Roguesooty

Hi all We are starting up with Firefly. Does anyone know if as a school we can develop our own add-ons for firefly and if so how would I go about getting started? or is there a information pack or other documentation for doing this? For example I have a couple of web applications that I would like to merge in to Firefly. Kind regards Simon

Thanks. I've taken a good look at Google Apps and it looks great for creation of documents and other materials and as a general site but it doesn't go anywhere near covering interaction with our MIS which is a major requirement. We are quite a large Primary and Secondary. Our MIS has Homework setting features, Parents evening features, Staff to be able to do class registration and lots of other features. I don't see any way to interact them with what Google can provide.

Happy to We recently moved to Schoolbase and are in to our 2nd full academic year with them.

Hi everyone I'm looking at the prospect of bringing in a VLE/Learning Platform/All in one solution in to our School. I'd like to know if there are any other Independant schools out there that have one and if so how is well is it used by Pupils, staff and parents. I would be very grateful for any feedback as I have been looking in to solutions such as Firefly, Frog, Moodle or Custom development (potentially based on our current SharePoint setup). In general what I'm looking for a system to do is to act as a one stop shop for Parents, pupils and staff to go to access Internal School information, access functionality provided by our MIS, access Homework and curriculum, access subject specific teaching resources, access to their own file area. I'd be really interested to know how other schools have approached this. Kindest regards Simon Evans

Hi We have just recently moved over to an Independant School only provider and ISAMS was one of those that we looked at. However they are not the only major Independant provider out there and the other one which I feel you would need to add to your list of viewing is Schoolbase by Furlong Business Solutions. This is the company we went with and all though their product is not as pretty as iSAMS the quality of service we have seen of them has been above and beyond our expectations! They sell a service rather than a product and they customise their product to meet the needs of the schools as best as possible. We had numerous tweaks that were needed to make the software feel like ours and they have dones these admirably. They also do have a large number of Independant Schools already that are international. They are definetly worth a look.

Price is actually fairly similar to be honest. What attracted us to the smaller providers was that they are only for Independant schools and also other Schools that we know and are close to or have good links to have spoken of these 2 mains ones or are using them which then started us looking at them and finding that the list of customers for each of them are very extensive. We were also quite attracted by the flexibility and the "Can Do" attitude when it comes to modify the software package to fit our needs, which they both do within reason plus we need a system which can be housed on School site as we have lots of other databases/applications within School that require either information from the main database or actual SQL connectivity to the database.

Thank you to all who have posted about Schoolbase and iSAMS. All information has been of use in our deliberations. We have had both Schoolbase and iSAMS now deliver a presentation each and we are currently now deliberating as to who we go with. This takes some time as a lot of people from accross lots of different areas of the school have been involved and need to have some input into the decision but hopefully within the next couple of days we will have decided. When we do decide I will post up here who we have gone with and our reasons... if people would find this information useful?? Just on a side note to Phil and to Toby; SIMS is a good product and when I first started here I would have encouraged a lot of people to move to SIMS. However after seeing just how our school works and seeing what the demands are SIMS would not have met our requirements. This I know becuase prior to being at this School I used to work for Capita SIMS in various roles in regional centres and also at Bedford HQ for about 8 years. I was on the frontline working with Schools and LA's for all that time. This is how I knew that SIMS would not work in our School. Anyway staying on topic if people would like me to post up here who we go with and how we came to our decision then I'll be happy to if it will be useful.

Thanks for the PM. I should now be able to respond to it. Hurrah! any comments or impressions from anyone about Schoolbase or ISAMS is welcome.

Hi Phil. I apprecaite that you do have a number of Independant Schools using SIMS. I am simply saying that SIMS does not meet our needs and that because the public sector requires so much work and change that SIMS and also CMIS and other major providers have to spend so much time on keeping up with these changes and cannot dedicate enough resources to meet the demands of some Independant Schools. I also think that there is a fear of changing MIS systems as it requires such a lot of work and time. Therefore I think that it is often easier for schools to stay with what they have and make it work, rather than look for something else that more meets their needs. That is just the way I see it. Other companies dedicated to only the Independant market are able to provide a more tailored and flexible solution and are starting to prove themselves very worthy of investigation. In our School we have had CMIS for 10 years and only now have we finally decided that it is time to bite the bullet and find something that can meet our needs. SIMS would have been a consideration given my own extensive background with SIMS but having seen what these Independant only companies can provide and services they offer it is very impressive.

Hi Nephilim Could you please PM me as I would like to ask you a couple of questions but cannot PM anyone until I have made more posts. Thank you!

The narrowing down for us was quite simple. The main MIS competitors out there, like SIMS, Bromcom, simply cannot provide a package that meets all our needs and they are also more focused on the public sector rather than the private sector. We then looked at what a lot of other Independant schools were using and the vast majority of schools were using either ISAMS or Schoolbase. In fact if you look at both websites and see the list of schools that they have it is like a who's who of independant schools. That really made our minds up to look at these 2 though I have taken a look at others but to be honest they do not come close to what Schoolbase or ISAMS can do and offer.

We are an independant school and are looking to move away from CMIS. We have narrowed down our search of MIS systems to either Schoolbase or ISAMs. What we would like to do is get opinions from schools that are actually using either provider as to whether they would recommend it and what experience they have had from it. If anyone could help I would be very grateful.