Steven_Cleaver

Bye Bye

Yes we use the Assessment Individual Reports based around our SIM's reports which works really well and reduced our printing costs , but have sort of created our own web based analysis system that produces a fair bit of automated analysis for Staff and I just wondered if we could link this into Insight which it looks kike we can pretty easily. Just wondering if it was feasible to link in other documents based on Student No and as you say would be fantastic if it works.

Hi I know a few people on here use Insight and I am currently talking to their support staff who are excellent but wondered if anyone else had an Idea or has used User-defined pages in Insight. I have been talking to Tasc Software and they have helped us link in our automated web based Progress tracking and Intervention system we have created into Insight using User-defined pages and linking to student no which looks like it will work brilliantly for us, so that students and Parents can see this information. Just wondered if anyone knew if their was a way of linking a specific document or video in here to specific student using User-defined pages.

Cheers looks like another option thanks, we have sort of developed our own way of doing SIM's to Moodle and for getting data out of SIM's just not familiar with CMIS\Facility and just wondered if it was possible so thanks.

Cheers really appreciated looks like this might work for what I am after.

Don't know anything about CMIS but just wondered if anyone knows a way or if it is possible to auto extract grades on a schedule ?

Could also try these guys as well Burconix Ltd I know they have helped quite a few RM schools along these lines and can't praise them highly enough, offer whole raft of support and there own software tools but only if you want. Very all IT engineers so no sort of heavy handed sales or over pricing.

Just noticed this company are advertising post Burconix Ltd excellent company do some work for us and a couple of other schools in our borough.

We use it and is used pretty well by nearly all departments and really well by a few. Used FROG (few years back) in the last school again used pretty well and had one teacher come from another FROG school and said they found Moodle slightly easier to use once they got going. Our SLT add things like this to there QA (Quality Assurance Meetings) are you using it if not why not and set it as Target. Also do surveys of students and did one for Moodle very positive feed back from students which helped drive Moodle use by departments a little more.

Teaching Vacancies really good school closing date for applications 31/3/2014 Subject Leader Science Assistant Subject Leader English Maths Teacher Lode Heath School

You could try a company called Burconix Ltd we have used these guys for a few things as do a couple of other schools in the borough excellent reliable outfit and will offer you as much or as little support as required so can just come in and help with major projects or offer you on going support what ever you require can't rate them highly enough. They also work throughout the UK.

Hi Just wondered if anyone had used these (vision2learn) and what there experience was of the company, what they used and if they thought it was successful. Thanks

It is just a piece of software we have developed with someone else you can just download a piece of software onto device memory stick, pc or laptop and can generate a unique key for this that when you run the app the first time copy in the key and it registers against some software on the Server each key is unique and encrypted. Then double click the app and it does first factor then username and password second factor. We have a client on each PC and this controls if you can access this with single or dual factor so all SIM's machines require Dual Factor, if that makes sense and is controlled by the software on the server. Very rough explanation.

Use our own remote access solution built around RDP but with encrypted App for dual factor Authentication for Staff so they can access SIM's, works well as logs everything as well.

Survey monkey we have used this pretty extensively for the last three years does a lot of the work for you just need to occasionally tweak the analysis after depending on what you want, we use the Gold package as we do quite a lot of Surveys around £299 per year although we got in early o get this for £199 but well worth it. You can also try the free version to see if it suites.

Could also try Skip VNC Console with VNC which is free and looks like a good way of managing VNC through a console although I haven't used, but looks good, Skeep VNC Console | Free System Administration software downloads at SourceForge.net found this on another thread on Edugeek and looks interesting.

Got the Leaflet as well and does look good with really nice interface but have sort of covered this with SSO to most things in school linked to our AD and then Remote access to computers for staff (staff simple dual factor to MIS) and students using our own system. The only thing that worries me with allowing files to be copied between school and home is data protection and which file is the most up to date, loss of data if computer crashes at home by keeping everything in school it is backed up and only using up to date copy and as mentioned above Remote access systems would and should cover a lot of this functionality. Might arrange a Demo though in case I am missing something.

Hopefully we can't even muck the San Marino games up but I bet we still make it a struggle to get through wouldn't be the same otherwise.

At least England have got a reasonable draw . Mind you we will probably just scrap through.

Abtutor paid for works well, VNC free but a bit harder to manage and use, I had a look at Impero and this looked good as well again paid for.

We use it a little for really Attendance and Behaviour analysis and am sort of keeping an eye on how this develops at a couple of schools in the borough, I went to visit a couple of schools that I had been told were using this well and seemed good my only concern was when I asked how many staff were using it they said themselves (Data person) and one or two of SLT but what we want is everyone using the data which is what we have now. You possibly can set Discover up on a separate Server although at the moment ours is sat on the SIM’s server, my only issue would be performance if loads of staff started using Discover although I have beefed up our SIM’s Server over the summer. Discover also takes a bit of work to set up so if it looks like it will add something extra to what we already have and might be useful for staff we might invest sometime in this. The LEA also set some initial stuff in Discover for us as our LEA are very pro-active and they also provided some training for ourselves and our SLT but SLT here thought we already had was probably better for us and this was really before the last set of development with our own system. But as I say I am just keeping an eye how Discover develops.

@CAM completely understand it is difficult as we all have people to answer to and if its what they want is always difficult to move away. We have here Analysis in SIM's where we can (mostly class tracking and Target setting), export data into our own system which is what SLT and teaching staff us for analysis at reporting periods and enter and track intervention and used at QA (Quality Assurance) meetings, we also use SISRA which a couple of SLT use our Data Manager and myself use along with the other systems. Even with all this going on we still produce some analysis in excel that none of these give us we do try and then replicate this in SIM's or our own system after and sort of use Excel for modelling but we still have to do some analysis in Excel. @psydii we found keeping the spread sheets we created wasn't as you say to difficult but we were having to recreate up date these at each assessment point to get all the analysis we wanted which was taking sometime and was prone to the occasional error that is why we automated this into our own system. I also did some cost analysis on the amount of time it was taking to maintain these Excel sheets and in staff time we were talking thousands of pounds based on three reporting periods a year 5 years so 15 sets of analysis especially for the depth of analysis. As you say it is what perhaps MIS's should do and some do to an extent the problem is I am not quite sure they do them well enough or the required skills to develop these within in the MIS system are extremely high and can take years to develop then that person leaves or retires and a lot of this can be lost. Now a lot of this is automated and our MIS person isn't just manipulating data she is much more involved in using the data to highlight where Intervention is required this has made the school much more focused on Intervention across the whole school and look at expected progress and whether students are achieving this and if not what are we doing and if the intervention undertaken is successful or not and this can be seen by all staff easily.

@PhilNeal @Dave_Bensley Completely agree with PhilNeal and Dave_Bensley to a point as they both say extremely difficult to keep data up to date in excel spread sheets this is ok for analysis at specific point but as they say is quickly out of date and extremely difficult to maintain, not sure about SIM's displaying the analysis of data though that is easy for the end user or in a user friendly manor. My other concern in displaying this all just in SIM's is performance I am sure quite a few of us on here had issues before the Summer upgrade as regards the SIM's upgrade that was sort of auto updating the Home Page causing massive performance issues, this seemed to go on for a few weeks and to be honest was only fully fixed here even after installing all the patches etc in the Summer upgrade and has mean't that to try to alleviate some of the issues in regards to performance we have upgraded to 2012. Again completely agree with Phil and Dave about exporting the data out of SIM's and into Excel or other system unless you have a way of keeping all the analysis outside SIM's up to date or are only doing the analysis at a specific point and realise that this can be quickly out of date if things change.

This was a right pain here with spread sheets all over the place pretty much as you described, to be honest I don't think the SIM's interface is the easiest for staff to use in regards getting their data in some respects and especially as a whole school view, what we have done is produce a system that extracts the data from SIM's into its own system that analyses the data and puts it into an easy to sue front end and gives a fairly simple end for staff and SLT to navigate and don't have to bother myself or Data Manager to get analysis of data at reporting points it is all done. The Data Manager has set up Class\Subject tracking sheets in SIM's that Staff do the tracking in between reporting points which subject staff use which replaced a lot of the Excel sheets going on and we sort politely refuse to maintain Excel sheets as explain these are quickly out of date although will produce things for one off analysis in Excel or provide Excel training to staff was hard work and had some people moaning at the start but they have sort of come round. They can also export out of SIM's Mark sheets into Excel or out of the system we have created into Excel but that is up to them to maintain and manage.

We use Quota Scheduling and give KS3 students 15p per week or tops upto 15p if not used, KS4 students 45p but tops up if some sued but max of 45p, 3p per b\w 5p per colour but limit how many colour they can print, if they want more we query why. Staff we set them an overdraft of £100 initially as we have printers and photocopiers linked and Teachers linked to Departments if the use £100 we up the Overdraft we then produce a report finance who charge departments on usage, since departments have started to get charged for printing which wasn't the case a couple of years back printing is still to high but has reduced. Staff also use Moodle a lot more for uploading resources .