tombry

we use 365 for email, but all staff have office 2010 (soon 2013 I suspect) on their computers. personally I'd love to move to GAPPS, but I don't think our head of I.T. would be down for that, especially as some of us use Excel at a decently high level. but I'd love to move to chromebooks and gapps for our students/staff.

We have one of the Head's two PAs read every single report and make the corrections. I like your idea better!

I haven't actually - I set up SLT with 2xClient ages ago, and have used that on the PE ones - definitely going to swap them to the MS one now - that will get them to use it more for sure.

I would also be down for a Schoolcomms Teacher App - we have two licenses of GC, and it seems ridiculously pricey for what we use it for. I'm trying to get the PE department to use their ipads with RDP, I've got one converted, but not the other yet (to be fair, it can be fiddly using SIMS on an ipad through RDP)

have you queried your teachers on it? we use paper reports, tied back to the report system in SIMS so teachers at least know when kids are on report (the lovely ® on the register helps). I tried to get the paper cut out of it and just have teachers fill out the reports in SIMS, but it was pointed out to me (by about 3/4s of our staff) that it would never be filled out as with the piece of paper it is right in front of them, and it takes a couple seconds to tick the boxes and write a comment if needed, whereas opening it up in SIMS would take far longer. considering that generally classes with one student on report will have 2 or 3 (or 7 in one instance) other students also on report, the time build up was going to be too much to warrant getting rid of the paper. we also have parents sign the reports every night and collect them back, which wouldn't have been possible using the e-report.

I'm an idiot. ours are set up as admin's - thus why they can run the import routine - and I think I did that for that reason actually. (It's been 2 years since I set it up)

don't represent schoolcomms, but on point 1, you can set the import to run automatically upon the first start up of Schoolcomms - I'm the administrator of our multi-users, but whenever any of the admin ladies sign in (if they sign in before me) the report runs then as well. fully agree on part 2 as well, and part 3 would be nice, I've found a workaround in that I will put the teacher's email address as a link on their name in the message - it works for the vast majority of the messages that go out, although we do have some parents that will just reply to me (or admin staff), so I'd like your option!

I've flat out told our staff that they have to look at the assessment page, or my analysis pages - we do monthly assessments (I know), and there is no way I could generate the reports every week. I have maintained that it is not something that can be done, and would advise you to take the same stance - unless you have an admin person that can generate individual reports without much issue. but to complain that looking at a report under linked documents is too much effort is ridiculous - it would take longer for the report to generate than it would for them to open the linked document.

I looked at the MRBS stuff back in June, looked easy enough, threw it towards our head of ICT (who asked about it) and I don't think it's gone anywhere since. @vikpaw - got a link to that import tool? I might just set it up myself, as the excel files they try to use are constantly being edited by more than one person, who will happily save another copy into the directory, which leads to 3 or 4 'active' ones at a time.

this is so much better than my current method of RDPing to the SIMS server to do things while my desktop instance is busy.

pretty sure the last time I had this issue I had the SA password incorrect.

won't know for sure till the end of February - which doesn't help us either, as our options evening is tomorrow night. Thankfully all the confusing English stuff won't be until 2017, at least in 2016 everyone's English will count double. I'm trying to look at our Y9s, but am having a hell of a time getting the progress 8 measure to work in assman - can handle the maths, english, and best 3 from the EBacc range, it's just getting those last 3 without counting ones that were counted in EBacc range - from the lack of replies to my post in the MIS forum, I'm guessing not many others have a solution either.

So I'm sure most of you have seen the document from the dfe laying out their current ideas on the progress-8 measure, with promises that we'll have the full one at the end of February. I'm starting to build out some marksheets to look at my current y9s and see how they line up under the progress 8, and was doing well until I got to the actual progress 8 measure. I've got my Y9s in with their estimated grades, going across 15 subjects. Going from the dfe guidance I need to count their best 8 grades with the following rules: 2 of the 8 have to be English and Maths 3 of the 8 have to be from Ebacc subjects; Science, ICT, Geography, History, Spanish, French (easy enough, Max 1, 2, 3 columns pull that) the last 3 have to be from the Ebacc, as well as Art, Drama, Muisc, Computing, and any Vocational courses that make the list. and here is where I'm having a problem, as if I use Max 1, 2, 3 columns, I'm going to get overlap from the Ebacc subjects (I'm sure) - so how can I pull the highest 3 grades that aren't included in the Ebacc Max columns?

yeah mine was up this morning, worry over

goes both ways - there are some comments that are useful - but @GREED has my main concern in one. but it's all well and good to say it's a training issue - staff don't half listen to what they are told, so I can't imagine they would amazingly do so now. Personally I think it'd be great for them to learn by having a parent see something they shouldn't put - but if the option wasn't there to limit parents from seeing it, I can see SLT saying to not allow that access at all, which completely removes the tool.

I'll relax then, and check tomorrow

Everything says it is today. I have everything ready, log into COLLECT, it states that it is open (under news), yet it is not in my data collection table. figure that I must have made an error when setting up the school accounts, and must not have given myself rights to the census collections. go check, have full rights to everything. Anyone else not seeing the collection there to upload to?

I'd like to make it so parents would not see any comments. I'd also want to make sure that it wasn't sharing bullying incidents with parents, as those are things we track internally and decide if it is bullying - don't need a parent to see that their child was put down as a victim, when they might not actually be a victim. We actually use 0BP for a couple things that we give detentions for, that I would want parents to be aware of too. Not sure if you're covering it, but I don't think I'd want parents reading the comments on behaviour incidents, as some of our staff put some inappropriate comments in there at times (not too mention spelling/grammar errors)

The Cisco VPN isn't two factor, but it's what the LA recommends here, so I use it. I've used TeamViewer for myself, but I prefer the VPN/RDP solution for working in SIMS.

We use the Herts Grid's VPN solution with RDP - works great, and is fully secure end to end. Also doesn't require the computers in school to be logged in, only on.

no permission issues here either - but from the releasing potential event I attended in November, I seem to remember the gal that PMs the performance management addition mentioning how some groups would be changed to better fit that - if you use the new PM part of SIMS, maybe that caused it?

we actually implemented that teachers have to include this information on their seating plans - as very very few use their marksheets outside of reporting time.

in my old job I used to have to rename photo files all the time - I used to use a program called U Rename It to do it when it was a simple thing, but I think if you did this in excel it would be easier - although you would have to know how sims was naming the photos on export. but build a concatenate formula of ren "photo name.jpg" "UPN.jpg" and then copy that to a text file and save it as a bat.

I'd like different colors for a few things: Reports - We have students on behaviour reports, literacy reports, and numeracy reports - be really nice to differentiate those by color. I've asked a few times, and have always been informed that you cannot change the colors, but I can set up subject specific reports to handle the different ones - I'm trying to get away from the negativity of the red color for the literacy and numeracy, not the name.

Love it. will fully test it out when/if you all offer it to me like you did the reporting/recording messages stuff last spring. As a school we reset our points totals every year. What I'd really love is for it to notify a parent when their child receives a detention, and then reminds them on the day that their child has a detention - would eliminate a good hour of my day.