I ain't technically minded in any way, shape or form. There were few difficulties and Capita Support were extremely helpful with any that did occur - especially in getting our Broadband provider to open the correct ports for the correct IP Addresses etc. - something I failed in dismally!

 

For me, the product is excellent and we now have many satisfied Staff and Parents using it. This satisfaction can only increase with the Upgrades due by Autumn 2010.

 

I have had several schools visit us to see how SLG is setup - and I don't pretend that we are using it to it's full capacity. A couple of these schools have VLEs that also supposedly fulfill the Parental Engagement criteria, but are just not delivering what the VLEs promised. They saw from their visits here that SLG does meet these criteria right now and will be doing so to an even higher level by Autumn 2010!

 

Last Friday we came out of Special Measures. I am not saying that this was due to SLG, but SLG has certainly played it's part - as have the many other procedures that we put into place, many of which were based on our SIMS procedures.

 

(Having said my piece - back to my watching brief!)

Edited March 28, 2010 by Sivadam

[Cmd.exe]

I have to agree with Sivadam

 

We've have had SLG for over 18 months and it has been great. It has been well received by parents, many of whom log on more than once a day to check lesson attendance and call us to correct errors in our data! Certainly it encourages dialogue between parents and the school, which i'm sure was the point in the first place.

 

It's not perfect, but we've had very few problems and anything we've raised with Capita has been swiftly rectified.

 

Even the staff here (who will happily moan about any platform) have to admit the functionality it offers them at home for report writing and marksheets, etc, is irreplaceable.

[timbo343]

Can I just add my thoughts on this...

 

I went to a Capita Demo/Technical course on Wednesday in Manchester about this, it was FREE for sims customers and there was all sorts of different people with different job roles that attended and i must say that the course made everything ALOT clearer and we have decided to go down, well 85% decided to go down the hosted option and then we may look at hosting it ourselves in the future but that is a fairway in the future.

 

As for the speed, the speed is only determinded by how fast your upload connection is as im sure that capita have a pretty good connection. Our is about 768K so i can see it been a bit slow but thats because our BT exchange is crap. I don't fancy looking after all the parent logins and possible kid logins. Plus capita said that their logon password are very complex and will ask each school in terms of preferred usernames and they will be soon be going to 2 factor authentication to access the data and yes, teachers accessing the data at home will have a different username and password t what they use at home, but they will have to deal with it at the mo.