Visit us at these conferences

We’re going to be attending the following year-end conferences and we’d love to see you there!


Oct 25-27
NCAEE Sixth Annual Elementary School Conference – Raliegh, NC  Conference details


Oct 29-30
FACCS / IACCS Christian Educator’s Convention 2009 – Orange County, FL  Convention details


Nov 2
VAIS 2009 Creativity: Unlock the Spark Within – Richmond, VA
Conference details


Nov 5-6
ISACS Annual Conference – Columbus, OH
Conference details


Nov 9
AIMS Annual Fall Conference – Baltimore, MD
Conference details


Nov 12-13
FLOCS/ACTS National Educators Conference – Orlando, FL
Conference details


Nov 16-17
25th Annual Conference for Administrators of Independent and Religious Schools – Albany, NY
Conference details


Nov 19-20
FCIS 54th Annual Convention – Orlando, FL
Convention details


We’re really looking forward to seeing you!

If you feel we should be attending any other conferences do email Anne at anne@quickschools.com and we’ll make sure to see you there next year.

Attendance for multiple periods

We now have period based attendance!

Over the course of the last two months we discovered that some smaller schools had a need to mark attendance for both halves of the day.. and some for all 7 or 8 periods. With all this valuable information at hand we decided to add a couple of features to make your life easier through period based attendance.


Switching it on
On configuring the attendance feature, you should be able to see the following section. Simply place a check-mark in the box provided.

config

Read More »

Follow up with Peter Mitchell, Corona Academy

After our initial conversation with Cheryl Mitchell, the principal of Corona Academy, we followed up with Peter Mitchell, the IT administrator of the school.

It was an enlightening conversation as Peter shared his vision for Corona Academy with regards to IT expansion. He envisions having an expansive computer lab for all the students,  a smart board for each class as well as the use of e-learning solutions that could intuitively instruct students about subjects that are easier taught using computers.

Peter also shared how he first realized they needed a school management software. He first had thoughts about implementing a school software for Corona while working with a bigger school in California. On digging a bit deeper, however, he however found that the system being used at that school wouldn’t fit very well with Corona Academy, simply because it was ‘bloated’ and not to mention quite expensive.

This realization kick-started his search for school management software which eventually led him to QuickSchools. He tried it and found the service a good fit for their school (Yeayy!!) – even for the parents who would eventually use the parent portal.

Here’s a snippet from our conversation with Peter:

“Aside from the price being much better for us… the system seemed to be better for us as well, specially being that we have a lot of parents who are not as computer savvy as you would probably need with some other programs and I think QuickSchools is pretty straight forward when it comes to getting the information you would want to get.”

Leadership activities for high school students

Most schools find it important to instill a sense of leadership in their graduating class of students. We’ve decided to help you by doing some research on the best ways to get students geared up to take their next step.

In this post we’ve outlined some techniques such as leadership swaps, discussions on reading body language and team building exercises in addition to a few great links.

Read More »

QuickSchools.com Web Traffic

QuickSchools had it’s soft launch in Albany New York last November at the CAIRS conferenceWe’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!

QuickSchool’s feature enhancements: Attendance taking

The team has been working on improving the attendance feature over the last few weeks and I think it’s time we let you in on some of it.

The attendance feature currently allows the homeroom teachers to take attendance for their classes. If configured, it also allows assigned individuals to handle entry of attendance.

We very much appreciate the insightful suggestions that were made by the schools that signed up for the free trial as it really helped the team gain traction towards releasing an attendance feature that meets the needs of most smaller schools.


You can now tell the system if it’s not a school day

attendance scroller

Apart from the easy-to-scroll interface, there’s a new link that says This is not a school day and it lets you remove any attendance data recorded for that particular date. This should be useful, for anyone entering attendance really, as it helps manage weekend attendance information that does not need to appear on the report card.

You can now add remarks for each student’s daily attendance

details2

It’s as simple as clicking the ‘Add Remark’ button, typing in the details and clicking OK.

The advantage of keeping such information at a granular level is that come analysis time, administrators can really dig deep into any attendance issues they are facing with a particular student or group of students.


A little something extra that we sprinkled in

Another minor change we’ve made is that once you decide to start marking attendance for a particular day, all your students will start off appearing as present for that day. This should make it convenient to use given that you probably don’t want to be clicking away at check-boxes each day. All you need to do now is to look out for those students who are tardy or absent.

5: Inspiring Movies about Teachers

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. ~William Arthur Ward

There are no written rules out there stating the right or wrong way to teach. The best part about teaching is that there are endless ways you can relay a message to your students.

Take it from these teachers – I’d like to share with you 5 movies that I’ve compiled of the most inspiring movies about teachers. They are sure to move me every time I watch them (tears included).

Dangerous Minds
Louanne Johnson is an ex-marine, hired as a teacher at a high-school located in a poorer area of the city. She has recently separated from her husband. Her friend, also a teacher at the school, got the temporary position for her. After a terrible reception from the students, she tries unconventional methods of teaching (using karate, Bob Dylan lyrics, etc) to gain the trust of her students.

The Karate Kid
Daniel is new in town, and is getting picked on by the local bullies, who all are adept in karate. Determined to stick up for himself, Daniel begins to teach himself karate, only to discover that the caretaker at his apartment seems to be a grand master in karate. Agreeing to teach Daniel, Mr. Miyagi shows Daniel that there is more to karate than violence, and perhaps the best way to solve the problem he has with the bullies is in the All Valley Karate Championship.

Dead Poets Society
Painfully shy Todd Anderson has been sent to the school where his popular older brother was valedictorian. His room-mate, Neil, although exceedingly bright and popular, is very much under the thumb of his overbearing father. The two, along with their other friends, meet Professor Keating, their new English teacher, who tells them of the Dead Poets Society, and encourages them to go against the status quo. Each, in their own way, does this, and is changed for life.

Lean on Me
An arrogant and unorthodox teacher returns as principal to the idyllic high school from which he had earlier been fired to find it a den of drug abuse, gang violence, and urban despair. Eventually his successful but unorthodox methods lead to a clash with city officials that threaten to undo all his efforts. This is based on a true story.

Stand and Deliver
Jaime Escalante is a mathematics teacher in a school in a Hispanic neighborhood. Convinced that his students have potential, he adopts unconventional teaching methods to try and turn gang members and no-hopers into some of the country’s top algebra and calculus students

Source: Synopsis from http://www.imdb.com

The beauty about teaching is that it’s a ripple effect. As the saying goes

“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell, where his influence stops.” Henry Brooks.

You got that right Mr. Henry! Look at where all of us are now.

Thank you, dear teacher.

Corona Academy finding QuickSchools a good fit

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been keeping track of the number of sign-ups to measure the success rates of the August 17th launch – the results have been great so far.  Of the many schools that have signed up, we specially want to highlight Corona Christian Academy, because their adoption rate of QuickSchools was just amazing. They had their school account up and running within just 5 days – teachers, students, attendance and even grading.

CoronaLogo

Corona Christian Academy has been operating in Queens, New York for the last 4 years and has a count of 36 students who attend grades 1 to 10 along with the Kindergarten. They’re very keen on incorporating IT into the school’s everyday activities, all the way from managing the school to teaching kids.

This is what Cheryl Mitchell, the principal, has to say about the teachers’ experience so far

“… when we’re doing report cards, instead of having to total all the grades and everything like that they just put in grades, and it (QuickSchools) does the totals for them, so they just love it.”

The school previously used Excel to manage all their tuition fees, and upon using QuickSchools, they found that that the Fee Tracking feature makes it much simpler to carry out billing. Another feature that Cheryl likes to use is the Report Cards feature as it gives her visibility on the progress of activities.

“That’s another thing I like, is the fact that I am able to as the principal, to go on and check and make sure that my teachers are entering grades…”, says Cheryl Mitchell.