Category: Advanced Configuration

Lesson Plans by Month & Copy Lessons from Archive (Private Beta)

3 Comments

We’ve been building out from our Lesson Plans by Subject and Lesson Plan Dates updates and have some cool new views to share. These work with the Lesson Plans by Subject feature and allow teachers to view a long-term calendar of lessons as well as copy them forward from the school archive of past terms’ lessons. Here’s a quick look at the setup.

The Lesson Plans by Month view works a lot like the the Lesson Plans by Subject view, and even the Gradebook. Simply select a subject that you’re teaching and the lesson plans you have setup for the current term view will appear on their lesson date. Also, you can mouse over a day, click the “Add Daily Lesson” button to add a new lesson for that day.

by Month

You can drag and drop the lesson around to a different day, and right click to edit the lesson:

Edit Lesson

In addition, one of the coolest features of the by Month view is that “Copy Lessons” button at the top. It directs you to a wizard that helps you migrate past terms’ lessons forward so as to view and update lessons for a new term. From the wizard, you can select which term and subject you’d like copy forward from the archive.Read More »

Lesson Plan by Subject (Private Beta)

Azroy Kandan3 Comments

We’re testing a new version of the Lesson Plans that can now be specific to subjects. In the existing QuickSchools module, you can create a Lesson Plan Set, which can be applied to multiple subjects across different semesters. But with the introduction of Lesson Plan Dates, we thought it might be better to simply link Lesson Plans directly to each subject / section (within a particular academic term).

This new Lesson Plan module will work just like the Gradebook and Homework modules. Simply select a subject that you’re teaching, and you can then immediately add/edit the lessons for this subject.

Lesson Plans by Subject
Lesson Plans by Subject

Here are some differences for comparison:Read More »

Hidden Features and Private Beta

Azroy Kandan55 Comments

As a company that works tirelessly to provide a system that is simple, intuitive, and easy-to-use, it’s often difficult to introduce new features, without making it more complicated for the majority of our customers. For us at QuickSchools, it’s less about simply providing a feature, and more about providing a feature that simply works.

With that in mind, we have several features that are intentionally hidden, either because (1) they are in private beta (and thus requires more testing before it goes out for public release), (2) they are designed for a specific target market, or (3) they are too complicated to enable without the help of our technical support personnel.

One such example is our Reporting feature. We only recently introduced our new Report Creator app, which was in private beta for several months. Before that, we had (and still have) an internal report designer that is very complicated to use but also much more flexible for those more complex reports. The aim is to provide a capability (in this case reporting) that simply works for the majority of our customers, but still have something more flexible for those that need that flexibility.

Admissions Graph on Report Creator
Admissions Graph on Report Creator

Read More »

Integration to Learning Management Systems (LMS)

Azroy Kandan8 Comments

Learning Management Systems (LMS) are a very different beast compared to Student Information Systems (SIS), which is what QuickSchools provides as an online service. Student Information Systems (also known as School Management Systems or School Administration Systems) focus on record keeping, and the administrative aspects of running a school (track student demographics, attendance, grades, fees, transcripts, etc). Learning Management Systems on the other hand focus on the delivery of content (or lessons) to students, and is primarily used by teachers.

There is a big overlap between the 2 systems though. School Management Systems are known to provide some level of LMS functionality, such as portals for students and parents to download homework assignments. Learning Management Systems too have been known to produce report cards, which has mainly been in the realm of SISs. But it’s really hard for any vendor or company to provide focus in both areas, as they are primarily different markets with different needs.

The large overlap between the two types of systems suggests that integration would allow schools to tap into the best of both worlds – so teachers can use an LMS to share lessons and record grades, while administrators can use an SIS to produce report cards and transcripts.

We announced last year that we now support integration with Schoology, which is an awesome Learning Management System in the market today. But Schoology is not the only LMS out there, and it does focus only on K-12 schools. And so, we’ve decided to introduce more apps in this area.

In the coming months, we’ll be providing integration to the following LMSs:Read More »

Tag Your Students

Azroy Kandan5 Comments

We have a new feature under development, currently available upon request in Private Beta. On the student record in QuickSchools, you can now tag students, and those tags will appear on the main Students listing. You can also search for students based on those tags:

Student Listing with searchable Tags
Student Listing with searchable Tags

This is particularly useful to inform users about important information regarding the student, like Peanut Allergies, Suspensions and so on. Once the Tagging feature is enabled, you can set tags for the student under the Student record.Read More »