chrisateen

Thanks for the advice guys. I listened to the advice about doing it web based and decided to go with a web based application using C# and MS SQL server. I think I am just going to write down some basic features that it should have and not take any more suggestions until we have something that is ready for our staff in-house to test/use then once I know things are fine with that then we can look into adding extra features to it. With regards to not doing it at all it's not really an option for the school to not do it due to the nature of the project. The school didn't ask me to do it either so I could have decided to walk away but I am thinking about my own professional development and I want to eventually move away from a school MIS job to a more software developer job depending on how things go or if I decide to pursue management instead. Therefore I'm not really bothered about the money as I am thinking long term as to how I can use it to further develop my career plus to be fair I am getting paid quite well anyway as a data manager. Being involved in such a project and managing it as well will do great wonders to my CV. Also my school is the type to recognise when one is overloaded and will hire more people if needs be as long as it would benefit the school. In terms of work load I will have 2 other people as well working on it and I line manage a few staff so if I can train them up with some of the data stuff it would free me up some time to focus on this (depending on how huge it becomes). If I bit more than I can chew with this project then at least I tried my best and learnt along the way

Hi All I cant give too much details otherwise I might give myself away. I want to develop an inhouse system for our school which the school is hoping to turn into something huge. I am excited about this as its a huge project and can help me further my career and developing an inhouse system is something that I always wanted to do but I worry that I am not an experienced coder and I don't want to end up with a system due to lack of experience that is full of bugs or does not keep up with the constant change with technology. As you know I am a data manager who line manages a couple of staff members. One of my staff who is finishing uni this summer has done computing as part of his degree so I can get that person to help. But apart from that (and a teacher who is learning to code as well) there is no one else who can really help out. What advice would you give? Is it possible for me to develop a very good system or do you think we are out of our depth?

Yes it's tools - performance -options to view data from exams and I can lock and unlock seassons within sims examinations as well ( just like loxking a result set in sims). Not what I need though as I want one single marksheet where you can edit forecast grades and assesment grades at the same time but I have had a look and it doesn't seem possible. I have created a marksheet though where teachers can add a forecast grade and a seperate one where they can view (but not edit) assesment and forecast grade. Seems like this is the closest to what I ideally want

I know I can get the exam aspects into a marksheet but only if I add it as read only. Ideally I want the column as a data entry column so teachers can enter the forecast grade and see the assesment grade at the same time. Hope that makes more sense

Hi I want to get my team to set up a marksheet in SIMS in which teachers put in a forecast grade for exams and the teacher can see the student's predicted grade at the same time. Or do we have to create a separate marksheet for entries and forecast then put a read only column in the main teacher assesment marksheet. Or is there another easier way that you guys do it Thanks

I think that map is harder to understand than the current one they use in london

I bought the Samsung UE22F5400 22 inch tv for my bedroom recently as I wanted to watch tv in bed. Really good as its a smart tv in which you can browse on the internet, has two HDMI ports, VGA, USB ports, freeview, Youtube, bbc iplayer, 4OD and many more and you can download apps. I also use it temporarily as a computer screen as well.

I think Capita needs to make it a priority to add such feature into SIMS. All MIS systems should have an audit trail. I also had instances where things have gone missing and I have nothing to find out why it went missing.

Your right BTEC level 3 points are not the same as A Level points. Plus the points depend on size of the BTEC course. It was a nightmare setting it up last summer in assesment. Start by having a look at the document at http://www.gov.uk/government/publications/performance-points-a-practical-guide-to-key-stage-4-and-5-points If you are still stuck after reading the document on that page let me know as I can help further

I also agree to a certain extent that having all sorts of spreadsheets as 90% of time it's stuff that can easily be set up in SIMS. I know some will argue that for teachers using spreadsheets may be easier than using SIMS however I find that most teachers can even do basic things on a spreadsheet and then they come to me asking how do they do this and that on a spreadsheet and ends up being more time consuming showing staff who to use a formula on a spreadsheet than setting up a marksheet on SIMS especially when they end up putting some that data back into SIMS for the reports SIMS discover does seem like a nice piece of software to extract data from the SIMS database but it takes a long time to set up assessment manager graphs. What would be nice if one could set up a graph based on some aspects then filter it by result set, year group e.tc than having to set up a graph for each result set. Plus it's limited compared to running reports in routine. I personally think that discover needs to be developed more but it does have a lot of potential in the future especially for teachers who are SIMSaphobic and need to extract some data

I know that already. Plus people can still tamper with the user defined feilds. I have had problems with tampering and its a shame SIMS does not have an audit trail. In fact I knew someone who never saved any files on the work computer so that when they left the school could not get access to the work they did whilst employeed by the school No matter how hard you try and stop people accessing and modifying data there will always be someone who can potetially gain access to it. We unfortunatly (to a small extent) have to trust that people will behave like professionals even though we know that very few are capable of doing that.

I know I was just pointing that even though anyone can view the data does not mean they can edit the data. I think he needs to decide how sensitive the data is. If it is sensitive data then the udf route may be a better option

The point about security is something you need to consider as technically speaking everyone can view the data. However remember that you can restrict who can edit the marksheet as you can create a user defined group then add the teachers who should be in charge of that group. They would be the only ones to edit the data.

I'm not as experience like other people on here. However if it was me I will record and store all of that information in assessment manager. So create result sets and aspects for all of that data as well as a marksheet. Doing it in assessment manager will enable you to see who imputed that data into SIMS and view historic data plus you can create a group of teachers who will be able to access that marksheet/data

I did the parkrun once myself and enjoyed myself. Plus one runs a lot quicker when there are lots of people running with you and can be a bit competitive as well

I wouldnt say I was half marthon stage when I did it. I ran for over a year and a half and managed to go from being able to run for only 5min to doing 12km in under an hour (although losing a lot of weight helped as well). On top of that I did a few 10k and 5k runs in decent times. Then when I got my first job in summer 2012 I didnt train properly for the half marathon so ended up walking for some it but I did it in 2hrs 15min. Had I train properly I should have been able to do it in under 2hrs possibly even in 1hr 50min Recently my left knee has been hurting badly when I run. I thought it might go away if I took a break but it hasn't so I think I might need to go to the doctors. So now I can run at a speed of 9k for about 40 - 60min but any faster than that and my knee starts to give way. Moral of the story is that if I can do it you can do it too

You may be surprised. I couldn't run for 2min before but in Oct 2012 I did a Half Marathon. Try taking up running for a while and see what happens even if you only run 5mins a day until you get use to it.

I dodnt follow the plan but I did take up running a while back to lose weight. Its a great thing to do and like you said when you do it you feel a buzz and sometimes you want to do even more. I can bet that in a few months time you will be doing 10k's then after you will be considerjng doing a marathon. Good luck and most importantly make sure you stick to it

Ignore last post. I figured it out as to why it wasnt working. I had it as a word report insteadbof an rtf report. This is what happens when I'm trying to do everything at once

Hi All I am trying to edit a Photo Template so that a teacher can download pictures by class group order and it has which class they are in. When I try to add class as part of my field onto the template the add ins are not coming up at all (I am using Word 2007). The add ins are working when I set up and individual assessment report but not when setting up a template in reports - run reports. Is there something that I need to do in word? Thanks

@vikpaw @Steven_Cleaver Thanks for the response. It seems like the easiest way is to create multiple reports in SIMS and get command reporter to extract the data or use the method that Steven_cleaver uses. Autoreports is also something I need to look into however it sounds more complicated than using command reporter I managed on Friday to use command reporter and task scheduler to run some basic reports for a teacher who needed some reports exported weekly and the IT person was more than happy to give me permission to use task scheduler which means I can now play around a bit more with extracting data I wished I knew how to use command reporter a long time ago as it would have saved me a lot of time and effort in the past.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]22266[/ATTACH] I have done a report similar to what you have in the screen shot already. The only difference is that the assessment filter is prompted at run time if I do it via SIMS and I want it so that only 1 result set can be selected rather than have all the result set selected like in your screen shot. Now I could do it the way you did it in your screen and select multiple results sets then do some macros that would filter and analyse the data I want. Problem is that if I do it similar to how you have it in your screen shot I will be downloading a huge amount of data which will be too messy However what I would like to do is use command line reporter to only select for example where the resultset is End of KS3 Expect and the Grade set is KS2 Sub Levels.

I dont think I have explained myself properly. I have a report in SIMS that downloads student exam marks in a subject then used vba to do all the calulations so that the data is analysed automatically when the report is downloaded. When I run the report it would prompt for a result set and an aspect name. If I want to download the report for each subject I will have to run the report manually for each subject (one for maths then one for english e.t.c). I know I can set up different reports for maths, english, science and for each result set butthat would take ages and will just have a huge list of reports in SIMS. What would be easier is to use command reporter to run all the reports I want then tell it which aspects and results set I want it to download.

@Steven_Cleaver Thanks for that. Really helped as a teacher wanted some reports running and I didn't want to sit there and run the reports each time by myself. It's a shame I can't auto schedule it (I don't have permissions to do so ) A question though. If I have a report which requires certain parameters (e.g I need to select the aspect name and the result set) how do I go about it?

Hi All Currently where I work the network is being run by RM. Since the latest upgrade SIMS has been incredibly slow and keeps crashing when we press save to the point where teachers are emailing me about it thinking that I have access to the network and can sort it out. Now if it was anything else I will email back to say RM are aware of the issue and not much I can do but its affecting me also as running reports takes over 30min to download and saving on SIMS takes another 15min. What makes things worse is that reports are due which slows things down for me which I cannot afford to have an issue as I am in charge of the mock exam all next week all by myself. I know there is not much I can do but is there any tips for things that could possibly be slowing SIMS down so badly. Is there anything I could do to speed SIMS up or can get the IT technician (who is not employed by RM) to look at for me. Or anything that I can advise the teachers (apart from the ovious like not saving too much at once, be pacient if it freezes e.t.c)