Necessity: The mother of Invention

As you've heard, we're  developing a web product from the ground up. However, so many of our MUSAC schools do so much with Classic, particularly ClassRoom Manager, that it will be many more developer days of work before you'll wish to swap out to the fully online world. Timing of the roll out of of fibre another consideration.
In response to a request by his Principal at Mt Aspiring, web interfaces were developed (by Tim Harper) to:

• Enter teacher absences online (iPad, iPhone, Android, Apple platform/Linux platform ...)
• Teacher portal for school reports (further functionality available and being considered)
• Parent portal to see whats going on
• Student portal to keep informed

These tools are currently active in half a dozen schools - primary and secondary and we've sent a survey to a few schools to gauge the level of interest in MUSAC making these more widely available and supporting them. So far - lots of strong interest!

The idea here is that some schools want the best of both worlds - flexibility and breadth and depth of Classic plus a few basic web tools. When MUSAC's full hosted SaaS web product is deeper in functionality the school can choose to migrate. Those schools who don't use the breadth and depth of Classic will be more inclined to move to the fully web hosted system sooner.

At this stage we're in limited release with the web product, moving to formal release 31 March 2012. The product will continue to evolve and develop over many years. The above portals for Classic can be used until the web hosted product is developed enough for your school.

I expect to have a decision from the MUSAC Board at our next meeting (1/12/2011). I'll keep you posted.