Kiddom

Pros

The flexibility of assigning different tasks to different students, as well as the deep resource pool. It's a great way to personalize learning in a fairly simple manner. Works great for projects, as well.

Cons

Can be a bit buggy when logging students in (sometimes the app freezes). There are also some linked resources (primarily from CK-12) that don't work well. Could use a way to integrate questions/responses, grading, and link embedding directly into assignments.

Pros

Hi, I am a 4th grade teacher who started using Kiddom this fall in full distance learning. It has been an great decision overall (although I do not really know about how much it costs).
Here are the things that make it strong:
1. It is a good mix of versatile vs easy to use for kids- meaning, I can largely change it for what I want, but it functions pretty easily for student.
2. Grading is really easy- you can input MC and have them graded for you, or put grading notes for other teachers.

Cons

1. My school bought Kiddom to use for its partnership with EL (a Lit curriculum). Although we do use Kiddom successfully for Lit, the EL resources are difficult to navigate. Honestly, this is probably more of a problem with EL than it is with Kiddom.
2. Creating your own activities/lessons is time consuming. It takes a while to input each question individually and does not have a copy/past feature. This would be really helpful as many of the questions that I ask follow a similar format, and I need to input them manually each time.
3. My students largely are all on Chromebooks (and therefore the same type of device), but the interface on their screens occasionally looks different (due to sizing, etc). this has caused some confusion with kids.
4. We tried to write an essay on Kiddom this week and it was a struggle. Navigating between different assignments is not really possible for many of our kids and navigating within an assignment is fairly awkward as the questions can stretch or shrink if you click on them. We are opting to using Googledocs for any larger writing assignments, but still love Kiddom for daily work.

Pros

OUR are available, aligned to stds, and can be edited.
Easy to submit a grade per student per activity.
Feedback allows for audio and images and arrives in email account.
The Done and Late links are helpful in finding work to grade.
The assignments are broken into weeks.

Cons

Students need to be able to draw a number line a shape on the grid, show their work with a tape diagram and plot coordinate pairs. Kiddom does not have these tools everything is text or students write in their notebook and upload images.
Late work is only mentioned as a notification ex. 3 days ago, but should be tagged on the assignment.
Students that join with two different accounts does not show the email used, so a teacher cannot determine which account to delete.
Difficult to use distantly synchronous, since there is not a way to see what the student is working on in a specific moment. Ex Desmos and Nearpod show you the students’ work on a summary page “live”.
Reports are not helpful. If I want only the Unit Test to show me the standards’ aligned with student proficiency, I can’t. It includes the exit slips and other assignments.
Glitches are common for example 1) students go i to the account and the see that 30 assignments are late (I have to tell them don’t worry, it is a glitch) 2) I drag an assignment and it doesn’t drag to the week assignments so I try a couple more times and next thing I know I have assigned the same assignment 10 times.
Many of the library’s resources are not linked correctly.
If I link Khan Academy, the scores are not included in Kiddom. I also have to assign in Khan Academy and find the scores there.
Google Docs cannot be assigned making a copy for each student in Kiddom.
Self grading with auto feedback options would be great.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Kiddom

Pros

It is an easy way to share the curriculum with my distance learners.

Cons

Some parts are cumbersome. Some things aren’t easy to share with families, use.

Pros

The communication features work well, especially now that students may be grouped. Once that feature was added, I was able to group and teach both distance learning and in-person learning successfully, though things such as discussion boards still don't exist. Overall, the activity layout is functional and clear. Assigning activities is very easy and can be done in multiple ways, with various editable aspects (individually assign, adjust time and due date, etc). I appreciate these features.

Cons

The default settings cannot be adjusted, so for example every question is worth an arbitrary 4 points until it is manually changed. Therefore, I have to manually adjust so many features on every single activity. If I could just adjust the settings so that each assignment started the way I wanted (summative, with 10 point questions, NOT labeled participation, etc) that would save me several obnoxious clicks. Also, the help team response time has slowed considerably, and certain obvious fixes still haven't been made, such as the click-through glitch on multiple-part questions. I'm sure this is because we inundated them with needs, etc, but it's frustrating to have the same problems over and over. Also, the problem of not being able to duplicate and adjust assignments is frustrating. Every new assignment has to be created from scratch OR written over an old assignment so we can't have multiple versions or save copies of past assignments for remediation needs. This is a pretty serious issue as it adds time and work to teachers who are already overloaded. Finally, the fact that the elements (questions, text boxes, directions, etc) within an activity DON'T stay in the order we put them, but default to a specific order (questions always at the bottom, text boxes on top) at the moment they're assigned means that I can't space directions through the activity. All directions have to be at the top unless you cheat and put directions in a question box. It's frankly infuriating.