During the registration process the exam registrations, prior learning assessment courses, estimated graduation dates, special notes about the student, report card dates and programs are all recorded giving administration, teachers and clerical staff easy access to information regarding the student. All of these things save everyone time and give them valuable insight into each student.
The reports in Mentor are very well laid out, quick and easy to access. Having access to these reports has saved the Administrative Assistant a great deal of time not having to collect the data manually when a request is made.
Mentor Manager is truly a "Student Management System" and all staff must view it this way and use it to the maximum.
Sincerely,
Donna Miller, Principal
I have been a school principal for seventeen years. I have worked in Junior Secondaries, a Senior Secondary and for the past seven years as Principal of Alternate and Adult Programs in School District #70 (Alberni). I have used many different administrative software systems including Turbo, Columbia and Trevlac. Several years ago I began searching for a system that would meet the unique needs of our alternate programs and that would be flexible in meeting changing demands.
In the spring of 2002 we purchased Mentor Manager for our school. I can honestly say that this has been one of the best decisions we could have made. The developers of Mentor Manager, Grant Sutherland and John Duncan of Valhalla Solutions, have been fantastic to work with and the product continues to meet and exceed our expectations. We have had phenomenal support and training from Grant and John and their staff. The Student Information component of Mentor Manager is well built and is evolving to meet changing needs. The staff of Mentor Manager Systems is working on some cutting edge technology that is really enhancing their Mentor system.
One of the projects we have been partnered with Valhalla on has been a Course Developer component leading to a Course Management component with web delivery capabilities. This project has gone very well so far and has positioned us to take advantage of emerging educational needs and opportunities. We are now in the process of installing a SQL Server that will launch this new resource. It is our intent to use this new capability to service the growing number of adult students we have in remote sites and to use it to address the needs of home schoolers in our District. We are also considering its application in our International student program. The Course Management component of Mentor has positioned Mentor to be at the leading edge of meeting the growing demand for this type of software around B.C.
They are strong players in this field, with a proven product and innovative potential. They would be a great partner to the successful vendor and have already established a niche in this part of the market.
If I can be of further assistance please do not hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,
Tom McEvay
Principal
Phone 250-723-3744
e-mail: tmcevay@sd70.bc.ca
For years we have had a number of student databases to help track our students; ministry reporting database software, attendance database software, detailed demographics database, marks and progress database, computer managed courses database, as well as various paper files. After years of unsuccessfully trying to synchronize these various databases, we started using Mentor Manager. This program has not only allowed us to track all of this data in one place, but to do so with remarkable ease.
We are now able to easily produce reports for the Ministry, District, parents, student or group of students within seconds. Because teachers have access to all of this data, they find it much easier to track and report on their self-paced students, resulting in better completion rates.
The product support has been outstanding. Support staff has been available with solutions 7 days a week and seemingly at any hour. Because we are not a traditional school and operate on weekends and evenings, this flexible support has been very important to us. We have requested a number of additional features, and every one has been added, some within hours. Likewise when requesting custom reports, these have been produced long before any deadline we may have had.
With three campuses, self-paced computer managed courses, traditional courses, apprenticeship programs, etc., Mentor Manager has finally enabled us to have control over our entire student. More importantly, it has enabled our staff to easily use this data. I highly recommend this software.
Sincerely,
Ken McLeod
Head Teacher
I wanted to take this time to send you this note of support. We have been using mentor Manager for several years and we find it the ideal tool to manage students, teachers, and government agencies.
In the student files we can add data that supports us as we do such tasks as: recording marks, meetings, messages, attendance and comments for anecdotal reporting. The personal data is completed and very well presented.
Teachers find this management tool easy to use and navigate. This is not an easy task on most of the hardware presently on the market. Marks are interoperable between platforms and the student comments section is ongoing and can be interactive in nature.
The sharing of data between government agencies is smooth and accurate with no need to reproduce added forms and labor.
Overall, Grant, this is a friendly and highly affective computer system that most schools should consider when looking for a management tool.
Good luck to you Grant. You and John have done a great job!
Ray Furlotte
Head Teacher
Cooperative Education Centre
1301 Bay Avenue
Trail, BC, V1R 4A6
250-368-8280
We have been using Mentor Manager for two years now and have found it an invaluable tool in keeping track of our student records. Given the complexity of managing a school environment that utilises both structured classes and self-paced curriculum, Mentor Manager is the management tool that meets our needs. Service has been excellent and we look forward continuing use of this product and are presently looking forward implementing terminal server technology to link up our remote sites.
Kootenay Lake Learning Center is located in Nelson, B.C. It is a Continuing Education school, as well as a school providing regular high school curriculum to students from the local high school. I am pleased to act as a reference for the Mentor Manager software system. We had the latest version installed last fall, and the program has met our needs in a more than satisfactory way.
The program provides smooth, user friendly manipulation. All staff are able to utilize the program in terms of registering students, reporting on student progress, programming students, and reporting data for Ministry requirements.
I have received more than adequate support from the program vendor, and the service has been prompt.
Certainly, in our particular application, the Mentor Manager System provides all that we require from an administration program.
Yours truly,
E. Moisey
Vice-Principal
I have been using Mentor Manager since its inception and have witnessed first hand the pro-active approach to improve and expand the software. In our constantly changing environment it is important to make changes and additions quickly and smoothly. Grant and John have lived up to this demand.
The best feature about Mentor Manager is the ease with which staff can access and input information. The interactive nature of the software allows us to view all comments and changes instantly. We can easily retrieve comments, demographics, course information, attendance, Ministry information and much more for active students as well as withdrawn students.
A perfect example of the ease of accessibility of information occurred just the other day when a teacher from another school phoned and asked for course information on a shared student because WinSchool, the system in her school, was too cumbersome and she knew I could access the information instantly. What better compliment than one from a non-user!!
Looking forward to bigger and better things,
Barb Kinakin
Senior Alternate Program Assistant
This letter is in response to the proposal that all BC schools use only one management system. I am the head teacher of a small (75 students) alternate secondary school in Powell River. We use the Mentor Manager management program at our school. It does some things that no other program does or can do. It would be a tremendous increase in our work load to have to use something like WinSchool which would be more cumbersome while not doing the job that we need done. We deliver our curriculum principally via a program called Nautikos from the Odyssey Learning Corporation as do numerous other small schools in BC and throughout the world. Because it contains all of our curriculum needs from Grade 7 to graduation within the BC system, it is ideal for small self-paced alternate schools. Mentor Manager while doing all that programs like WinSchool do, also integrates with Nautikos to automatically extract data to be able to monitor student progress and report to parents. This ability allows small schools to operate without expensive support staff and to more efficiently utilize any existing teaching staff who are freed from record keeping duties to be able to teach.
The advantages of Mentor Manager as we see them are:
1. It automatically integrates with Nautikos to manage data for tracking and reporting.
2. In addition, it is able to handle data from any other program that the school may be using, even teacher derived data.
3. It is shared over the LAN and all of the teachers share the one database which becomes the hub for all that we do with instant access to the latest information about this student.
4. Reporting to a parent about the attendance or progress of their child is almost instant.
5. The data is managed at the source by the teachers. It doesn't require clerical staff to make entries. We don't have a secretary.
6. Individual report cards can be printed in a few seconds.
7. All of the Ministry reporting, such as 1701s, is automatic and perfectly integrates into the District data.
8. This program was designed for exactly this purpose and does it very well.
9. It is very easy to use.
We couldn't operate our school without Mentor Manager. Without Mentor Manager we would have to have less students or more support staff. Our ability to have accurate, up-to-date information immediately available to teachers, parents and students is invaluable.
Yours truly,
Ken Shannon, Head teacher
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