implemented WH. I think fresh eyes on the system was useful in redesigning
how the data was played through the system to make it more meaningful for
the faculty, students, parents and alumni.
There are limitations to all systems and I was not part of the selection
process since it was before my time, but I think we are getting good value
for what we have with WH. On just about every occasion, we have not had
situations where the system does not give us what we want or provide a
workaround. By far the biggest issue is really working with users to get
needs requirements and understanding what we want it to. This discovery
leads to untangling past practices and questionable assumptions that really
have nothing to do with the software (typically).
I have not played with Finalsite, but it seems to me at a quick glance to be
far more of a development environment that can be molded with professional
labor or in-house talent to adapt to what the school wants. In following the
thread on ISEL, it seems that is a strong selling point for the product for
those that have bought the environment. I totally understand that value
proposition. The only issue I have with that is that typically these sorts
of systems can become so catered and tweaked that they cease to be the
standard development environment and start to really become custom
solutions.
Again, my experience is NOT in schools and I have seen scenarios play out
for others like this in corporate environments where software systems can be
customized so much, they cease to have the value of upgradability of the
standard core toolsets and layers of the base product. It is all done with
the best intentions and driven by the desire to hit the nail on the head for
temporal customer requirements, but long term it can be detrimental for the
customer to give them everything they want and cross the line from what I
would call 'personalization' of the software environment for the site to
full-blown 'customization' of the software to generate a site 'version' for
the customer which can eventually make you in the business of software
developers for your custom site.
Probably have gone on too long here, but at least in working with WH, there
is a definite structure that is underlying all the WH installations that
takes into account the upgrade and feature set improvements because there
are certain areas that just cannot be messed with or should not be messed
with to maintain common architecture across the customer-base.
Jonathan
................................
Jonathan Mergy (jmergy@lwhs.org)
Director Of Technology
Lick-Wilmerding High School
755 Ocean Ave, SF CA 94112
P:415.333.4021 x365
http://www.lwhs.org
> From: Ann Hamel <ahamel@fvs.edu>
> Reply-To: ISED-L <ISED-L@listserv.syr.edu>
> Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 08:45:23 -0700
> To: ISED-L <ISED-L@listserv.syr.edu>
> Subject: Re: Whipple Hill vs FinalSite
>
> I would have to concur with Elizabeth. The decision to go with
> WhippleHill was made before I came this school, but I have been so
> impressed by WhippleHill's commitment to the future and their vision.
> They are constantly improving and maturing their product in a way that
> makes it more customizable for the user and so even though we all start
> with a similar playing field, ours can look very different from yours if
> we choose it. I can speak to you more off list if you like.
> Ann
>
>
> Ann Hamel
> Director of Technology
> Yearbook Instructor
> Community Service Coordinator
> Fountain Valley School of Colorado
> 6155 Fountain Valley School Road
> Colorado Springs, CO 80911-2299
> ahamel@fvs.edu
> 719.391.5330
>
> Approx. 324 L. of water is used to produce 1 KG of paper.
> Please consider the environment before printing this email.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: A forum for independent school educators
> [mailto:ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Elizabeth Preston
> Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 6:26 PM
> To: ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
> Subject: Re: Whipple Hill vs FinalSite
>
> We went with WhippleHill 5 years ago for a number of reasons. We needed
> a
> good website that was more interactive and easy to update with content
> management system. But our decision went further as we needed much more
> that Finalsite was unable to offer. Beyond communicating the mission
> and
> goals of the schools to prospective families and the community, we
> needed
> tools to communicate better with our current constituents. We were also
> lacking with good database to handle admissions, student information
> system,
> etc. As technology has changed and communicating in a browser-based
> environment has become the expectation, we needed that integration.
> FinalSite at the time did not have a robust system to communicate other
> than
> building pages. Over the years, WH has been constantly developing
> tools to
> stay current with current trends and technologies. The recent ecosystem
> integration with various application like AlertNow, Naviance, upcoming
> Moodle etc. makes it a choice with so much growth. I honestly see no
> comparison. However, as you decide between vendors, I would seriously
> consider where you want to go long term. Long term I think you find
> yourself disappointed as their technologies are not growing with market
> expectations. Taking on a tool to communicate more effectively takes
> time
> and human resources, vendor aside. The time and effort is worth it. At
> the
> beginning of the school, not a year has gone by where new families
> comment
> that they are blown away by the amount of content we provide and
> communicate. All that could not been done as easily without the tools
> we
> have put in place by using WhippleHill.
>
> Feel free to contact me if you would like more information.
>
> Elizabeth Preston
> Director of Technology
> St. Luke's School
> 203.801-4836
> http://www.stlukesct.org/Default.asp?bhcp=1
> https://www.stlukesct.org/podium/default.aspx?t=103916
>
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