System Development

Summer 2011 Rollover

2011-08-23T15:42:00.001-07:00

Yes folks, we've rolled over the year groups promoting students up a year. Again, sorry to the folks in the southern hemisphere...

Add your room plan to Bob

2011-06-11T08:57:00.000-07:00

We've added the facility to upload a Word document (or similar) with a ClipArt plan inside to show staff the layout of your ICT rooms for planning purposes.
Simply edit a room and look for the upload a plan link (Max 200Kb)
http://www.onlineschooltools.co.uk/free-online-multi-week-timetable-room-booking/

New weeks available - now until end of 2012

2011-05-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

We have added new weeks to the system - up to the end of 2012

Info about Bob the room booking system:

Info about Ernie the equipment booking system

Parents evening booking

2011-02-06T06:28:00.000-08:00

Use Phil to keep track of your parents evening bookings - easier to find than that bit of paper. Saying that, you can print the page if you want to take it with you.

Parents can book online at home using a student code that you can define (use their SIMS number?).

Once the evening is over you can find the session in the archive and record which parents you saw.

Seasons greeting

2010-12-20T12:10:00.001-08:00

Happy holidays folks!!!

Resources blog

2010-10-31T05:32:00.000-07:00

One of our users has created a rather useful blog (TechnoTeaching) containing educationally interesting online links - definitely worth a look.
He mentions some room booking system called Bob that could be worth a peep...

Adding users - Single user

2010-10-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

We've made it a bit quicker to add users one by one. The Title is a required field anymore and the username is generated as you type the first name and surname in. Are we spoiling you?

Bob is even easier to set up

2010-10-30T15:10:00.001-07:00

We've reviewed the set up process for Bob (our popular son!) and have made it simpler - much less clicks and a bit of intuition - enjoy!
http://www.onlineschooltools.co.uk/free-online-multi-week-timetable-room-booking/

Email bookings in Bob

2010-10-26T11:49:00.000-07:00

We've added the facility to email yourself your recent bookings in Bob.
Once you've made your bookings, click "Email bookings" on the left, review your bookings and press send.
Hopefully the email will make it through your school's spam filters...

Adding users - Quick add

2010-10-23T14:58:00.000-07:00

We're very proud of this one. We know the main thing holding people back from using our systems is adding users (in some cases thousands - who'd of thought schools are so big?) and for a while we've been scratching our heads trying to make it easier.
Then bingo - how about a box you can just paste users into? It's now in action - with a preview so errors shouldn't (in theory) go in...
Hopefully this should really help in setting up / managing users.

Bob - Room Booking - Customizable period / lesson names

2010-10-02T14:30:00.001-07:00

It's been a long time coming... After many requests our developer has finally changed Bob so you can change your period names. Bless him, he has been busy - it took a site wide redesign for more space and plenty of tinkering with the database.

To change period / lesson names:
-----------
Click on System Admin > Bob > Period / lesson names
Then select the number of weeks (probably only 1) and make your changes.

Oh, and he's colour coded the periods with OST rainbow colours to make it pretty / help users choose correct periods.

Bob year group / subject / topic tracking

2010-09-04T07:10:00.000-07:00

You can now add notes to Bob to store the year group, subject & topic taught in the ICT room.
This is backed up with a section on the stats page listing what has been taught to whom - great for OFSTED / department review evidence.

Summer 2010 Rollover

2010-08-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

Yes folks, we've rolled over the year groups promoting students up a year. Again, sorry to the folks in the southern hemisphere...

Ollie lives!

2010-08-19T10:17:00.000-07:00

We have now finished Ollie to a working level. We never call any system finished but we think it's ready.
Please sign up and give us some feedback. There are so many possibilities with options that we are bound to need to improve it somewhere.

http://onlineschooltools.co.uk/free-online-ks4-options/

Multiple user delete added

2010-08-18T03:24:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time coming but we have now added a multiple user delete function to the "View users" page.
This should prove useful for deleting departed students from the database. Remember the data protection act says you should only keep data as long as is necessary.
NOTE: You may not be able to delete huge numbers of users at a time as our servers may time out, you may have to try deleting 10-20 at a time.

Coming soon - Ollie the ks4 options system

2010-08-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

We are currently finishing off Ollie the options system
Having been through the options process again this year we decided to make a system to put the process on the web, above all reducing the masses of paper involved.
The system currently allows teachers to create a page of info for their subject, which can then be checked and edited by the administrator.
The system has pages so you can see a list of students that have completed their options and those who haven't.
You can also display options externally and copy the information into a word document for printing, if you so desire...
Students can then log in, see option info and apply online.
That's all so far, we might look into a bit that lets students add reasons why they chose a subject

New OCR Nationals (for 2010) ICT Level 2 coming soon!

2010-08-01T15:29:00.000-07:00

We are currently working on putting the new ICT level 2 (2010) criteria into Dave. We hope to have them finished by the end of August.

http://onlineschooltools.co.uk/free-online-ict-marking/

New weeks available in Bob

2010-06-10T07:39:00.001-07:00

We have added new weeks for Bob - up to the end of 2011 - 26/12/2011 to be exact!

http://onlineschooltools.co.uk/free-online-multi-week-timetable-room-booking/

Bob Viewer

2010-05-14T07:23:00.000-07:00

Now you can show your room bookings without requiring a login. Simply give your staff this url, where #school# is your school short name:

http://www.onlineschooltools.co.uk/bob?school=#school#

Quentin - the Q&A student selector

2010-04-09T04:52:00.000-07:00

Bring technology into the art of question & answer sessions with Quentin the random student selector.
Designed to fairly choose students during Q&A, not just the noisy ones or ones with over active arms, Quentin randomly selects students from a chosen class.
Currently attached to Dave (because classes are already set up by you in this system), Quentin will soon be added to other systems such as Andy & Steve.

500 schools joined!

2010-03-23T15:37:00.000-07:00

We have now got more than 500 schools signed up for our systems! We hope you are all enjoying / benefiting from using them.

Andy - Assessing pupil progress (APP) KS3

2010-03-21T11:51:00.000-07:00

Long under development, we have released Andy - the APP tracking system. Easy to set up, all criteria have been added for you. You can re-word the criteria into pupil speak.

http://onlineschooltools.co.uk/free-online-app-assessing-pupils-progress/

Ernie - Equipment booking

2010-03-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

With the help of a very enthusiastic school in Australia we have now developed Ernie the equipment booking system. It works similarly to Bob, same speed & simplicity.

http://onlineschooltools.co.uk/free-online-equipment-booking

View all unit marks per student

2009-10-02T14:33:00.000-07:00

Now you can search for a student, mark units and see all of the students marks accross all units on one page.

Simply search for a student by surname on the Dave home page and click on the links next to the students name.

Duplicate groups

2009-09-26T11:04:00.000-07:00

You can now duplicate groups in Dave (online ICT OCR marking) and Steve (technology health & safety skills marking). This is particularly if you want to share a class with another teacher.

Simply duplicate the class, edit it and change the teacher name.

Multiple Administrators

2009-09-25T06:34:00.000-07:00

You can now have more than one administrator.
Simply edit the user and tick the "Administrator" box. Simple.

Create Email Distribution Lists for your classes in Dave

2009-09-18T03:00:00.000-07:00

What?
We have built a page in Dave that creates a list of the students firstnames and surnames seperated by semi colons for use in Outlook.

Why?
The idea is that you can copy the list of names and paste the list into the 'Select Names' window in the 'Distribution list' funtion in MS Outlook.

To do find the list for your class:
Go to Dave, Click on 'Options' for your group, then 'Copy class names for Outlook email distribution lists'

2009/2010 Rollover

2009-09-02T08:32:00.000-07:00

We have performed the rollover for 2009/2010 today.

Year 7 becomes year 8, year 8 becomes year 9 etc.

Apologies to schools in the southern hemisphere, we are looking into ways of allowing a separate rollover for you.

Customise your login page

2009-07-30T06:16:00.000-07:00

You can customise our login page for your school so it can be used as a homepage for staff and students

Why customise?

You can customise the login page to have the following:

School name & logo - visual confirmation that staff / students are on the right website
Custom links including your school website address - easy access to your school website and other websites useful for your staff and students

How do I customise the login page?

Simply log in as an administrator, click on 'School' in the left menu. You can upload your school's logo etc. on this page, at the bottom of the page is a link to add homepage links.

Dave layout update

2009-07-30T04:20:00.000-07:00

We have added the ability to delete groups from Dave. This will delete the group and remove students from the group. It will NOT delete marks from students. Marks are deleted when the student is deleted from the OST student.

The options for each group can be found by clicking on "Options", next to the group name.
Options include group name, students, units and delete group.

We have also built a page designed with the head of department in mind, this page shows all marks / units asssigned to each group.

A list of your Dave groups has been added to your summary / home page.

Eric - Exam Timer

2009-07-24T04:37:00.001-07:00

A system developed and tested over the exam season 2009 is Eric - the Exam Timer.

Eric was developed to be a simple one page system for use in exam halls with a screen and projector.

He came into existence after a suggestion from one of our schools. The exam officer wanted something easier to see from the back of the hall than the blackboard / clock that was currently in use.

Eric is simply a page with boxes that can be typed in to show up to 4 exam start / finish dates. There are also boxes for the school centre number. The date and time are also shown, and the school logo is displayed (if you've uploaded it in the school details area).

Simple and effective - just the way we like it.

To meet Eric, log in to OST and then go to this address: http://www.onlineschooltools.co.uk/new-system/eric/

Show / hide systems

2009-07-18T05:19:00.000-07:00

We have added a page to enable administrators to show / hide systems from teachers and students.

If you wish to experiment with / set up / change a system and keep it hidden while you do so, simply click on 'System' and then 'Show / hide' in the Admin menu.

Skills tool for technology

2009-07-17T05:07:00.000-07:00

We are currently working on a 'skills handbook' for technology (current system name - Steve).

The idea behind the system is to enable teachers to quickly record students experiences in technology. The main idea (at the moment) is to record students skills with tools, be it the lathe or an electric oven. Each tool can be rated for each student, whole classes can be done in seconds.

Using this system, teachers can get a good idea of a new students abilities quickly. Student data can be easily imported and exported should the student change school or move on to college.

Sounds like something you could use? Please contact us and we'll keep you informed.

http://onlineschooltools.co.uk/free-online-tech-skills-monitoring

Prepping for the summer holiday development

2009-07-13T04:10:00.000-07:00

We are looking to roll out our free online marking system (Dave) at the beginning of the summer, in time for our users to acquaint themselves with the system over the summer and hit the ground running at the start the new school year.

Dave
Make sure you contact us to be added once the system is complete. Dave has been in use in several schools for a while now, undergoing testing - which he's passed in flying colours... We are just finishing off the OCR unit criteria at the moment. After that we'll give him a final check and then release him to the masses.

Bob
Bob our room booking system has undergone a few refinements, just simple things to make him easier and quicker to use. We have also added more weeks into the database ready for the next school year.

Arnie
We have made arnie more flexible, allowing detentions to be set at break and lunch, and allowing teachers to decide which type of detention can be set as a follow up.

Multiple administrators
You can now have multiple administrators, simply create a user account and then email the username to us.

Welcome

2009-07-13T04:07:00.000-07:00

Hi and welcome to the Online School Tools system development blog.

We will use this to keep our users informed of the goings on behind the scenes at Online School Tools.