Steven_Cleaver

Could also look at these guys as Welcome | CCCC - 4CSoftware have used there software which was a bit of work to setup but gave a good level of analysis once implemented, links to SIM's and now looks like it can produce some very graphical features, not sure if this would be available to parents though.

You could have a look at Insight from Tasc Software which has a nice Graphical for Parents and students feel especially for Attendance, Behaviour, Detentions, Exams Reports etc although am not to sure about Assessment as this may require this to be set up in SIM's Assessment to link through. There is a quick video on our Youtube off our website which gives you a look at screen shots Lode Heath School if you want a look if it is any help.

Haven't you got anything in your MIS ? We use SIM's Mark Sheets which works well for class tracking although can be complicated to set up and maintain and needs someone with a good skill level and have developed our own system to extract data from SIM's into our own whole school system that does analysis of the data at key reporting points, and enables for all this information to be live and deals with new students, classes changes etc automatically so analysis on Student, Class, Subject, Form Group, Teacher, all Subjects with graphing etc and all this done automatically, with Intervention and Intervention Analysis built in, which we are looking at using with another school and possibly some of our feeders. Could also look at these guys as Welcome | CCCC - 4CSoftware as I have used there software which was a bit of work to setup but gave a good level of analysis once implemented. Another good system is SISRA although can be a little complicated for Staff to use gives a good level of analysis but you do have to upload student information fairly periodically and isn't automated so can mean data gets out of date new starters, students moving class etc. excellent for Exams analysis though. If you want any more info or more detail give us a shout.

Of course you are would never argue.

Wouldn't dare disagree

Could be useful as the remote solution we use works fine over Windows Devices and works with ITAP for Android, IPad etc had heard rumours Microsoft had brought the company that made ITAP so thanks for confirming this.

BCX Management Tools with PRISM we have been using this for a few years and is excellent but does a lot more than just software installation same as Impero so not sure if it is overkill for what you want Burconix - Professional ICT Solutions for Education and SME but take a look and are a really good company to deal with.

Interesting discussion. How about this !!! During the Exam period close the school to all years except those taking Exams so they have this as part of their Summer holiday so 4 weeks allow some staff off for two weeks, some staff for Invigilating exams any spare staff could concentrate on creating resources for the new year (which they should be doing as part of their holiday and some do well but others not at all) and have these signed off by their Line managers. Second 2 weeks have the other Staff on holiday and swap round. This would allow all IT suites available for exams and spare rooms if required to hold students with interactive boards so could watch tv do extra revision, between exams etc Careers advice etc. As would have plenty of facilities. As someone has said extra kit in case the odd device crashes. Also have one school in a borough where no exams are sat but students from this school go to different schools to sit the exams either themselves or bused and have a set of coaches on standby in case a schools systems did crash then Coach or bus all those students under supervision to the empty school. Obviously if more than one school crashes on the same day you have issues but can only cater for so many scenarios.

Another one for Virtual box we have used this here for Programming etc Create a generic account create your Windows 7 how you want install what Software you want etc I also put some key logging software on these Microsoft Visual studio express 2010 but what you like then Export the image to a shared area then install Virtual box on other machines and import the image as the user you created. Then students logon with Generic account you created. We also make the IT staff aware that they should make sure students are fully supervised when using this and use staff Abtutor to do this.

Good explanation of social media.

Hi @PhilNeal does this include the A2C software for downloading data from Exam boards, if so this is deffinately a step in the right direction as have found this to be a much better system for transfering of data between the school and exam boards.

Used to work here three years ago and still keep in touch, Excellent school with good staff including excellent IT staff .

Would be interested to know that as well.

Looks like he is trying to use his power to get exam boards to play fair, next we'll be calling him Super Phil.

@PhilNeal Cheers for responding, I am glad that the Process is being looked at and can imagine with all the various qualifications and exam boards this is very difficult. It is just really frustrating when you follow all the guidance given which to be honest wasn't very clear in regards to patching, upgrade SIM's, re-keying, follow various steps and running various things you still have issues on Exams day. I am not saying the fault completely lies with Capita as I am sure it doesn't but is just very frustrating when you have followed all guidance as it is and you still have issues and we did get a workaround but with the guidance of another Exams Officer in the borough after spending about 5 hrs between Exam board and LEA support. In general we have found SIM's as a set of Tools and MIS system really good especially the more we use the various features just the User Interface for showing the Analysis of data for staff not easy for staff to navigate so have created our own. For Reporting, Timetabling and various other functions excellent though the more we use this, just occasionally have issues with updates and upgrades which have seem to have happened a lot more this year for some reason but may only just be my experience. Again Phil thanks for taking the time and effort to explain.

Completely agree with you but might just me but this year seems worst than ever and to get to the Exams day without these issues being sorted even though we had followed all the recommendations is ridiculous especially with all the resources Capita have available. Don't get me wrong SIM's as a product is pretty good as in it does an awful lot and where something else does it better but and links into SIM's we have bought that product rather than the SIM's modules. It is just constant issues with Upgrades, Updates and Patch, Upgrades, Updates and Patch's which to be honest don't seem to offer much extra functionality but seem to be fixes for things that don't work right and then end up breaking something else. The Spring upgrade was the first upgrade I thought actually offered a lot of extra functionality and looked really good and what happens someone decides to set a ridiculous refresh on the data to dashboards and causes massive performance issues for quite a few schools, which we were still having until the Summer Upgrade even after all the patches and is part of the reason we went to Server 2012 instead of 2008 R2 so we could throw more resources at this. It just the fact that this is also taking up more and more of my time to try and resolve issues caused by the upgrades, updates etc particularly this year.

I'll warn you a bit of a rant before I start and I'll go the short version had multiple patches for Exams over the last few months, anyhow off on holiday from about the 1st to 15th July thought I would go before the summer my 50th and had a fair bit on over the summer. Get back multiple emails from LEA and Exams Officer need to install Exams patch 18307 but probably best to do summer upgrade first ok, the information about this and what I needed to do seemed to change about 3 or 4 times, never mind we were going to move the SIM's Server to a new VM in over the summer then upgrade, anyway follow instructions summer upgrade and LEA run the patch after It have done the Diagnostic bit. Exams Officer deletes the manual entries she had done in Marksheet, we must have spent a good few hours sorting all this out. What happens Exams day we end up having to re-enter all this results back in Manually as we have still have an issue with this so was a waste of time doing the initial patch etc. We also have another set of results into that won't import in on the day we download the Exam files two out of the three subjects are fine but third just won't import in we have a look and can't see the level in the Grade set so presume it is a Basdata issue so onto phone to Exams re-download, try again no joy, phone LEA who have a look oh try the Exam board we say we have tried this but no joy oh try again does anyone get the feeling we are going to be going round and round well your right three more phone calls to Exam board then LEA who to be honest were doing their best final call to Exams board oh a few schools have been having a similar issue theirs a SIM's patch that might work for that sorry but (WTF) phone LEA oh we will have to check, by now its 1.30pm and she still has to print and collate them for the students for 10am Exam officers is nearly in tears then suggest we phone someone we had been speaking to at another school who come up with a way we could get these in manually as we couldn't do it through a Marksheet as it kept giving us an error. So use the method suggested and just manually input these and print these off before we get kicked out of school. Exams Officer gets a phone call that evening their its a and known issue and theirs a SIM's patch cheers but have had to manually do this with advice from another Exams officer. So cheers Capita rant over feel much better now, as I said this is the short version. o

Completely agree and our Head has emailed staff and told them not to use data sticks to store data but to use our remote access system as if they store data on memory stick and this gets lost they will be liable to disciplinary action and this is now in our ICT policy.

Someone from our LEA said it was a requirement or should have Dual Factor Authentication when accessing MIS systems when we were discussing remote access and as well as anything web facing being SSL which makes sense, so we did this as if their was a security issue I didn't want the LEA saying they had told us this and we hadn't factored this in. So we built Dual Factor into our own RDP solution so need App on memory stick, PC, laptop and Username and Password and added extra security, logging, App disabling etc on the front end and locked down RDP as much as possible for instance only enables RDP through the web interface and only for that session closes ports not needed etc, wonder if you could do something like this, we also let students access over RDP through this route but without encrypted App so can't access SIM's or MIS systems. The LEA also get an external company to do Penetration testing on our web facing solutions so we know these are as secure as possible, recently had them pick up an issue on our Moodle Server with older version of PHP so upgraded Moodle and PHP and informed the LEA as we want to keep up a good relationship with them.

Might actually finish all ours this year which will be quite a feat as this did increase by about 30% last couple of weeks of half term and first week of the holidays as it always does I did say might.

Hi Robd Welcome back maybe, where schools have changed in the last few years, a lot more schools using Server Virtualisation, SAN storage, just also for a idea here is a list of some of the stuff we use. WDS - for Imaging Citrix and Xen - Server virtualisation Prism - custom packages for software deployment. Moodle - VLE Network Secure Gateway - Staff and Student remote access Home Access + - access to staff and student files\folders although nearly faded this out due to Network Secure Gateway SIM's - MIS Progress Bar - gives staff analysis of Progress data, from various points with graphs etc Abtutor - for remote station and staff classroom management WIX - school website BCX Management Tools - Desktop, Shortcut, Printer, User Management, Startup\Shutdown task and much more etc Microsoft Visual Studio - software development (just a few small Apps) ForeFront - Anti Virus Software - MS Office, Adobe CS6, normal mix of dodgy and not so dodgy educational software Insight - Parental Gateway Microsoft Server technologies - Shadow Copy (Backup for quick restore), File Server Resource Manager (block file extensions or warn by email), Share and Storage Management (Storage allocation) Hope this helps, not a full list but what I could think of off the top of my head.

Signed.

Ordered some from 4gon Monday but have two week wait due to out of stock 3 pro pack.

ABtutor (Class room Management, IT Support, Remote Control etc) and Burconix Ltd BCX Management Tools (Network Management, User Management, Printer Management, App Deployment etc)

I think what your looking at the Acer Iconia W510 seems a good option for what you wish to use them for and we are looking at these ourselves after doing some research. We have a few Ipads that are used for specific things like videoing in PE, lesson observations, Pupil premium with some specific software, ebooks etc. Also reading your second post you seem to have a very good take on this. We do use ITAP on the Ipads to access our own remote desktop solution as well as students and staff accessing this for external access to school PC's which makes the Ipads a bit more useable as a whole. Your also right about an RDP solution not being the slickest with Ipad devices and is a much better experience with a Windows device with keyboard etc.