Author: Azreen Latiff

Continuous improvement

Azreen Latiff8 Comments

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!

Team building activities for middle to high school students

Azreen Latiff5 Comments

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’.

Have fun!

QuickSchools.com Web Traffic

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QuickSchools had it’s soft launch in Albany New York last November at the CAIRS conference. We’ll be there again this year, so definitely look us up.

It’s been roughly 11 months since Albany 2008 and I was thinking that it’d be interesting to look at some web traffic statistics of QuickSchools.com

QuickSchools web traffic in the last 11 months
QuickSchools web traffic in the last 11 months

From the Google Analytics graph, we can see that right after Albany, we managed to get some interest from the conference and experienced our first bunch of visitors in November-December 2008.

During this phase, we learned what worked and quite frankly, what didn’t! Thanks to some honest and frank feedback from our customers, we continuously improved our value proposition, from concept to features and our pricing too.

All this culminated in our release on Aug 17th this year. And what a difference that made. We’ve gotten more than 100 sign-ups since Aug 17th compared to a grand total of about 30 schools before that date. The Aug 17th release transformed QuickSchools.com to be FULLY ONLINE. That means schools can go from “being interested” to “go-live” on QuickSchools.com in a matter of minutes and they do this all by themselves.

Of course, we have a long way to go but the vision is clear. For the smaller schools out there who are looking for a good solution to their schools’ administrative needs, QuickSchools.com is for you!

QuickSchools.com welcomes Azroy Kandan – Accounts Director, North America

Azreen Latiff3 Comments

We’re really happy to share some exciting news on the HR front. Azroy Kandan (Roy) will join us starting May 1st and he’ll be overseeing the go-live activities for schools in the US and Canada.

Azroy graduated from Cornell and was based in Chicago at Sapient Technologies. He spent a few years in Malaysia with Maestro Solutions before starting out on a wonderful adventure in Canada with his family. 🙂

It’s great to have him on the team and we’re confident that he’ll do a great job as Accounts Director for the North American region.

Welcome aboard, Roy!