Due to the current circumstances, we are aware that lots of you are carrying out your daily jobs from home. Whether your school wants to deliver live lessons, share work, hold a staff meeting, meet with parents or external agencies or just check in on your pupils, we are currently offering free training and support to help schools get off the ground and start using these technologies. Please see the following articles in the newsletter for ideas of potential tools/software to help your school get the most out of online learning.

We have already worked with a number of schools across the county to help to set these sites up and are more than happy to support all Shropshire schools in moving forward with these technologies.

If you are interested in discussing these platforms with us further, would like us to send you copies of the training documents or would like to join a virtual training session please contact our Schools Business Partner: Claire.Morgan@shropshire.gov.uk . 

Alternatively  please feel free to contact us at ICT.support@shropshire.gov.uk if you wish to talk to us about this or alternative platforms that you can use for free.

Although Seesaw is not part of the Microsoft platform, it has been present in education settings for years and is one of the apps that Apple for education promote. Seesaw has a free set-up and a paid for set-up. Most schools are able to use the free set-up and have been able to do everything that they have wanted to do with it. But some schools really like some of the premium features and decide to upgrade to this: https://help.seesaw.me/hc/en-us/articles/211211043-What-is-Seesaw-Plus- Seesaw allows pupils to login via a QR code instead of an email which proves really popular with teachers of younger classes.

You are able to upload documents, photos and videos while also being able to set activities for your pupils to complete. With Seesaw, it is always worth while keeping an eye on their Facebook page as they often advertise some fantastic freebies on there. At the moment, they are offering an extra month on the premium subscription for free so for schools, who are using this feature, it is worth keeping an eye on their page.ck to edit this placeholder text.

As you are no doubt aware due to the ongoing Covid19 pandemic it has been anything but business as usual for schools.

With all this going on we would like to take the opportunity to remind those schools with SIMS Support from Shropshire ICT that we continue to be there to support them with SIMS and our helpdesk remains open as usual with staff currently working from home.
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What’s new in the Spring 2020 Release of SIMS version 7.192?

Registration Certificate - Personal Details
Reports | Attendance | Individual Pupil Reports | Registration Certificate Report

To help avoid accidentally sending personal details where it is not intended, the option for the inclusion of the Personal Details section of the report is now more prominent and the default is set to No.
When the print option is selected, a popup enables the choice of including or excluding the Personal Details section.

The check box previously used for this purpose has been removed from the Registration Certificate Report browser.

Importing Pupil/Student Email Addresses and Telephone Numbers

Routines | Data In | Pupil Data | Import From Spreadsheet

School Administrators can now import pupil/student personal email addresses and telephone numbers from a spreadsheet.
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SIMS End of year procedures and visits

It’s getting to that the time of year when schools usually start contacting us to book an on site visit with a member of the SIMS Team to help with carrying out end of year procedures.

We would just like to take this opportunity to advise customers we are able to offer bookable sessions with members of the team to support you with carrying out end of year procedures remotely if we are unable to visit the school in person.

We will review the situation on an ongoing basis inline with government advice. We highly recommend giving us as much notice as possible if you would like to book in a session for support with EOY so we can best meet your requirements.

The end of year procedures will also be available on the SLG nearer the time at http://shropshirelg.net/services/shropshire-ict/sims/end-of-year/
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Reminder

All schools subscribing to SIMS support with Shropshire ICT have 3 hours a term they can use for SIMS training or Support training or support as required in addition to the usual helpdesk support.

Please contact the SIMS Helpdesk for more information (contact details can be found at the end of this newsletter).

Due the current situation, the roll-out of the WAN has had to be put on hold temporarily. However, this will not affect you or the service that you are currently paying for. While we await the current restrictions to be lifted or lessened, you will continue with your contract as it currently stands and we will notify you as soon as we are able to restart the implementation of the new connections.

If you have any questions about this, please email us at ict.support@shropshire.gov.uk.

Did you know SIMS has its own internal messaging facility as standard?

If you need to send a quick message to a teacher from the office or vice versa then go to Focus| Alerts| General Messages and choose a recipient to send a message to. You can also use it to send an emergency alert and some other functions such as setting reminders.

You can also setup your Homepage to view your SIMS messages Inbox. 

Please contact the SIMS team for more information on using these features.