Author: Azroy Kandan

Attendance Not Yet Taken

Azroy Kandan1 Comment

We wanted to briefly discuss how the Attendance module works in QuickSchools, and what happens when a teacher does NOT take (or has not taken) attendance on a designated school day. In these cases, the system will grey out the student record for the period, and reports will indicate that it has not yet been taken for that day/period.

Attendance Calendar on the Student record with attendance "Not Yet Taken"
Calendar on the Student record with “Not Yet Taken”

Taking attendance for the first time

The calendar adds school days in real-time when it is first taken on any particular day. For instance, you can establish holidays and school days in the Calendar (found under “New Semester Setup”), but the system will not designate a date as a school day until attendance is taken on that day.

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Parent Portal Features

Azroy Kandan9 Comments

If you have yet to enable the Parent Portal for your QuickSchools account, you’re missing out! This article describes some of the features offered via the QuickSchools Parent Portal:

Information at a Glance

From the Home page, parents can quickly see recent activity like recent attendance, grades, homework assignments and disciplinary incidents. Events are listed on the right, and the Parent Message Board is at the bottom of the screen. Parents can click on the various elements to view more information.

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New Assignments App (Beta)

Azroy Kandan10 Comments

In our efforts to provide a more streamlined Online Learning experience, our Assignments App, which is still in Private Beta, is coming along nicely. If you’d like to try out this feature, please contact QuickSchools support. 

So here’s what you can do so far:

  • Teachers can create and view assignments for their subjects
  • Students can upload/submit assignments from the Student Portal
  • System tracks multiple submissions from the same student for the same assignment
  • Teachers can easily review submissions from each student

Moving forward, you can expect the following features:

  • Schedule Assignments to be Published
  • Enter Grades directly from the Submissions screen
  • Easily navigate between Submissions for a particular Assignment
  • Chat Feature for Submissions
  • Annotate Submissions
  • Calendar view for Assignments

If you have any further questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us via email or chat. It’s your feedback that makes these improvements worthwhile!

Zoom Integration App (Beta)

Azroy Kandan9 Comments

We announced recently that QuickSchools is working on a Live Stream feature via Zoom Integration. We are happy to announce that a first version of this app has been deployed in last weeks release:

Live Stream App for Zoom Integration

This app is still in Private Beta, which means schools will need to request for this app in order to use it. We hope that early adopters of this app will share feedback with us, so that we can continue to improve the app moving forward.

To connect your QuickSchools account with Zoom, you’ll need to create API credentials from Zoom. More details here:

https://support.quickschools.com/hc/en-us/articles/360046992452

That’s it for now. We are planning more improvements in the coming months, to help schools with the upcoming school year. Please stay tuned by following us on Facebook or Twitter, in order to get the latest updates.

Apps for LMS Integration

Azroy Kandan4 Comments

QuickSchools has several apps that integrate to an external LMS. Although there are slight differences in the functionality for each app, the overall approach and style is very similar.

apps for the LSM integration

Gradebook Sync

The primary goal of the Integration App is to pull the latest Gradebook data from the external LMS into QuickSchools. This is essentially an import, and no changes are made to the external LMS during this process. However, the synchronization process also includes changes in enrollment. So if you add a student to a course and add grades for that student in the external LMS, or if you remove a student from a course, the integration will automatically enroll or unenroll the student accordingly, in order to match the local QuickSchools Gradebook with the external LMS.

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Online Learning V1

Azroy Kandan20 Comments

QuickSchools has traditionally been a Student Information System (SIS), not a Learning Management System (LMS). However, there has always been some overlap (i.e. Gradebook). But given the changing times, and a strong need for all schools to have an online learning capability, we’ve decided to beef up our in-house support for Online Learning. We may not be as full-featured as many of the big players out there, like Canvas, Schoology, Google Classroom, Odysseyware and Ignitia (all of which we do integrate with), but there’s a lot to be said about having a simple core set of features that works seamlessly with an SIS. 

New Assignments module as part of Online Learning capability
New Assignments module as part of Online Learning capability

So here we’d like to outline some of these features, that make up the Online Learning experience within QuickSchools:

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Parent Message Board

Azroy Kandan3 Comments

The Parent Message Board is a great way to share information with parents in an unobtrusive manner in QuickSchools. Parents simply see these messages when logging into the Parent Portal. New messages appear at the bottom of the Home screen, just below the Student Updates:

Parent Message Board on the Parent Portal

As an administrator, just to go to the “Parent Portal” menu to post messages. Images are automatically displayed on screen. You can also share links and files too:

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