Ketlane

My approach to this is to try to think of the users of the system - what would they appreciate and want? In my limited experience they want something easy, intuitive, apparently non-technical (of course there'll be a load of complex stuff behind the interface, but...). They need access to the info and data without admin or tech help. In an ideal world it would be so obvious that they wouldn't need training. I agree with others who are suggesting integration - anything that makes the experince of using the ICT system in the school seamless just has to be a good thing.

Pobody's Nerfect

I was called once, quite a while ago. Phoned them, they were ever so helpful in deferring my service to a time convenient for school and work and things. Found it absolutely fascinating - but there are times when you certainly need a book or three, the newspaper and probably some knitting or something. Had two days doing v little, was sent home on one day, and we were quite frequently bundled out of the court while some legal argument was heard, and again had to amuse ourselves. For interest, don't miss it - and it is an opportunity to have your (circumscribed) say....

Thoroughly happy with SchoolBase. What's impressing me now is that new staff are saying how pleased they are with it, how muc better it is that (whatever-it-was-in-their-last-place). We haven't considered a move since adopting SchoolBase so I really cannot comment on ISAMS. I think the key point about the Schoolbase product is that the questions they ask in development are "what do schools want and need" and "how will people use this"; there is very little technophobe barrier. Service has been excellent; one one occasion it was merely very good. PM me if you want more.

We could argue over MIS (and I'd win in the end...) but there is no doubt that the more features and tools (some colleagues refer to them as toys, but there you go) you have the more these features will make your life easier. My prejudice is that the MIS is primarily for staff dealing with children and parents, and that therefore it should be as simple to use as possible and should require no technical skill at all to use it. Maintenance and support should be far behind the scenes. But an absolutely critical factor is the level of support. Whom do you phone - do they make a point of knowing who you are? Are they always helpful - and with answers? Do they ring back, or email, as promised? Do they admit they don't know and answer - and then go and get the answer from a colleague who does? All of this (or rather failure in all this) is why we left our previous provider. As that was four years ago or so, it wouldn't be fair to name them here.

May initially seem like overkill to get a full system. Try SchoolBase (which isn't free) - what we have found is that the more we have a MIS the more we use it and the more demand and ideas we have for using it. Boarding particularly needs communications features which day establishments would only use rarely. Welcome

Any guidance welcomed - in principle there are two approaches, with stand-alone loggers or with PC. What do colleagues think is best? Secondly what is a reasonable provision - or to put it another way how many logging systems do you have per class/pupil/labroatory/whatever?

Our change (now 4 years ago, and we haven't looked back) was driven by five things: 1. Dreadful customer service from the company concerned (I won't name them as it was some time ago and things may well have changed a lot) 2. The promise of excellent service from the new company, which has certainly been delivered. 3. The demand to demystify and - if you like - to democratise access to the data, so that all staff could get what they wanted quickly and intuitively, and to make the support of the MIS much less technical. This, too has worked out really well. 4. The offer of increased functionality in response to our requests, flexibility, customisation and so on. There is now so much in the system that we wouldn't even have thought of four years ago. 5. Evidence that the MIS would run much, much faster than the old one. We also needed a sixth: 6. A promise (also fulfilled) that the migration would work without huge hassle. Our biggest frustration now is that we can only roll out the next wonderful bits of functionality at the pace we can comfortably carry the staff - but we have set up one new function this week and there'll be more soon! The decision was developed by the academic management team before going to senior management with a firm proposal. (and if you were wondering - SchoolBase)

Isn't COUNTIF the functions we need? It takes two arguments, range and criteria, so =COUNTIF(A":A2000,"a") would count the a cells for you. This is what I use for counting grades etc.

It's soooo long since I used one. I remember having a Wordwise word processor ROM. Typing *W. (or *WORD ) set the word processor going. *BASIC got you back. *. should get you a catalogue of what's on a disk.

I would avoid Windermere, Ambleside - very heavily touristed though lots to do, including rainy days. Agree with so many others, Keswick is good. Also consider Penrith area, good access to North Lakes (and via A66 to the NW and the coast). There is stacks to do - plenty of stately homes and things as well as walking - unless you are determined on the big names Helvellyn, Scafell etc go for the outlying areas e.g. NW fells, far eastern area incl High Street, or the area to the N of Skiddaw: I have walked there for a day in high summer and met no-one. In the Eden Valley you can visit ostrich farm, bakery etc etc. Tourist Info Centre in Keswick or Penrith will help with accom. Other highs - slate mine at Honister, iron ore mine at the coast, and even Sellafield visitor centre....

If you watch the whole Bill Gates talk on TED (see http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.htmlthe balance of the talk is hugely different. Well worth 27 minutes of your time - as is so much on TED. Gates is dead right, frowm what I know and have seen: vaccines and healthcare, including clean water and sanitation, have the initially counterintuitive effect of reducing population because completed family size declines very quickly in response. I didn't know about his proposed nuclear technology - will have to follow it up sometime. Oops - what started as a light-hearted thread has become pretty heavy!

The prob is this, as we see it. Quite a few candidates have exam concessions which entitle them to a word processor at least; so they just have to be provided (Disability Discrim legislation). If we then prevent others from using w/p and other tools, we are disadvantaging them - and there's no doubt in my mind that producing Geog c/w is far, far better electronically. So we've just got to make it available to all, if they are to perform at their best. (If you can persuade your school to opt for IGCSE you may well be lucky enough to find there's no c/w at all - problem solved at a stroke!)

Some personal travel experience (and that of looking after youngsters) says ALWAYS photocopy your passport when travelling and make sure the copy is kept separate from the original. Passports are very attractive to theives - and the photocopy will help you when you go to the Embassy or High Commission to get a replacement or temporary one.

"To every problem there is a solution which is simple, obvious - and wrong" - Einstein

Other posters are quite right, as far as I understand it. Now our parent directory was launched in response to a parent who brought in her son's previous school's directory. Secondary school; each class photographed with form teacher; names, addresses, phone numbers and emails of all parents and teachers shown. This directory was used very heavily to manage and run events to support the school, and was publiched as a matter of course, supported by some parents advertising their companies or whatever. This of course is totally impossible here under the DPA, but the experience (in the USA) was, she explained, wholly positive. What we've done is to get parents to sign a consent form; all that we disclose in the directory is that John Smith's parents and Mr Mike Smith and Miss Jane Jones, their phone number (landline or mobile to taste) and the area where they live. This seems to be sufficiently informative to be useful and sufficiently anonymised to do the job, with signed consent. The complaints we've had have been from parents who didn't sign the consent form and were therefore omitted! We get the data from the MIS (which also has the consent recorded), tidy it up, check it and then send that to the parents' association who actually print and distribute. Seems to work. In anything like a sensible world I'd far prefer the US version.

Our MIS, SchoolBase, is great for this - holds stacks of mailmerge letters which we can write, does the whole Readers Digest mailmerge bit if you want. After mass e-mailout last week, it generated the letters to send by snailmail - tedious bit was signing them and stuffing envelopes; it also has the neat trick that if you do a mailmerge to email it automatically generates snailmail versions for parents without email.

The reverse of this is, sending email from school to parents. If you send text, no problems (barring the parents that haven't told us they've changed email address because they have changed job or whatever, and I have an automated snail-mail standard letter for them); but anything with images of any sort - and they do make school emails look nicer - seems to bounce from time to time. png file extensions are routinely bounced by recipient systems with .gov.uk addresses. The only way I can guarantee an email with images reaches everyone is to convert to pdf and send that as an attachment.

It's all horribly complicated and I think we all worry that we'll get it wrong - applies to paper files as well as e-files (and as some establishments already scan all paper documents and then retain the e-file, it gets even more complex) Need to retain evidence of correspondence and internal documents so that an audit trail and evidence that things that should have been done, have been done. This might be for a long time: consider the student who comes back with a legal challenge that he/she hadn't been looked after properly, perhaps years later when the trigger for the action is dropping out of uni. This needs to be balanced with the Data Protection principle that we should not keep data that is not held for the benefit of the data subject. In that context we get requests for verification of old exam results - some as far back as the 1960s - so that sort of e-data needs pretty permanent storage. The big load on any school that is brave enough to do things by the book must be the cost of weeding the files, whether electronic or paper. My guess - not our policy, my guess - is that 6 months or a year might not be long enough in some cases. Storage space is cheap so I would tend to go for longer storage.

Designed for independents so does some things really well that you can't get from the mainstream products. Tech backup great and very willing to help. Updates take all of 10 mins to install, no tech input, and most of that time is spent drinking coffee. We really like it and it's dead easy for teachers to use (some didn't bother turning up for training because they'd sorted it out for themselves).

What experience do colleagues have in the amount of training needed in setting up a VLE/Learning Platform? I'm looking at a model which starts with a day for SLT, then another day with other managers, then getting them to work with their teams. Any comments very very welcome!