oxide54 Posted September 26, 2012 Posted September 26, 2012 hi what are people doing for pe to take registers? we have no wireless but any portable devices we can sync up at a desk later?
glennda Posted September 26, 2012 Posted September 26, 2012 Not that I'm aware of - could you not use Groupcall Emerge and just get a bog standard wireless AP for the PE Office? Some rubbish excuse it only works with that software etc etc?
oxide54 Posted September 26, 2012 Author Posted September 26, 2012 requirement is no wireless. the cost of wireless is not the issue. not going into detail on that on here.
bossman Posted September 26, 2012 Posted September 26, 2012 @oxide54: When you say "No Wireless" would that also rule out an IPhone with 3G contract and Groupcall app installed which would connect through a proper encrypted link to the MIS server. I know @Sylv3r has done this in his school and he say's it has been very effective. 1
oxide54 Posted September 26, 2012 Author Posted September 26, 2012 (edited) that interests me, when i say no wireless, i mean no 802.11 Wifi. anything else is up for discussion. Edited September 26, 2012 by oxide54 1
glennda Posted September 27, 2012 Posted September 27, 2012 @oxide54: When you say "No Wireless" would that also rule out an IPhone with 3G contract and Groupcall app installed which would connect through a proper encrypted link to the MIS server. I know @Sylv3r has done this in his school and he say's it has been very effective. You can also do this with the lower cost Android Devices and Emerge Groupcall Emerge - the powerful yet intuitive iPhone / iPod 'App' which enables schools to have an up-to-the-minute copy of their MIS data instantly and securely available in the palm of their hand might be cheaper to get these on contract then Iphones. 1
36Degrees Posted September 27, 2012 Posted September 27, 2012 Strangely enough that has just come up here, as it does pretty much every year! Will have a look at that.
vikpaw Posted September 29, 2012 Posted September 29, 2012 Android version is looking pretty good now. I'm still testing on my iPhone, but when i last used it on my Android tabled it was really good, and the offline mode worked a treat. 2
vikpaw Posted September 29, 2012 Posted September 29, 2012 I think Bromcom's app that installed on laptops will also let you do offline registers, then synch back to the network later, so you could do that on cable. But that may now be defunct.
36Degrees Posted October 1, 2012 Posted October 1, 2012 Think I will contact Emerge and ask for some sort of indicative pricing. Then I can decide whether it's worth having a trial and buying a tablet.
glennda Posted October 1, 2012 Posted October 1, 2012 Think I will contact Emerge and ask for some sort of indicative pricing. Then I can decide whether it's worth having a trial and buying a tablet. It used to be something like £299 for the first device per year and then £99 for each device after that so if you had 5 devices it would cost you £695 a year. Or a site license for unlimited devices is around £2500 a year. These may have changed but its roughly that much (I purchased Summer 2011 though). 1
Greg Posted October 1, 2012 Posted October 1, 2012 Some of our schools use SLG, some have bought it just for registeration. A question without wireless - will you have a requirement for staff to supply a device with a 3G connectivity contract or would the school supply these.
Bromcom_John Posted October 1, 2012 Posted October 1, 2012 I think Bromcom's app that installed on laptops will also let you do offline registers, then synch back to the network later, so you could do that on cable. But that may now be defunct. For this situation I would suggest our WebFolder product on mobile devices via the secure gateway. Same function as webfolder but going via a secure 3G link.
vikpaw Posted October 1, 2012 Posted October 1, 2012 (edited) Think I will contact Emerge and ask for some sort of indicative pricing. Then I can decide whether it's worth having a trial and buying a tablet. Pricing has gone up, i think at least £125 per subsequent device if not more. site licence price is based on whether it's primary or secondary, i think for secondary around £3k, maybe higher now. You can download the app now on either iDevice or aDroid and test it out, connect to the demo server. Contact them and they used to let you test against your own data, but it's not necessary to see how good it is, at least from a tech point of view; management on the other hand, are much more easily convinced when they see their own photo in the palm of their hands, but maybe that's just a narcissistic thing. Edited October 1, 2012 by vikpaw clarity 1
Bromcom_John Posted October 1, 2012 Posted October 1, 2012 Just a general point to consider. A lot of schools go down the 3G connectivitity route without doing any kind of proper evaluation on the bandwidth costs that using a mobile enabled device (with whatever software solution you choose) will create. Obviously you're probably only talking about minimal bandwidth on all of the basic services but most of the mobile enabled products have facility for tranferal of images or extra data in some way, shape or form and this tends to get a bit overlooked. We've seen a few schools hit this hurdle so we tend to bring this up to ensure that the added comms requirements are accounted for. I mean, you would hate for the PE staff to get all efficient with taking their registers only to find the Bursar asking where this new bill for excessive bandwidth usage is coming from 2
vikpaw Posted October 1, 2012 Posted October 1, 2012 Yeah, especially when Emerge now supports taking photos and videos to add to Behaviour incidents.
36Degrees Posted October 1, 2012 Posted October 1, 2012 I'd factored in the additional cost of a mobile contract but not really thought about how much data would be transferred and those costs.
vikpaw Posted October 1, 2012 Posted October 1, 2012 That's why wifi is good. Otherwise, what are those giff gaff jobbies like? I've heard they are cheap and unlimited.
Bromcom_John Posted October 1, 2012 Posted October 1, 2012 I'd factored in the additional cost of a mobile contract but not really thought about how much data would be transferred and those costs. Well, as Vik and myself have pointed out, the basic data packages shoudl cover "standard" use on most mobile products. It's only if you are considering the use of the more data heavy aspects of these products that you need to start worrying. I can't comment on the newer addition to Emerge (especially if your teachers start getting video evidence happy) but the basic data transmittance of that and our own products should be well within the standard download tariff of most contracts. To give you some REALLY rough ballpark figures (and these are from our product couldn't comment on Emerge) each register uses approximately 72kb. If we multiply this up for 6 period day, 5 day week, 4 week month it comes in at just under 9mb. If you use the options for pupil photo's then it's approximately 12kb per student instead of the 72kb for the entire register. But you can see that even that won't really cut into "most" download tariffs.
GREED Posted October 2, 2012 Posted October 2, 2012 (edited) The key point with Emerge is you can delay uploading all content to the server until you are back within a wifi zone, so you don't HAVE to have a contract at all. You could do it on a ipod touch? Edit: I just missed the post where it says 'no wireless'... I wonder if Emerge would download via a hardline once back in the office? Edited October 2, 2012 by GREED
vikpaw Posted October 3, 2012 Posted October 3, 2012 I don't think it does hardline sync intrinsically, and it could be a pain on iDevice, but i was going to ask if they could port the app to say the mac and / or pc.
GREED Posted October 3, 2012 Posted October 3, 2012 This all seems very long winded to avoid using wireless. Interested to know the reason why. If you have the app on mac/pc doesn't that make the mobile element pointless?
oxide54 Posted October 3, 2012 Author Posted October 3, 2012 If you have the app on mac/pc doesn't that make the mobile element pointless? PE don't have computers in the playground or the middle of the football field.
GREED Posted October 3, 2012 Posted October 3, 2012 (edited) PE don't have computers in the playground or the middle of the football field. Sorry that part was in reply to Vik, I know there are no computers in the playground.... As in the whole point of a solution is it needs to be mobile, so needs to be far removed from any static device. I situation of syncing to a static device at the end of the lesson or day is my suggested errr suggestion. Emerge may not do that though Edited October 3, 2012 by GREED
oxide54 Posted October 3, 2012 Author Posted October 3, 2012 Sorry that part was in reply to Vik, I know there are no computers in the playground.... As in the whole point of a solution is it needs to be mobile, so needs to be far removed from any static device. I situation of syncing to a static device at the end of the lesson or day is my suggested errr suggestion. Emerge may not do that though fair enough mate, i should probably have read further up the thread!
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