How is it working in your school?

General
1

We are planning to use Gibbon at our schools and want to now know the following

  1. How was the students uptake and what did you do to assist them if any?
  2. Would love to connect with a school and have a meeting to get more feedback or your experience
2

Hi Wikus,

My school is just finishing its fourth year using Gibbon, and in that time we’ve also helped two of our sister-schools to start using Gibbon too. We went from just starting using the system to it now being an integral part of our day-to-day school operations.

To begin with, we setup the system for teachers and administrators first. This involved setting up timetables, classes, roll groups, etc. to get the structure of the school setup. Much of this happened before the beginning of the first school year using Gibbon. Once the school year started, we gave a bit of time in the beginning for teachers to get familiar with the system before opening it up to students.

From there, students were given access to login. We use the Sign-in with Google integration, which greatly simplifies the login process for staff and students. We didn’t find that they needed much assistance to use the system, however we only provide access to students in grades 7-12, so they have a fair amount of tech savvy by then.

Later in the first year, once everything was running smoothly, we started working in access for parents. This can prove to be harder, as you need to track down valid emails for each parent, and then work out a way to inform them of their login details, or at least direct them to the Forgot Password function. The uptake was a bit slower for parents and they needed more support, in the form of PDFs and email support. We did find that once we started using modules like Activities and Reports, parents had a lot of incentive to learn how to login and register their students activities or look at their report cards.

Hope this helps answer some of your initial questions! Overall, our staff really enjoy using Gibbon, and it has become an important part of our school’s information platforms : )