Schola Europaea European School Brussels II

Amidst all this overwhelming noise, organisational communication is often perceived
as interruptive, instead of being appreciated. Every educational counsellor or
director can tell you tales of how hard it is to reach teachers and students. Every
teacher knows how much effort it takes to find and talk to colleagues or parents.
Would it be possible to make this communication easier, more effective and more
accurate? And if so, how?
Our answer to the first question is definitely: “Yes, it is possible”.
In our contributions we share our solutions and plans to improve our organisational
communication within the school. The first will be about the absence registration and
the second contribution will deal with organisational communication in general. Our
idea is to work from top to bottom at the moment. We will start some projects in the
secondary school and will integrate this, if successful, into the primary school as well.
EASY COMMUNICATION IN THE CLOUDS (1)
WebUntis
A normal hectic school day in September.
The phone rings (again) in my timetabler
room. It is the deputy head: “Francois,
I need all the absences of this student
during the last school year” and he names
the student. “And I need it now”, he adds.
I open my browser, log in into WebUntis
and I select to a date some where in the
last school year. Clicking on the button
“Absences” the screen fills itself with
a lot of names. I search for the name of the
student and click on the button “Report”.
In a new window a PDF opens with all
absences of this student with dates and
information about excuses (or rather the
lack of excuses). I don’t go to the deputy’s
office, but simply select his printer and
push the button. Done.
That is what WebUntis is all about: simple,
available, in the cloud, in your own
language.
Where does this name WebUntis came
from in the first place?
WebUntis is the internet version of
a program called Untis. Every timetabler will
know the name Untis, because it is one of
the most common programs, used to create
timetables. And therefore all information
of which particular student should be in
what class at a certain moment in time is
stored in Untis. By moving it to the internet,
this information is made accessible to
staff. Teachers can check if this particular
student is then actually present. So there
you have it: an online absence registration
system. But how does it work?
Administration
Web
Units
Figure 1 Basic info exchange
Teachers
Erziehungsberater
Early in the morning parents start to call
school to say their child is ill. The staff
member in charge picks up the phone and
enters this information into WebUntis. So
by the time teachers go to their classes and
login to their computer, these absences are
already available.
PANORAMA 133