magnesium

https://www.tes.com/jobs/vacancy/it-support-officer-london-1124805

I am not with Schools Broadband but have used Lightspeed web filtering for the last 4 to 5 years. We have the on-site Lightspeed Rocket and have never had the issues people are mentioning here. I have changed ISPs once and upgraded our leased line to 100 Mbps in that time. We upgraded to web filter 3 about 3 months ago and received the usual good service. I do not like the new interface as much as the old but that is as far as my complaints go. I recently had a similar experience of two companies blaming each other and it helped speaking with people who use one company but not the other. I cannot comment on Schools Broadband as I have no experience of their service but only had a few minor filtering issues with Lightspeed which got resolved. I hope it all gets resolved soon. Nothing worse than on-going issues and not having answers for SLTs.

We have narrowed down our choice of MIS down to either Hebron.net or SchoolBase. We already use Hebron in the finance department and is the Bursar's preferred choice. My issue with Schoolbase is we still will need to run separate payroll and accounts packages. The teaching side feel that it is really good for tracking, monitoring and reporting pupils grades/assesments. I think much the same could be said of Hebron.net. If anybody has any experiences with either package in any of the following areas I would love to hear from you:- Pupil database/admissions, attendence, pupil assement and reporting, curriculum/timetabling/ examiniations, finance and support/training provided. Thanks Magnesium

Thanks for the replies. I have heard a mixture of positive and negative points about both Sanako and Virtuoso. I have yet to see a demo of the Sanako although I did see it at Bett last January. On the support side of things I heard both could be better. The other thing is ongoing training. The Virtuoso sellers appear to see training as an on going thing which is important for when new teachers start. Though that is from a salesman (They never tell you what's in the tin). From other schools I have heard Sanako seem to leave you to get on with it yourself. A new name another school recommended to our Head of MFL was a Belgian company called ARTEC www.artec-electronics.com. I have spoken to the UK distributor and hope to see a demo soon. My main fear is we spend a disgusting figure of money on a system and we are left to get on with little support or training.

Has anybody had any experiences of the Sony Virtuoso and Soloist Experiences Language Learning software? Both positive and negative opinions would be very hellpful.