jon_d

Do you mean 6am? Midnight is the release time to exam offices, not pupils - at least with our exam boards.

We are looking at different solutions to send out exam results to pupils. Just curious as to how many edgeekers are doing this and how? Also are they are going to home or school email addresses, or even parents? Is anybody aware of any legal restrictions or data protection issues with doing this? Thanks

Thanks for the feedback, please keep it coming! TASC Insight - As I mentioned we already looked at this, I quite liked it, but it got the thumbs down on the visuals by everybody in the meeting, a real shame as I think with some minor tweaks to the graphics and colours on the demo site they would have swung it. Unfortunate first impressions. MCAS - We also looked at this, and as John says, we need to bolt onto SIMS rather than replace it so we would be using the SD version. Otherwise it looked promising. It would be nice to have some form of AD link up though, and also a direct URL that embeds your school code rather than having the parents remember this too. SchoolComms - Spoke to them yesterday, very appealing product, waiting for them to get back to me with some technical queries. Not too impressed the "Trial" evaluation modified my live SIMS Server without asking.... Again no AD link up too. Regarding pupil exam results – we envisage pupils will have their own logins, and thus results would only be delivered directly to them. This also seems to be the approach we have seen so far in those products that do have this feature. We have scripted this in the past to be sent out via email, but it is still a manual export procedure from SIMS.

Can anybody recommend any parent portal or parent/pupil engagement systems worth looking into? We have SIMS as a MIS system, and we want something that will be able to pull information from this and hopefully allow parents to update their details. Other things on the checklist include: Attendance/Conduct Pupil Reports Timetables We also want to push out our exam board results from SIMS directly to pupils – so it would be useful to provide pupils with logins as well. Ideally it would also have some form of homework option as well. SLT also want it to have a "wow" factor – Web 2.0 was mentioned, which probably means it needs to look like facebook... So far we have looked at: SLG (Basic and horrific AD integration method) Firefly+Parent Portal module (Pretty, but expensive and doesn’t meet all our requirements) BromComs MCAS (Not bad, but no pupil homework/exam results) TASC Insight (Ticked a lot of boxes, but visually very unappealing) Suggestions gratefully received! I’m starting to suspect we might need several products to deliver all the different elements.

Some interesting options there, keep them coming! I was contemplating using staff code letters (3 letters) for the teaching staff accounts. We don't really have any sort of generic id system, we have only just stared using UPN numbers, and only because we have been forced to - but a UPN is a bit long for a pupil to remember. I seem to remember this is some sort of composite key though, so possible to just use part of it? Ideally whatever we choose ought to become the De facto standard for other systems as well - we seem to have so many different and convoluted systems going on in each department at the moment. Nightmare!

We are looking to roll out a new system next year, and I am looking for ideas on naming conventions for pupil and staff accounts. I've worked in some schools where all accounts were just numbered (s999 for staff, p999 for pupils), and some that name each account. At the moment it seems to have been pretty much up to whoever happened to add the account - there has been no standard (underscores, dots, dashes, numbers, all of the above, take your pick!). I now have the luxury of starting from scratch with a new domain and a free hand, but wondering what options are out there. I'm interested to see how people are naming their accounts, what works well, what problems do you have, would you do anything differently? So, how do you do yours?

Sorry to hijack the thread, but those of you using biometric print release on papercut - what are you using to manage the biometrics? BioStore etc? We already have a biometric database through our NRS cashless system, but it doesn't appear to play well with others. Pcounter say they can integrate, but their software seems very clunky compared to papercut. Can I ask which cashless/library system you are using? Seems logical that things like print/cashless/library/door entry/registration would all tie into one system - but after talking to several vendors the reality is a little disappointing.