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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    SchoolSpeak

    Score10 out of 10
    N/ASchoolSpeak offers an elementary, middle school, or preschool school management system oriented around the needs of private entities. It is a VenturEd brand.N/A

    Slate for Admissions

    Score7.6 out of 10
    N/ASlate is a platform for admissions and enrollment management, student success, and alumni/advancement, from Technolutions in New Haven. Designed and developed exclusively for higher education, Slate by Technolutions supports the student and donor lifecycle, and provides a unified interface to CRM, outreach and communications, travel management, online applications, online reading, student success and retention, and alumni and donor engagement.N/A
    Pricing
    SchoolSpeakSlate for Admissions
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    SchoolSpeakSlate for Admissions
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    SchoolSpeakSlate for Admissions
    Considered Both Products
    VenturEd Solutions
    No answer on this topic
    Technolutions
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    80%
    Implementation went as expected
    4 Answers
    User Ratings
    SchoolSpeakSlate for Admissions
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (9 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.2
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    SchoolSpeakSlate for Admissions
    Likelihood to Recommend
    VenturEd Solutions
    Specifically speaking, SchoolSpeak is best used and only really utilized in education. From K-12 it serves a great purpose in terms of parent interaction and direct communication with parents about child performance, attendance, and scores in school. At younger ages, I think it will be even more appropriate for it to be used to create strictly parent platforms for helping them enroll in things they can do at home for their kids, teach their own children, and monitor their own children—especially if they are stay-at-home parents, homeschooling, or the children are not enrolled in school yet. I think a great idea would be creating a parent portal for newborns with daily activities to do from birth through age three, when they may go to pre-school. This is the only additional option I think that SchoolSpeak could serve.
    Incentivized
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    Technolutions
    I would recommend Slate, by Technolutions for any higher education institution, big or small. Though there is a higher cost associated with Slate than most other options, it's well worth the price. The level of detail that you're able to gather, maintain, and query on within your student data is far beyond anything I've experienced with other systems. These insights help you pinpoint areas for action and improvement so that you can pivot when necessary, helping you reach your enrollment goals quicker and more efficiently.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    VenturEd Solutions
    • One thing it does well is one of the tools it incorporation, volunteer forms. These forms work for parents, teachers, and students. One of the hardest things to do is to get confirmation sign-ups and support. This streamlines the process of organizing events.
    • The gradebook interface is easy to use and understand. In order to take attendance, complete grades and give assignments, SchoolSpeak actually is an easy platform to learn and is smoothly integrated.
    • Archiving of past classes is easy to do and important because schools need to retain records for a long time after students have moved on.
    • The platform lets you organize students and find them quickly by graduation.
    Incentivized
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    Technolutions
    • Managing contacts.
    • Smart communications (drip email campaigns).
    • Real-time data management.
    • End-to-end control of product (or instance of).
    • Allows for easy to implement segmentation via smart rules and queries (data sets).
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    VenturEd Solutions
    • It can definitely have room for improvement in the design and template options. Using a more appealing layout like WIX or WEEBLY offer, but integrating the school speak platform into it would be a wonderful layout and great functionality.
    • I would love to see social media integration. For business courses and media courses, there should be the ability to have social platforms connect directly and load within ShcoolSpeak. Social Media is the newest marketing strategy and it is left out of functionality here.
    • Custom font downloads would make the design much easier and more attractive. The fonts they allow you to use are basic and overly common.
    Incentivized
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    Technolutions
    • Being able to have students register at an event without needing a wifi network
    • Easier way to update records for individuals who move to a different organization
    • Being able to start an application first without needing to immediately set up a user name and password.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    VenturEd Solutions
    No answers on this topic
    Technolutions
    It's incredibly usable and easy to figure out. It's modern and does exactly what we need for it to do
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    VenturEd Solutions
    No answers on this topic
    Technolutions
    While I do wish they had actual representatives that we able to come to you for trainings for implementation and new users, I understand that a big draw is the money that is saved by instead investing in knowledgebase, which is it's online tutorials for different functions of Slate.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    VenturEd Solutions
    Moodle Rooms is a free platform but involves the need to be computer savvy. It is easy to use as well as SchoolSpeak. However, SchoolSpeak does have a direct communication platform with parents something that Moodle does not currently offer. This itself is a huge competitive advantage. The comparison then becomes, would you like to do less work but purchase SchoolSpeak, or do more work using multiple platforms but they are free. The SchoolSpeak platform does offer much more for the investment. Longer term and with full school integration, the investment is worth it. If you were to mandate using a platform, it should be SchoolSpeak because there are fewer risks associated with having to coach and education teachers, and less risk of complaints.
    Incentivized
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    Technolutions
    We had been on Recruitment Plus- it has been sunsetted, so we were forced to move. I also looked at Fire Engine Red. Slate seemed far and away the most robust CRM/Admissions solution.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    VenturEd Solutions
    • Positively speaking, it has a positive ROI. Although expensive, the platform does solve issues that we as educators have in giving parents daily information about their child in school. It is difficult to email all parents or call all parents, but a one-click platform really saves time and is worth the investment.
    • Negatively, there is a cost associated, and therefore, sometimes teachers can be given more work instead of buying a platform like this. Using other free tools could be more time consuming but cheaper.
    • Using School Speak we have seen parent involvement increase.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Technolutions
    • We aren't really a business, per se, but a nonprofit university. However, Slate[, by Technolutions] does allow us to easily sort applications into categories for different departments to review. And it provides a clear trail of who is looking at various documents when--and how long it takes to process them.
    Read full review
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