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ACSI Tech seminar by Wes Merta
- 1. Technology Tips to Make an Administrator's Life Easier Wes Merta Assistant Principal Strathcona Christian Academy [email_address]
- 2. Online booking of Parent/Teacher Interviews
- 9. Make a parent booking Manage parents Manage Teachers Set teacher breaks Print timetables Close bookings
- 24. Online sales of tickets
Editor's Notes
- Different schools use different systems for organising parent-teacher interviews, but there are two main ways we've come across. What we call “hall herding” is the simplest to organise, but it has several drawbacks. The drawbacks mean less motivated parents won't attend – possibly the parents you most need to see.
- The “paper chase” is the most common system for organising parent-teacher interviews. It requires a lot more work from the school administration and teaching staff, and lots of paper. Parents prefer this to hall herding because there is some certainty about who they will see and when. But it reduces teaching time when students besiege their teachers at the start and end of lessons, and students can avoid teachers they don't want their parents to talk to. It's also a nightmare when anyone loses their timetable, or if a teacher falls ill the day before the interviews.
- The “paper chase” is the most common system for organising parent-teacher interviews. It requires a lot more work from the school administration and teaching staff, and lots of paper. Parents prefer this to hall herding because there is some certainty about who they will see and when. But it reduces teaching time when students besiege their teachers at the start and end of lessons, and students can avoid teachers they don't want their parents to talk to. It's also a nightmare when anyone loses their timetable, or if a teacher falls ill the day before the interviews.
- So existing systems aren't perfect – let's see how SchoolBookings can help out. First we'll look at how it works for parents. We've set up imaginary elementary and secondary schools so you can see exactly how SchoolBookings works for parents. In a browser, go to the website, and enter the appropriate school code. This will lead you through three simple steps to book interviews for as many imaginary students as you like. It's worth putting in a real email address so you can see what the emailed interview notifications look like.
- To reschedule bookings, parents simply return to the website and enter the school code. If they use the same computer, their bookings pop up immediately. Otherwise the system will recognise them when they enter their name and email address. These advantages mean you get significantly greater attendance at your interviews. You should consider extending your interview timetable to cope with this. You may find some teachers grumble about the increased interview load. But increasing parental involvement should be a goal for every school, and teachers should find the improved relationship with parents making their teaching more effective.
- So SchoolBookings is good for parents – what can it do for your school? We'll look at how you set up interviews shortly. But because SchoolBookings is provided as a service, all you need is a browser – no servers, no software to set up and manage. You can sign up to the service and be ready to open bookings in less than an hour. And because parents actually do all the work, there is very little to do until the day of the interviews. Then you simply download, print and distribute the teacher timetables. Easy! We'll get to how much the service costs soon.
- As well as using the icons on the home page, you can still access all pages using the menu. We won't go into all the functions shown above, except for one example – what happens if a teacher falls ill or is otherwise unavailable for interviews?
- When bookings are closed, the admin home page shows the tasks you need to do before opening bookings to parents. The system will show which tasks have been completed by adding checks to the checkboxes.
- The red help button explains everything in more detail.
- The red help button explains everything in more detail.
- The red help button explains everything in more detail.
- The Teacher Login Settings page explains everything in more detail.
- Once a booking has been made, timetable blocks cannot be deleted or shortened. This is because existing bookings may have been made for the times that would disappear. You can still extend blocks, by making them start earlier or end later. Likewise once bookings have been made for a teacher, you can't delete the teacher or change the name of subjects with bookings.
- Once a booking has been made, timetable blocks cannot be deleted or shortened. This is because existing bookings may have been made for the times that would disappear. You can still extend blocks, by making them start earlier or end later. Likewise once bookings have been made for a teacher, you can't delete the teacher or change the name of subjects with bookings.
- A teacher falling ill on the day before the interviews is usually a nightmare. The school either has to contact all the parents with interviews with the teacher, or endure the parents' wrath when they turn up and find the teacher isn't there.
- Inevitably some families won't have access to the internet, but you can still accommodate them. Kiosk mode can be used in two ways: schools can have a kiosk (outside the school office, or in the library perhaps) for students and parents to pop in and make bookings. a kiosk can be available on the parent-teacher evening so parents can book on the spot. Schools can handle phone bookings very easily with SchoolBookings. Office staff can access all teacher's timetables directly from their desks, so bookings only take a minute or two. And some schools take this a step further, pro-actively phoning the parents they most want to see. Because you can access SchoolBookings from any computer, staff can even do this from the comfort of their home.
- We do not use SSL to secure sessions (except for credit card processing which is done on the Paymate website). The sensitivity of the data in SchoolBookings requests is fairly low, and does not justify the heavy overhead SSL would impose on our servers.
- We hope you will be pleasantly surprised by our fees. Most schools say we provide great value, and a couple have even told us we charge too little. If you choose payment on invoice, we send your school an invoice that you can pay by direct credit or check. Unfortunately this must be drawn in US dollars so we can pay it into our US bank account. We apologise for charging in US dollars, but Canadian regulations make it impossible for a foreign entity to open a Canadian bank account.
- No matter how good something sounds, people like to try it out for themselves. When you sign up, you get full working account that expires after a week, so you can see exactly how SchoolBookings will work for your school. At the end of the week, you get the option to pay via credit card or invoice – or you can simply abandon the account. It will be deleted a month after it expires.
- So existing systems aren't perfect – let's see how SchoolBookings can help out. First we'll look at how it works for parents. We've set up imaginary elementary and secondary schools so you can see exactly how SchoolBookings works for parents. In a browser, go to the website, and enter the appropriate school code. This will lead you through three simple steps to book interviews for as many imaginary students as you like. It's worth putting in a real email address so you can see what the emailed interview notifications look like.
- Virtual Industries Group is a web services company based in New Zealand. SchoolBookings is currently (Jan 2010) used by nearly 300 schools across the globe, and is growing rapidly. For the geeks, Schoolbookings runs on multiple redundant Linux-based servers in the USA. The system is engineered to scale easily to handle growth without impacting performance.