robins

This would be a helpful new feature for new-normal but I've yet to see the integration developed for SIMS schools. Another heavy lifting workaround with EdulinkOne allows teachers to add their reoccurring SIMS timetable to Outlook via a couple of clicks. As a one off they'd just paste class url in the appointment so reminders pop-up the Teams/Meet/Zoom link.

Recommend you let SIMS visualise house/achievement point totals on a continual basis by configuring a conduct/achievement widget on your SIMS homepage. You can change bar graph colours to suit house colours and click to drill down to see highest scoring students, etc. Best of all SIMS then refreshes graph continually so it's effortless to monitor daily, weekly, annual leading house. PM me if you need set up tips.

Agree, blank periods on Friday for Lower Sch would solve this without confusing faculty. If more Upper/Lower timetable differences are needed, SIMS/Nova schools can opt for 'Multi-Timetable' allowing bespoke overlapping timetable cycles and Lesson Monitor attendance variations.

Agree, this variation can be handled in NT6 with considerable complexity. Best faculty know 1Wed timings differ, rename periods 0,1,2,3,4,5 and rely on class code/name to distinguish Registration periods. You could reinforce class code/name of 1030Reg as a simple special variation.

It's often necessary or convenient to trick SIMS by pre-admitting students and staff, especially so they sync to integrated systems as current students/staff before joining. Just be sure to update admission/start date/DOA once joined or archive/delete if they never turn up. It would be great if third party developers support busy school staff by providing the 'include admissions' or 'effective date' filter available within SIMS to avoid this trick.

The pay is a bit vague as there is some flexibility if a candidate can offer something that convinces us is worth a premium. Also we have to be competitive in London but we are a nice school with sound SMT, supportive parents, cute kids from Nursery to Yr7/8 and financially more like a Primary so I don't want to raise false hopes. Lots of benefits, young dynamic approach to ICT amongst teachers, huge scope to support/develop Frog and a wide exposure to modern systems. Would probably suit someone frustrated elsewhere, who wants to have a say and get recognition. Did I mention inspiration Head, nice school dinners & sociable colleagues?

Hi all. We're looking for someone in the big smoke who wants to broaden their technological horizons as a big cog in a small wheel within an ambitious private school. We have created a happy successful modern school in a posh part of town in the past four years and need to refine it, expand it and potentially duplicate it elsewhere. As well as some boring stuff there's lots of opportunity to develop solutions and contribute ideas rather than be ignored in a bigger/older organisation. If this sounds like you, see our ad in the tes.co.uk and read on (corrected version) below: ICT Technician Purpose of the Post: A new permanent fulltime position is being created to support and develop ICT services at Knightsbridge School. The demand for this role reflects our growing dependency on ICT in all aspects of the school which itself is extending to KS3 in London and developing new partner schools abroad. We are a well resourced school keen to adopt best practice in the use of ICT for teaching, learning, communication, administration and management. Being a small school this role offers an exciting opportunity to undertake a broad range of tasks and projects alongside the ICT specialist and school leadership. Person Specification: Desirable skills are as follows: · Experience of XP desktop and support of common peripherals. Experience of using and supporting Microsoft Office and other common applications. Experience of server side hardware, software and administration are also desirable. Experience of developing solutions, software or content management and creative ICT skills are also valued. · Experience desired in some of the following technologies: Windows Active Directory and Group Policy management, software deployment and OS packaging or imaging, DNS, DHCP, basic networking including physical cabling, switches, routers, VPNs and WiFi, administering MS SQL and Exchange servers, recovery and redundancy, Powershell, SQL, PHP, SCORM, MIS (especially SIMS), VLEs (especially the Frog LP), PBXs and VoIP, HTML and Javascript, classroom hardware, Audio Visual & Interactive Whiteboards, client, server and web based teaching and assessment software, media editing and content management tools. Person Specification: General · Good record keeping. Logical approach to problem solving, proactive approach to avoiding or solving issues. A ‘can do’ attitude but with awareness of own limitations / risks / budget / H&S. · Well presented and organised with good time-management, communication and change management skills. Able to work well under pressure with initiative both under instruction and autonomously. Willingness to contribute ideas and propose / reflect on solutions. · Ability to work in a secure environment and to maintain confidentiality. · Committed to a range of appropriate professional development and keeping up to date with new technologies and techniques relevant to educational IT. · Flexible and friendly and able to contribute positively and prioritise effectively between the demands of teaching, administration and leadership teams. Able to act as a positive role model to inspire staff and children alike not just in supporting / encouraging effective use of ICT but also a willingness to participate in the overall life of the School. Additional Information · As part of the recruitment process candidates will be required to demonstrate some practical and theoretical ICT skills and experience. · There is some flexibility in the start date for the successful candidate, though availability to start this summer is desirable. · Specific and shared responsibilities will be agreed according to the skills and ambitions of the successful candidate or once appropriate training has been provided. The successful candidate will be equally keen to work autonomously or within a team environment. This post reports operationally to the ICT Specialist in the first instance with whom some responsibilities are shared and in some duties both posts are intended to cover each other in case of absence / holiday on a best endeavours basis. As in any small organisation the post holder should relish the opportunity to get involved with broader aspects of school life and ad hoc tasks as needs arise. A proportion of annual leave is to be ring fenced to be taken during school holidays and the role will incorporate a share of ‘on-call’ rota duties for minimal critical service continuity. Yes - thats right - the world on a stick please - but this is all part of what I like about working in a small / young school. If you want to have rigidly deliminated responsibilities, be paid a King's ransom, don't understand what it takes to be a small business or want to be told explicitly what to do all day - please apply elsewhere!

Has anyone tried SIMS on SQL 2008 std R2 32 bit with a single named instance. I hear its pretty stable generally - after all it's not a major release. I'm still on Win2003 as when I switched to SIMS Win2008 hadn't been OK'ed by Capita which was annoying.

Thought I'd give this a bump. This product is now called Response and there are some fancy new handsets available. Regardsless the principals are still the same. This has grown in popularity with our teachers and kids but Smart themselves don't seem to be doing anthing clever with the backend... I'd love to hear from anyone who is recording and sharing quiz results either within smart utils or excel and sharing pupil data effectively. Especially if you are making use of tags to compare common aspects to the kids answers. Any hints on how teachers can roam their results with their application data and share data with other teachers - at present we export all quiz results to excel and save in a common area.

We've just bought Frog, had SIMS and AD linked and done the initial training. I've not noticed anything I don't like yet. It doesn't seem to get mentioned much on here probably because the frog community forums are pretty effective - ask your sales rep to give you access to the community via a demo login. By the way TASC wrote the database link to SIMS on behalf of Frog. Much of the platform seems to be within our powers to develop or gets extended FOC by changes which users vote for or commission. Interestingly there is code sharing and content swapshop but also a facility to flog user created things to one another within the community.

Thanks for that. BlueHills Provision Map Writer is ticking lots of boxes for us but can't write back to SIMS in a more intelligent way than manually linking a document (as far as I can see). If we want to encourage teachers to get all their info on pupils from the MIS then ideally it would populate SIMS SEN fields for needs, provisions, reviews etc. IEPwriter populates some basic details from SIMS, allows teachers to customise the report template, offers suggestions of targets etc and saves as an IEP linked document in SIMS. There are no management tools and its not going to support this move towards 'provision mapping'. There seems to be demand for an IEP tool that can write back to SEN fields in the MIS like ‘Review’ and has management features that a SENCO can use to keep track which teachers are up to date with termly IEPs or report on the resources they need to provide/cost to meet IEP targets. I dont think its included in PARS, I'll ask TASC if they plan to offer anything like this - they seem to be the only 3rd party that have developed stuff that truely integrates with SIMS in terms of database reads and writes.

Given IEPs are being superceeded by Provision Maps, does anyone know of any software that supports this and ideally links to SIMS? I get the feeling I could write a report in SIMS that will populate an IEP template and just save as a linked doc (and save a pile of money)?

Stop troughing and announce who the BETT awards have gone to!!! I'll avoid their stands tomorrow - its all about corporate back slapping anyway

Buyit247.com had a RM Interactive ClassTable for a tiny price so I'm looking forward to seeing what it can do - no great expectations at this price. Only acts as a horizontal surface so less flexible but uses that same excellent Hitachi short throw asymetric mirrored projector. For me the Smart table is a winner with little kids as they get confused when they shadow the projected image, so a plasma/TFT underneath an touch sensitive bit of glass is the way ahead.

That sounds right. Yes - its the custom design and options like parent portal and secure gateway that hype the cost. Running costs are fair though and unlike other VLEs, if you stop paying them then the box that you've bought and host locally and all the software/content are your in perpetuity. Nice to know when the ICT .com spending spree bubble finally bursts.

Thansk - thats clever. With regards the SIMS report designer - I've asked for the concept of a current date range like today, this week, this month, this term etc to be added to the data dictionary in some future release. Simailarly it would be nice to choose 'current user' as a filter so its not necessary to customise report designs to only pick up records that relate to them, eg kids in their class or behaviour incidents attributed to them etc.

I have Schoolcomms integrated with SIMS so its possible to send real emails and texts - if a little cumbersome. However they've just sent me a link to their beta web version which is a bit nicer than the app but I await to see whether it will be functionally better or just aesthetic. The big advantage is Schoolcomms picks up all members of groups, eg Reg, club, subject, admissions, staff, home language, etc. Capita say they have some level of integration with Exchange in the pipline. Hopefully this will create a more dynamic way to keep distribution lists of SIMS contacts inc groups of contacts up to date. Hopefully this will allow SIMS functions like missing register report to break out to real email. Hopefully this will link NT6 timetables to populate teacher calendars etc. In the mean time exporting a report of contacts emails from SIMS into Outlook is handy.

I was ready to buy three last BETT as I think the concept is great for EYFS. However the platform wasn't too well supported with software at the time and there were no 3rd parties developing killer apps for it. Maybe things are different now. I think Smart are a brilliant supplier for integrated hardware and software but they are not really content developers. If their table apps could be developed by say 2simple or whoever then I think it would be a great (if pricey) product.

Aspiring to be both outstanding and a Frog school. More prospect of the later as it can be purchased for £20k, though inconveniently will also rely on everyone getting on board to be successful.

I can recommed the capita SIMS Advanced Reporting course having done it. I saw the brief for the intermediate course which looked worthwhile too. I watched a demo yesterday and saw that its possible to input achievements/behaviour (even for multiple selected students via the register and link on left panel. Very useful for busy teachers.

Yep I'm SMT/SLT as ICT/MIS mgr. Lots of long hours, long words and short acronyms. Can't now imagine not being able to voice the IT perspective or lead school development initiatives from a technology perspective. In my mind, really understanding the IT is essential to management - the corporal world has been on this for years with management consultant, change manager and IT architect really being roled into one. In many schools I have seen, managers have come up via IT either systems or academic paths because IT people tend to have to take a whole school perspective on everything and therefore make better leadership candidates as they see the big picture.

Apparently they are known limitations of the existing report builder. I look forward to the SQL reporting engine expected soon - presumably less usable but more powerful.

I have a report which prints a list of achievements to copy & paste into our weekly newsletter and others which print nice looking certificates via MS word RTFs (real time savers as we give out about a hundred certificates a week). Main bore with both is that date ranges have to be set on report filters every week - there is no dynamic concept of 'this week' or 'today' for date filters in SIMS (that I know of). Similarly it would be useful if staff could track a history of acheivements/behaviours records authored/attributed to them - similarly a filter can't be set based on who is logged into SIMS. The views on screen for this info are available per child, per incident(inc type and activity type) etc but not per teacher. A 'my achievements' view would help.

Just wanted to give this a bump. I will try to trial but was keen to hear from any users of RecordLink with SIMS out there. Any advice on whether to rollout to all or just admin dept and key academic staff like senco, exam admin etc? Much appreciated.

Mathletics is incredible and the resources are growing rapidly. We use Rosetta Stone for all languages inc French, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin, Greek and Latin - expensive but worth it. Both of these extend to be used at home, for homework or just for fun because kids think they are computer games - all the time you are collecting assessment data! We use Espresso as well which is great though I'm not sure what the secondary offering is like.