Alaress

Alaress is the company who built our (now award winning) new public website. James Leckie is the lead developer and he has had a product called OurSchool in the marketplace for about 8 years.

James and Ellen Richards (sales newbie) visited today, however, unfortunately, I was the only one available.

Here is a link to their site with some simple information about OurSchool (the new release has had a name change, but is basically the same)

Some sample logins are on their way.

My notes from the meeting are below, as well as some ramblings on the comment page.

James Leckie(developer) Ellen Richards (Sales). ARP ran down what we are looking for, what we have seen and how we might go about implementation. James talked firstly about “Stickiness”: getting people to use everyday, and return because they have to and want to. Product in development for 7-8 years. Was OurSchool, now re-branded. James is the initial developer – it is his company. So the person you talk to is the person who does the work. There is also a full time schools liaison. 6 schools (4 Melb, 2 Syd): Working with Synergetic as preferred LMS. Looking to get a TASS school. Integration: Custom themed for each deployment. Other schools have 1 or 2 full time staff on system – eLEarning coordinator – promoting, training, liaison, bug reporting [24 hour response-5 day patch on SLA]. AD integration - so single sign-on. Admin duties: Start of year: Add users in bulk [add and remove individuals] Rollover done with James’ help at year end Calendar integration: Simplify different calendars and Alaress happy to discuss how that is managed. Who manages it? Maintain data quality – by cleaning and education of users, creating policies Three basic areas: Intranet | portal | LMs ** Intranet: ** Files, images galleries, extra cur, groups. Each area, class, group whatever, has a folder. Admin of that folder can create sub folders. Each top level folder has a “home” page associated with it. Sub folders can too. Marksheet: Submission box, set work dates, open|close|late. Highlights all variants. , News (with expiry) ** Portal **: Bring all data together in one page, timetable, classes, groups, calendar, mail? ** LMS **: Not yet SCORM compliant. Has all the elements, but not brought together in a Learning Path-style setup [marked for 2011 development]. Can create questions. Online testing with timer (or not). Assignments, etc.. assessments, add news as notice for upcoming dates. For students there is a full calendar on MyWork page which keeps students informed as to what is due when, submit things for all their activities – like a teacher driven diary – [I liked this a lot] EPortfolio: Students page to do with what they want. Customise “home page” for each user. Limited set of modules from class pages. Blog etc.. as work pieces. ePortfolio marked by various teachers.. Currently only teachers and the parent can see the student’s ePortfolio. In discussions with schools about the road-map which takes through allowing other students to view/comment, then public – a long way to go on this.