The second June seminar held by Double First had a full house attendance.

Jeff Elliott, MD, explained the day’s packed agenda and stated he would be keeping a watchful eye that timings went to plan!

The day began with five workshops from which delegates could choose to attend three. All were ‘sold out’ to capacity.

  • Engage – Timetable
  • Engage – Assessments
  • Engage- Fees
  • Engage – Core
  • Double First Accounts, Administrator, and Payroll – The latest developments

Voicemail Hacking

In the half hour before lunch, Piers du Pré. Chairman, briefed on the ever increasing problem of voicemail hacking and how it applied to Schools.

‘My other company, du Pré, is a business infrastructure company, providing telephone systems, IT networks, and Calls and Lines, with a dedicated Education Division serving Schools,’ Piers explained.

Continuing, Piers added, ‘More and more, we are seeing organisations suffer from a new hacking craze called Voicemail Hacking, which is costing them many thousands of pounds before they realises it is happening.’

As an example, the words voicemail hacking were entered into Google which displayed many sites where specific information on hacking specific telephone systems were listed.

Fraud Alert

To combat this problem, Piers concluded by showing how the effects could be minimised. ‘du Pré can carry out a Security Validation Check on your telephone system, and offer their facility of Fraud Alert to minimise intrusion and cost.’

Our World on Double First’s Web-site

A tour of the password protected Our World area of Double First’s website, demonstrated the facilities available to all Users, and concluded Piers’ brief.

E-Learning

After lunch, Jeff Elliott, MD, brought an overview of the position of VLEs and e-learning in schools today, and covered the hot topics of,
what is a VLE and what is e-learning?
where is the pressure coming from to install a VLE?
what are the tangible benefits that a VLE and e-learning can bring?

Engage Portal – the new web-based Portal and VLE module

A demonstration of the Engage Portal followed, showing the fun a pupil can have with their ‘own space’ as well as how easy it was to communicate between pupils, teachers and parents.

The true power of the Portal became apparent when its integration with Engage was demonstrated.

Delegates were impressed by the seamless link to the administration and assessment modules of Engage and the obvious advantages that a single point of entry with a single database brought.

Comments

Over tea and coffee before departure, delegates said,

‘Timetable does exactly what we need. We’ve seen the others, but Engage sees them all off!’

‘My eyes have been opened. We use a competitor’s MIS but had no idea how powerful the Engage software is. We need to change….’

‘Fees is so easy to use. The extra functionality so time saving.’

‘I had no idea how powerful Double First had become and what it can do.’

‘I’ve been using Double First for years, and I’m still amazed how much more there is to learn about it.’

‘The way Engage links to Accounts is like magic.’

‘A really, really interesting seminar.’

‘The workshops were so helpful.’

‘Can’t wait to change our software to Engage!’

‘A very valuable day – well worth attending.’