The other day, one of our awesome new schools requested a checklist for how to set up report cards. The checklist is such a fantastic idea that we decided to share a step-by-step guide with everyone. So, whether it’s your first time setting up Report Cards, or your umpteenth time, here’s the how-to (with nifty pictures, of course!)
1 – Go to “Report Cards”
2 – Click on “Setup Report Cards”
3 – Click “Create New”
4 – Give your Report Cards a descriptive nameRead More »
As we head back into Report Card season, we’ve received quite a few requests for help setting up a Behavior/Work Habits/Social Growth grading system. In case you’re wondering the same thing, here are two ideas that we like to recommend when this question comes up.
Idea 1: The No-Credit Behavior Class
This is a nice way to setup a behavior grading system so that appears like a regular class in the student’s record and a teacher’s subject-based grading menu. It’s very convenient, and quite intuitive if you think of behavior/work/social skills as being like a subject for students. That said, it does have some drawbacks in that you need to hide the subject in each student’s transcript so that everything looks neat and tidy. If you’d like, you can set up a No-Credit Behavior class like this…
1. Go to Subjects and make a different Behavior subject for each grade.
Make sure to set the credit hours to 0 – so that it’s really “no credit”! 🙂
2. Enroll students
3. Set up a Subject-Specific Grading Template for the Class.
For this, first go to Setup Report cards, and scroll all the way to the bottom and click “Turn it on” for Subject Specific Grading Criteria. Then, click the new fourth tab in your Report Cards module.
Then, we can create a subject-specific criteria template. First click “Add Template”, then fill in your grading criteria
4. Assign the Template to the Class
Click the subject’s “Assigned Template” line to get a dropdown menu of possible choicesRead More »
As you may know, Class Discussions was one of the awesome new features we rolled out over this summer. It’s a great platform that allows teachers, students, and parents to discuss topics related to a class in a controlled and safe environment.
To turn on Class Discussions on QuickSchools, Admins go into the Settings → Turn Features On/Off menus. The Class Discussions module is connected to the Homework module, so they are turned on together:
To enable teachers to post updates to their own classes, as well as configure who can post for to others’ classes, head over to the configure menu. Now, as to a few ways to use it…
Because Parents, Students, and Teachers connected to a specific class all see the Class Discussions, the module is a great way to get the word out about specific events related to your class. It’s especially well-suited to class-related announcements since your posts can be emailed to students and parents when they are posted.
Because so much communication is done online now, blogging is one of those useful skills that many teachers want to encourage their students to develop. Because all QuickSchools data (including Class Discussions) is completely private and secure, student work is entirely safe while they practice their skills at writing for an online audience. For example, students could be encourage to rotate at writing a blog post for each week.Read More »
Our next feature that’s coming up real soon is Teacher Pages. Through Teacher Pages, teachers can connect with their classes for each subject that they teach. Teachers will be able to create and share rich content e.g. post a message and introduce a topic to the class, share links to material available on the Internet like a TED Talk video, a wikipedia article or a video from the Khan Academy, etc.
Students (and maybe parents too) of the class will then be able to connect through their respective portals and share their thoughts as well. Hopefully, the Teacher Pages feature will encourage discussions and exchange of ideas that ultimately enhances the classroom learning experience.
We are very excited about this new feature and we’ll share more details once the feature’s released.
UPDATED May 3, 2013:
The Teacher Pages module had been released, but it has been renamed to “Class Discussions”. We will be posting it on our blog in the next few days. You can turn it on via the “Features” page. Let us know what you think about it.
UPDATED May 6, 2013:
Online Class Discussions now LIVE!
http://blog.quickschools.com/2013/05/06/online-class-discussions/
