Features

Skiffer is full featured Academic Management System that integrates the functions of an online gradebook and a student information system in an affordable elegant package. Skiffer has the balance between functionality and ease of use that allow schools to simplify how grading is managed and integrate parents thru online access everywhere they are.

Configuring your school is a breeze.

Say goodbye to the complex configuration screens found in most school software.

Your school has specific needs and configuring your schools's Skiffer account to satisfy those needs is really simple. We spent a lot of energy and time developing and refining the core technologies that allow Skiffer adapt to the multitude of academic structures and complex student enrollment scenarios found in most schools.

  • School Tree ™

    The School Tree ™ is the mechanism Skiffer uses to help you define how the academic structure in your school works in an easy to understand, flexible and powerful way. Just build your School Tree ™ and Skiffer will know how your school works.

    The School Tree ™ supports

    • Multiple levels with independent academic structures (high school, mid-school, elementary school, pre-school, etc.)
    • Archive previous year grades
    • Outline how terms and sub-terms affect final grades including support for weighed averages
    • Courses with support for credits, categorization and non-grade courses
    • Custom grading scale for each level
    • Update the grading scale without affecting previous years averages.

  • Smart Enrollment ™

    How student enrollment is done in Skiffer? While students receive grades Skiffer uses its Smart Enrollment ™ technology to dynamically determine the courses a student is enrolled for a specific year. Teachers don't need to manage students lists independently, parents don't need to enter individual teacher codes or visit teacher webpages separately. Skiffer automatically gather data from all enrolled courses when needed, no extra work required.

    Smart Enrollment ™ features

    • Multiple student groups per grade and mixed student groups specific to a teacher
    • Enrollment can be managed by administrators or teachers
    • Easily manage students with course accommodations
    • Automatically handle teacher replacements
    • Seamless student promotion between grades and levels

Powerful and flexible grading made simple

Simplicity that welcomes most grading methods

Its easy to under-estimate how complex grading structures are in most schools. Thats why most grading software requires the user to configure a large list of hard to understand options before a single grade can be registered, sometimes after making changes on how grading is currently managed at school. Thanks to the advanced grading technologies included with Skiffer, most grading methods, from simple to complex, are easily handled.

  • Grading Tree ™

    This is the system Skiffer uses to organize all the grades in a student school life, from enrollment to graduation. It will be very hard to find another grading software that offers this combination of robustness and flexibility in such an easy to learn and use package.

    Grading Tree ™ features

    • Support for evaluations with sub-evaluations
    • Enforce standardized school-wide grading methodology or allow teachers to use their own criteria
    • Partial and final course averages
    • Partial and final general averages
    • Graduation average and class ranking
    • Include an equivalence next to each grade

  • Grading Card ™

    Depending on how the teachers in your school create their evaluations and register their grades, the Skiffer's Grading Card ™ will determine the proper way of calculating averages and final grades, no configuration required. Need more options? Adjust calculations with a simple click or tap from you finger.

    Grading Card ™ features

    • Support for accumulated points, grade averages or weighted averages
    • Custom grading scales with automatic conversions between percentage, letter and numeric formats
    • Explore the math behind a grading calculation
    • Automatically calculate averages for all students in a group
    • Adjust grade precision

Integrated qualitative assessment

Because teachers need more than grades to evaluate student performance and behavior

There are aspects of student development that are not suited for being evaluated using a standardized test. Skiffer offer tools for teachers to register and report qualitative grades alongside quantitative grades for the convenience of being able to manage a complete grading strategy using a single tool.

  • Attitudes

    A special type qualitative grades

    Qualities such as participation, interest and conduct are not necessarily suited for being evaluated using quantitative based grades in the same way as exams and projects do. Because of this Skiffer allows teachers to add to their gradebooks a special type of evaluations called Attitudes.

    Those Attitudes don't affect the final grade and let teachers use a qualitative grading scale based on comments such as 'satisfactory' or 'in-progress'. The qualitative grading scale is flexible and can be defined according to the needs of your school. Those attitudes appear in their own section on both online and printed reports.

  • The Skillbook

    A gradebook for preschool teachers

    Preschool teachers have different needs than elementary and secundary school teachers. They help students to develop essentials skills that are the foundation of their academic life. Most online grading services don't offer tools tailored for preschool teachers, leaving them isolated from the rest of the school.

    We value the work of preschool teachers and therefore Skiffer includes the Skillbook, a tool that allows preschool teachers create a large list of subjects and skills that will be developed with students over time. Teachers can track progress at multiple points in time and generate reports showing progress of a student in relation to the academic program.

Security that makes sense

No sensitive data to steal and grade modifications that don't go unnoticed

Skiffer has industry standard security features in place aimed at preventing unauthorized access to academic data. But our world is not perfect and many people will be tempted to try to modify grades in benefit of a specific student student or to steal school sensitive data. Because of this we don't require schools to include any sensitive data in order to manage grades with Skiffer. In addition, to ensure grades are always safe we have developed two technologies that have proven over time to be very effective in preventing un-authorized grade modifications.

  • Grade approval and validation

    Our workflow requires that teachers or academic officials approve grades before saving a hard copy of them along with their digital signature and timestamp. Grades don't propagate automatically to related averages, therefore recalculations have to be verified and approved. Everything has to match, and if doesn't, is easy to identify why. This is how validation is done at institutions that value security, but is not the way grades are managed with most competing systems.

    Benefits

    • Teachers and administrators are always conscious of the grades given
    • Unauthorized grade modifications are easy to detect and revert
    • Skiffer is faster because grades are not re-calculated all the time

  • The Vault

    Skiffer keeps daily backups of the school's academic data. In addition to that, Skiffer is integrated to a system we call internally The Vault where all user interactions are saved to an independent non-editable log. Because of this, the history of every data point in our databases is always available. Every time data is entered, edited or deleted we save who did it, when, where, what device was used, the values entered and replaced. If data is modified without authorization we have the right tools to help identify who was responsible, give recommendations on how to prevent the situation from repeating and more importantly to restore data to its original state.

    Features

    • Daily data backups
    • Extensive activity logs

Powerful access control features

Have control of who have access to what data and when they have access to it

Skiffer uses a simple system to give administrators control of all important aspects of data access control.

  • Multiple accounts, multiple devices

    Skiffer provides accounts for most members of the school community with tailored access rights. Our modern web application can be accessed from any device with a Webkit based browser including:

    • Windows, Mac and Linux computers
    • iPad and Android Tablets
    • iPhone and Android Smartphones

    Account Types

    • Administrator: full school management and grade editing
    • Auxiliary: limited school management
    • Teacher: course grading tools / optional homeroom grading tools
    • Student: read only access to personal data
    • Parent: read only access to their children data, convenient for parents with multiple kids and divorced parents who may have conflict sharing account passwords

  • Great access control options

    After years working directly with schools we designed a simple mechanism that focus on the access control features that matter the most. Sortware shouldn't force educators to spend their time micro-managing users.

    • Restrict access to students and parents with pending debt with the school while letting teachers to continue registering grades for the student
    • Denny access to students no longer enrolled at the school without having to delete their data
    • Denny access to faculty and administrative personal no longer affiliated with the institution without having to delete their data
    • Restrict grade editing after a term or year has ended and grades have been approved
    • Limit access to students and parents while teachers are working with final grading and averaging.

Printer friendly reports

Reduce paper waste, engage parents and improve finances in one shot

Skiffer is a green company that advocates for schools to reduce paper consumption. With Skiffer is not necessary to print progress reports as frequently since parents already have online access to this data. But we also understand that printable reports are still a requirement for schools, since there are still times where academic documents still need to be delivered on paper to parents, universities and accreditation boards. Printed gradebooks and student transcripts could be printed at the end of the year add another form of data backup that may be convenient, even if all data is also stored online. Because of this we designed reports that can be viewed in the screen so schools don't need to print as much, but that look great when printed to show-of of your school professionalism and prestige.

  • Printer friendly reports

    Skiffer includes a compelling collection of useful reports that are formatted to look great on the screen and on printed paper. Get statistics from your collected data or use the reports as official documents for parents, universities and accreditation boards.

    Available reports

    • Grades report
    • Progress report
    • Skill development report for preschool
    • List of students
    • List of averages
    • Class ranking
    • Year ranking
    • Graduation ranking
    • Elementary school transcript
    • High school transcript
    • Statistics for course final grades
    • Statistics for group general averages

  • Online parent access

    Parents and students have access to all their academic data online, directly on their Skiffer account. When parents access they are presented with a shelve filled with books that represent each one of the courses a student is enrolled on a specific year. Click on a book and quickly get access to exams grades, quiz scores, upcoming evaluations, attitudes, skills, averages and more. All the information from all the teachers is accessible on a single place all the time. Our mobile version is focused on allowing parents to get a glimpse of all the relevant information on the go, to help them prepare themselves and plan in how to help their kids before arriving home.