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Cover Image for Vacancy Search and the South Yorkshire Apprenticeship Hub

Vacancy Search and the South Yorkshire Apprenticeship Hub

Sheaf Digital has developed a version of our Sheffield Apprenticeships vacancy search site for the new South Yorkshire Apprenticeship Hub (SYAH). The SYAH vacancy site shows current live apprenticeship vacancies across South Yorkshire. The vacancy data comes from the **gov.uk** Apprenticeship Service API and is updated several times each day.
Software Development

The best learning management systems for training providers

A training provider that wants to put courses online is looking for a different kind of learning management system (LMS). Training providers have particular requirements - they want functionality that is closely aligned to the way they run their business.

What should a training provider look for in a learning management system? Here is a short list of things to think about.

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   Microsoft Power BI

Power BI in schools - a simple way to look at student attainment

This is one way of looking at student performance in Power BI. It’s a simple report built on top of single table of data about students and how they score in assessments.

Three things about the dashboard are worth noting:

  • It’s designed to answer a single question - how well are our students doing? Some thought has gone into the layout of the dashboard. The visualizations are simple and it is very easy to use.

  • The data behind it is also deceptively simple - a single Excel table of dummy data.

  • It uses some basic ‘Measures’ - custom fields in Power BI that you add to the visualizations in your report. The measures do some extra work with the data. They’re not complicated but they are an extra step that requires a bit more Power BI expertise.

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   Microsoft Power BI

Power BI in schools - prototype dashboards with MS Excel

A quick way to get started with Microsoft Power BI is to connect to data in MS Excel spreadsheets. Spreadsheet data is easy to import and it means you can focus your efforts on dashboard design - prototyping ideas before sharing them with colleagues.

Here are five things to think about when using Microsoft Power BI with data stored in MS Excel spreadsheets:

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   Microsoft Power BI

Schools, Data and Dashboards - Microsoft Power BI

Schools and academy trusts that want to use the data they collect to raise teaching quality and improve learner outcomes may face particular challenges.

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   Microsoft Power BI

Power BI in schools - how can you report on data from multiple MIS databases?

The real challenge for any school that wants to use a tool like Microsoft Power BI to analyse and report on data is how to get at data that is spread across different application databases - you want a solution that doesn’t involve lots of copy and pasting between different spreadsheets.

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   Software Development

Bespoke software development vs. off-the-shelf software

Why pay a software company to develop a bespoke application when there are so many subscription based online services?

Bespoke or custom software can sometimes be a better choice, but the decision is not always easy. This may help you decide:

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   Software Development

Working with a custom software development company - things to know

Here are some things we think it helps to know if you are about to start your first project with a software development company.

  • Ask questions about the technology stack. It’s doesn’t matter if you don’t know anything about software development languages or web technologies, you can still ask about the supplier’s preferred technology choice. Why PHP and not .NET? Why SQL Server instead of PostgreSQL for the database? Are there any licensing implications? How future proofed is the technology? Get answers in plain English.
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   Software Development

5 reasons why a bespoke CRM solution is the best solution for a small business

A customer relationship management (CRM) is then next step on from using MS Excel to keep track of customer interactions. You keep data your in one place - often a database in the cloud - instead of storing it in multiple Excel spreadsheets. Reporting on data then becomes easier and your data quality is better - data validation in web forms means you’ve got more control over what people type in.

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   Microsoft Power BI

A first look at the UK HE longitudinal education outcomes dataset with Microsoft Power BI

How easy it to compare the earnings of graduates from different universities? Does a computer science graduate from Durham University make more money than one from the the University of Sheffield?

The Department for Education’s longitudinal education outcomes dataset is a good place to start. It’s a quick job to convert the data into an Excel table, fix the formatting on some of the columns (whole numbers rather than text) and then import it into Microsoft Power BI Desktop.

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   eLearning Consultancy

Learning Japanese with Duolingo

I am a student of basic Japanese. I’ve done a year of evening classes here in Sheffield and I can just about remember all the Hiragana and Katakana, build some basic sentences and recognise the occasional word (one or two an episode!) when I’m watching Terrace House on Netflix.

From the start it was obvious that remembering things - and I mean even remembering what I’d done in class the night before - was the challenge. In fact, there were times when I got home and my dear wife (who speaks decent Japanese) asked what I done in the lesson and I’d already forgotten. Short term memory wiped by a 15 minute car journey.

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