Monday 26 March 2018

Easter is looming

Easter
The end of term 1 is nigh, but we all get a little practise break with the Easter holiday in a few days. Just enough time off for students to wind down .. then not quite wind up again for the week and a half before the April holidays .. and just in case you didn't know .. The date of Easter Sunday is usually the first Sunday after the first Full Moon occurring on or after the March equinox .. glad we cleared that up.

SPANZ & Edge Conferences
Our time at the SPANZ conference was very well spent with a lot of new connections made as well as catching up with acquaintances, both principals and sponsors. Many ideas and thoughts were shared especially around the likely changes Labour is indicating, although the detail is still up for debate. There is likely to be more clarity by the time our Edge conferences roll around in June. Please click here for more details on these as we are holding three conferences; Palmerston North, Auckland and Dunedin, and the programme has something for everyone.

NCEA Submission
For schools with NCEA students the first NCEA submission time is not too far away. This page in our Answers knowledge Base overviews the whole NCEA process in Edge, but the key points are:
  • Check the standards attached to each course .. including the version of the standard
    • Timetable>Information>Courses Lists .. Course Summary
  • Use the Edit Course Standards page to edit the standards attached to each student, NB. prior to the first submission un-ticking means 'unattached'. Once a standard has been submitted, un-ticking means withdrawn.
  • The standards attached to an individual student can be viewed en masse' on the Student Summary page, or the Assign Standards page. This can be bulk printed on the Achievement>View Results page. They can also be viewed in the portals and on the mobile app.
  • The submission file is created on the Admin>Import/Export>NZQA Import/Export page. For most of the year we recommend you tick, 'Only internal standards with results are submitted to NZQA'. NB. Attached external standards are always submitted so you may choose not to attach them until later in the year.
Training in the South Island
As indicated earlier in the year our South Island partner, Solutions and Services will be solely focusing on the financial work from the start of term 2, with MUSAC taking over the SMS and Library training from that point. We would again like to thank Solutions and Services for all their dedicated work and kilometers traveled over many years in supporting our software throughout the South Island. Feedback from schools over this time has been full of praise and we will look to carry on this excellent service from the start of next term.

For all schools, if you need training please email services@musac.io

Assay Analysis
An optional data analysis tool that takes your NCEA, PAT and OTJ data stored in Edge and presents it using an extensive range of filters in a colourful and graphical format. The data can be displayed in Teacher, HoD or School Leader centric views.


For example; Assay can show you how each of your students is going compared to their other classes, previous years’ results and their data such as PATs..... Assay can also give you your current classes by student in a form which gives an instant picture for each individual.


Assay is a separate 3rd party product that MUSAC has partnered with then embedded into Edge. For those schools wishing to enable this functionality please contact sales@musac.io


For more information, visit the Assay website.


For an interactive demo, click here and login with Username: demo and Password: demo.

National Standards Reporting
We have noted that a number of schools are still using the template report “Detailed Key Competencies and Flexible Comments” but are no longer reporting on National Standards. We are therefore changing the heading within this report from “National Standards” to “Curriculum Achievement”.

If you still would like the original heading then you can tick “National Standards” in the design area.

No other template reports have this heading to be changed. If you are using custom reports and would like changes made to them please contact services@musac.io

This change will be available after the next release which is scheduled for later this week.



Tuesday 13 March 2018

Conference Season

The year keeps marching on ... March Returns are now behind us and SPANZ, the first major conference MUSAC is attending, is just over a week away.

This year SPANZ is being held in picturesque Queenstown and after a couple of years away MUSAC is pleased to be back as a Silver Sponsor. With the Labour Government indicating that major changes to the educational system are in the wind it's also very timely as the  conference will be the ideal forum for discussing where things might be heading.

One area that Labour has been mentioned already is closer engagement between home and school, which segues nicely into a reminder about the Edge mobile app. The Edge app is already being used on a daily basis by thousands of staff, caregivers and students. Staff are entering attendance and looking up student details, senior students are keeping tracking of their NCEA results and caregivers can read the school announcements. The Edge app is free and can be downloaded from either App Store (Apple) or Play Store (Android). Once installed make up a pin number, enter your Edge login details and start using the app. No extra permissions are needed for staff, but for caregivers and students the Portal access settings need to be enabled



Monday 5 March 2018

Edge 5th March Technical Issue Update


Edge 5th March Technical Issue Update

Thank you very much for your patience during yesterday’s issues. We appreciate your support and understanding.

The issue has been resolved and it was identified to be related to server swap. The impact was reduced due of the extensive backup routine we have in place and we were able to restore the data.

Thank you once again for your patience.

Sunday 4 March 2018

URGENT Edge Technical Issues

IMPORTANT MESSAGE

Our server partners are experiencing significant technical issues due to an upgrade that was carried out over the weekend.
They along with our help are working to have this resolved as soon as possible however they do expect this will take until mid afternoon today.

This issue is affecting only certain parts of Edge ie: Edit Student, Printing of receipts, batch reports and some other queued print jobs including MoE Returns.

Attendance has not been affected so rolls can still be marked.

An update will be sent out a soon as we know anything more.

Thank you for your patience.


Update - 3.40pm:   There is still some testing needed over the next few hours however all going well this issue should be resolved by tomorrow morning.


Update - 1.45pm:   The team having been working very hard to stabalise the servers and at this point things are back up and running, however we do ask that users refrain from doing any large data changes or printing until tomorrow where possible.  There is still more remedial work to be done this afternoon so there may be more interruptions from 3.30pm.


Update - 11.25am:  We have had a meeting with our partners and they are in the process or restoring a backup which is likely to take 5hrs.  This time frame will be updated at 1pm today but at this stage we are looking at 3.30pm.