Hi Steve,
We moved from Emerge to SIMS Teacher over the summer due to Emerge not being able to cope with no actual PM registration sessions and copying the mark based on the last afternoon lesson of the day.
1. Do you have a PM registration period? Teacher App is not as refined at the moment as Emerge. However on the plus points the attendance data is updated in realtime, so we don't have issues with emerge overwrite or emerge slowing down SIMS every 15 mins.
The downsides there are a few,
If there is any issue with your staff data in SIMS, it will not work on a per staff member basis until you have corrected each one. So all good in the end
Currently it does not work for lessons which share teachers including support teachers.
Does not show any comments added at the moment.
The missing registers home screen does not work with the App, not sure if it works if you have inTouch, we dont.
Cannot search by class or see a students attendance in previous lessons.
You cannot quickly check if you have done all you registers that day if you have closed the App down, as it shows ticks for what registers you have completed in that session before you lock the ipad.
2.Don't know using iPad 2s and newer.
3.Yes assuming you have it setup in SIMS correctly.
4. Don't know have not used it yet, we use Google Apps for Education.
5. The cost is per pupil unless you have over a certain number then it is fixed price. If you buy Learner Gateway, then it is included for free. To use it for lessons you need to make sure you also have a Lesson Monitor license also.
Hope that helps.