QuickSchools Reporting
All the data that you key into your QuickSchools account can be viewed via our QuickSchools reports. Here are some important characteristic of our reports:
- Reports are in HTML format, which can easily be printed.
- Data is displayed in tabular format like Excel, making it easy to understand.
- Reports can be easily copied and pasted into Excel, and stored on your local PC.
Please note that these reports are different from report cards. Report cards specifically display student grades/evaluations only and are in PDF format.
Here are some other things you should know about the QuickSchools Reporting:
Enabling Reports for Modules and Users
First of all, we have reports for all our modules, from admissions and attendance to report cards and gradebook. If a module is not enabled, the related reports are not enabled, and this helps reduce clutter. You’ll have to turn on and use the module before you can see the reports.
Secondly, only the School Administrator has automatic access to all reports. For everybody else, access to reports needs to be assigned via the Features page. Just click on “Features” on the top right, click on “Configure” next to the module’s name, and add the appropriate users to the section that relates to report access for that module. Only the school administrator can assign access to users.
You can enable access to reports for specific users
Running the Reports
If you have access to reports, the “Reports” menu will appear across the top navigation bar. Clicking on it will bring up the list of reports that you have access to. The reports are organized alphabetically by module. And for each module, there may be several reports, as well as several variations (or formats) for each report. Here’s a sample of what your report listing might look like: Read more…
Gearing up for the New School Year
It’s August, and many schools are getting ready for the new school year. If you were using QuickSchools last year, you’ll want to know how to transfer your data over, so that you can make changes to the new academic year without affecting data from the previous academic year. And that’s very easy to do. Read more…
New Student Portal Released
For those of you who asked us for a Student Portal (usually, in place of a Parent Portal), wait no more. QuickSchools has just released a first version of the Student Portal module.
As with the Parent Portal, the Student Portal is only available on the Apollo Plan and above. To activate it, as the School Administrator, go to the “Features” page, and click on the check box next to “Student Portal”. You can assign additional users the ability to invite students by configuring the module, as you would with the other modules. Once the feature is configured, privileged users will see a new menu called “Student Portal”.
When you click on the “Student Portal” menu, the top section of the screen will show the email invitation you can send to your students. The bottom section shows a list of students. Just add email addresses as necessary, and invite away. The system will email the students a username and password, which they can then use to view their records and grades. Unlike the Parent Portal, students can only see their own records (parents can see records for all their children).
If you need help, come chat with our one of our live chat agents. Don’t have an account with us? Sign-up for your free 30-day trial now.
Last year, QuickSchools signed up the Cornerstone Christian Academy in Brockport NY, during the 2009 CCEA East Coast Conference that was organized not too far away. Now fast forward 1 year later, we thought we’d visit the school again and get some feedback on how things have come along. We spent an awkward 15 minutes taking some video testimonials from Chris and Joan Johnson, the founders of the school (we discussed other things as well, of course). And after we left, Chris and Joan put together a written testimonial of how they really felt about QuickSchools (which apparently they felt wasn’t really convey in its entirety in the 15 minutes we spent taking video testimonials). And so here it is, unedited and uncensored, a written testimonial from Chris and Joan Johnson from Cornerstone Christian Academy, Brockport NY:
Quickschools.com Remarks, After One Year of Use
We are Chris Johnson, Principal and Joan Johnson, Office Manager, of Cornerstone Christian Academy. We have been using the online, Quickschool System for nearly one year and would like to recommend it to you as well.
We are a small, private school with an enrollment of approximately 55 students. We chose to give Quickschools a try last June, when we were looking for an easier, more user – friendly way to keep our daily attendance records. We needed a method that was affordable, easy to use, reliable and efficient. Over the years, after doing much of our record – keeping in a manually, cumbersome way, we have found Quickschools to be an answer to our search and so much more!
We have found the Quickschools system, in one year’s time, aids us in all aspects of keeping records for our students. There are features to record and view basic family database of enrollment. Teachers can daily take attendance from their classroom. We submit store and view progress reports and report cards throughout the year. Parents are able to view teacher – posted daily homework assignments and access their own child’s records in the teacher grade book, quarterly report cards, and daily attendance. These features and more have all become available to us using the one Quickschools system, for an affordable per pupil rate. We are able to send mass contacts using family email addresses and have a real time event calendar available to any family with an email address as well, keeping everyone aware of the upcoming important dates. If families have an email address they may receive their own password and access to view and print everything that applies to their child. An additional plus to the online system is that any staff member or parent may access their own information securely from any computer. This gives everyone much more flexibility.
We have found that after one year of working with the staff at Quickschools, we have a better alternative to our old established ways, that yes, took some time to learn and get used to, but now has become almost second nature. This was a commitment from the Quickschools staff to us back in September. They promised they would work with us to get us there and they have fulfilled that commitment!
We have had outstanding service from all members of the Quickschool family. From the daily representatives, to the engineers, and the founders themselves, we have been given help around-the-clock during this year. If there was a problem and we needed an answer, if one person didn’t have and answer they would find an answer from another. If no direct answer was available, they would show us alternative ways to meet our goals or accomplish our task at hand.
Even from the very beginning stages they showed a willingness to help us succeed through the entire process of the software learning curve. For both those who had no computer experience and those who were more advanced, the representatives showed friendliness, patience, kindness, and helpfulness that never made anyone feel as if their question was unimportant, even during their own busy schedules. Parents and staff a like, have felt comfortable contacting them via the live chat, with any question and receive immediate service. We personally could not have learned the system as quickly as we did without this feature.
Quickschools is so adaptable to the individual school. We have many unique situations within our enrollment that require unique record – keeping, that other schools might not face. The staff at Quickschools made ways possible for us … not in a haphazard way, but by clear forethought as to how it would work the best for us. If some part of the system would not work for us they were very accommodating and would come up with an alternative that would fit us, or after working with a feature for example our report card template if it needed subtle changes, changes would be made.
An example of this is that in our small school with few staff members who do many jobs, they made a way for one person to do the work of many in the system, saving countless hours of office work. In addition, we have additional progress reports throughout the year that needed to have a different look. This was accommodated as well.
Finally, we appreciate the commitment from Quickbooks to make positive upgrades and launches based on the needs and desires of the schools that they serve. We have seen much evidence of this already in this past year, and look forward to more in the future.
Sincerely,
Chris and Joan Johnson
If you’re curious to see how the video testimonial turned out (which I think was pretty good), you can see it on Youtube here:
Help Files and Documentation
We’ve been asked many times on whether we have online help files or documentation on how to use QuickSchools. The fact is, we don’t. And here are some reasons why.
The first reason is our philosophy for simplicity. And many of our users agree that our system is very intuitive and easy to use. Extraneous features are hidden from the users, and users only see what they need to see. And if systems are easy to use from the get-go, then hopefully, there will be no need for help files and documentation.
The second reason is the nature of our constantly evolving software. With new features and enhancements being released every few weeks, we want to minimize effort on documentation, so that we can focus on providing users with the best software to manage their school; one that easy to use, and does not require a manual to use and understand.
But we do understand that there are always difficulties that users face using any system. And so to mitigate these, we provide all our users with live chat support, whether you’re an administrator, teacher, or a parent using an online portal for the first time. The live chat feature actually serves 2 purposes. It is primarily a support tool for users to overcome any problems they face while using QuickSchools. But, it also serves as a feedback tool, in that our technical personnel will relay the problems you face to our engineers, so that the system can be improved further in future releases. So if there is something that is unintuitive in the system, let us know, and we’ll try our best to get it right the second time around.
For those of you who want to see QuickSchools in action, without signing up for a free trial, we’ve started putting together some videos on youtube. You can check those out on http://www.youtube.com/quickschools.
Continuous improvement
It’s the summer season again and we’re revving up efforts to help many of you setup your very own QuickSchools account for the new academic year. Like last summer’s ‘batch’ of schools, many of you seem to have done plenty of research on student management systems or student information systems and we’re absolutely thrilled that you’ve decided to go with us!
There is also a handful who’ll be migrating from your previous school information system provider and we’re gonna do our best to make sure that you will be happy with this decision for months and years to come. 
As we take a moment to reflect on the past year, the biggest milestone for us must be our new version which was launched just under a year ago. Our fully online philosophy has been gaining tremendous traction and we’re encouraged further by your kind support and of course invaluable feedback. The entire QuickSchools suite has gone through multiple tweaks and slowly but surely, we’re getting better and better – again thanks to the great feedback and patience form everyone. I think by now, everyone totally appreciates that QuickSchools will always be a constantly evolving student information system that strives to respond effectively to our customers all over the world.
Many if not all of you guys have seen this first hand. Just take our attendance module for example. It was designed to be a simple attendance tracker at first in that we thought you guys just wanted to know if the student was simply present or not. Alas that was a bit too simple! So it’s gone through a few iterations and you can now take attendance by class, by homeroom, by subject and by period and you can also start taking attendance on behalf of any teacher in the school. It was an absolute pleasure for us to see how the software was adapting to your needs and the best compliment for us is when you started using the new features!
We have recently released the upgraded Mass Parent Messaging feature too. I’m not gonna spill the beans here just rest assured that it is slick and the parents will be impressed… we hope you will be too.
There are also many other improvements, small and big which have been well received by you. That being said, we are fully aware that we have our journey ahead of us. But if the past 12 months is anything to go by, we’re confident that the next 12 months will be even better, smoother and more polished – especially with the unveiling of the Athena plan later this Fall.
It has been such a pleasure working with our partners this last 12 months and we at QuickSchools look forward to another fantastic 12 months!
CCEA East Coast Conference
Last June 24-25, QuickSchools exhibited at the CCEA East Coast Conference in Farmington NY. We were here just last year, and so it was interesting to meet with schools that signed up from last year. One such school that really made a showing is the Calvary Chapel Christian School at Fredericktown PA. 6 of them attended the conference this year. We hung out and shared stories and experiences using QuickSchools this past year. This past year, they used the Attendance and Gradebook features extensively, as well as the Parent Portal to communicate with parents online. Next year, they will start generating report cards using QuickSchools. Here’s a picture of the CCEA Fredericktown staff aboard a boat cruise on the Eerie Canal.
If there is one key takeaway from our conversations with the staff at Fredericktown, it’s that the live chat support really makes a difference. And hopefully, you will see this from the other testimonials from schools using our software. We really enjoy working with smaller schools, and we want to know how we can improve our software and our services. So come speak with us online. We’d love to hear from you.
Online Collaborative Projects for Students
Is your classroom involved in any other collaborative activities? Do leave a comment and let us know.
New feature: Gradebook for parents
Among the many enhancements made to the gradebook feature, we’ve now switched on the ability for parents to take a look at their children’s gradebooks too. It’s a live, real-time indicator of progress across all the classes that a student takes.
Let’s first take a look at what a teacher would enter into his Intermediary Math 6 class’ gradebook.
As you’ll see, there are now 4 assignments and 1 quiz that has been graded for every student in the Intermediary Math 6 class.
Team building activities for middle to high school students
There was this one chapter in Tuesdays with Morrie that struck a chord with me. It was mainly this test that was described to measure trust. A simple test where one person stands up on a higher ground, for example on a table, facing away from the crowd and letting oneself fall backwards trusting the friends behind to catch the person before they fall. Letting students experience firsthand the importance of being a team player in such activities makes them personally appreciate the value of trust.
Now we’re not encouraging that you try the same activity, because honestly, it can be a little dangerous, but we did look around for some team building activities or games that you can put into action with your group of middle school students. You can try these whether you’re on a camping trip or even during your next Physical Ed. lesson:
1. The Toxic River - This is a group activity. Get everyone to group up at one side of a space – a hall or a field would be fine. Measure a strip of 5 feet next to your line of students and name it “the toxic river”.
The objective is to get the whole group to cross the river as fast as they can – you can set a time period based on the number of students in the group. The catch is that they are not allowed to cross the river without wearing a pair of magic boots. Each person can only wear the pair of boots once and the boots can’t be tossed over the river once a person has crossed over. If they do step on the toxic river without the magic boots, the whole team must start all over again. Hint : Carrying people over is the key. To avoid the same person having to carry the group, you can set a rule that no single person may cross the river more than 2 times.
2. Human Letters – Divide your students into groups of 4 to 5 people. This is a game of speed. The teacher calls out a letter in the alphabet and each group has to quickly form the required letter. They can do this lying on the ground or even while standing. The group that forms the letter fastest wins the game. This game requires students to quickly communicate which part of the letter they’ll be & therefore promotes clear communication as well as clear leaders in the group.
3. Minefield – This is quite an entertaining game and it’s best played in a big field. Form 2 or more teams and get each team to select a single person who will be blindfolded. Each team then gets an obstacle course through which they need to navigate their blindfolded team-mate through. The objective for each team is to get their team mate to the finish line without stepping on any of the mines. If the blind folded team mate does bump into or step on one, the team has to start all over again. To make this game safe, it’s best to use soft toys and hoops as ‘mines’.
