ClassDojo is a communication app for primary schools from the company of the same name in San Francisco. It helps teachers, families, and kids share more often and more positively about what's happening at school and at home - including photos, videos, messages, and positive feedback.
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Unique Learning System
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Unique Learning System (ULS) is a special education solution that supports students with disabilities from Pre-K through transition. It provides differentiated, standards-aligned lessons in ELA, math, science, social studies, and life skills with built-in assessments, progress tracking, and automated differentiation.
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Veracross
Score 8.5 out of 10
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Veracross is a student information system and has several modules, including Admission, Academics, Development, etc. all sharing a single database.
ClassDojo is a great platform to use in elementary classrooms for encouraging positive behaviors and tracking all kinds of them when they are happening. It rewards students and is easy to use on iPad. It is also great for taking attendance each day.
I have actually recommended it to another teacher in a different district for her autism program since she could level and pace it easily and also easily collect IEP data without stressing out her students with extra work. Unique Learning System is also a good program for our autism program because it is consistent with all core subjects, making is very routine based.
Veracross is software that can be highly recommended to anyone in the education industry. Veracross offers a breadth of services varying from administration to student-parent communication. The unique abilities that Veracross offers such as email reminders, attendance management, billing, and payment processing, and attendance tracking have made my job as an administrative support manager so much easier and more productive here at Teachables.
Data tracking and progress reports - Unique Learning System's Polaris feature is a user-friendly, simple way to track and monitor progress towards learners IEP goals. When creating a roadmap that follows a learner's IEP, you input data such as learning profiles and benchmark assessments and rubrics that then produce goal suggestions. You can craft your own goal, use a suggested goal, or choose a goal from the goal library. It gives you a great idea of what goals to target based on learner needs and progress. Entering data is super easy, just a date and a data point, and a graph generates for you. From there, it will show the data trend and flag it for you when it's at risk. It is also easy to add an intervention. Quarterly, I use the progress report feature to generate a report that provides me with the graphs that I use to put into IEP writer.
Curriculum pacing - My school utilizes Unique Learning System for our daily instruction. Unique Learning System provides pacing guides with what to teach and when. Everything is standards aligned and all of the lesson plans have ways that you can differentiate already built into the plans as well as an easy to use, structured/routine based set up that makes daily lessons predictable for learners to increase engagement.
N2Y - My learners love News To You! This provides children with access to informational text. We use it as a "fun Friday" read every week. We read the article in class, watch videos, answer questions, and typically do an activity to go along with it. The kids look forward to it every week, and also enjoy the Joey's Locker games that go along with the articles. They have a new feature to be able to assign activities that go along with the article which is really nice because I assign them as supplemental activities to go along with what we are learning about in class!
Require offline download, hence this can be used in rural areas. When the study materials are published the app just downloads them and keep it ready. Hence when the child does the online learning the bandwidth is saved
Inbox needs to be improved with features
Needs more pictorial icon for small kids who are in KG etc etc
Unique Learning System's materials in the science and social studies areas aren't "fluffy" as other areas, but they are continuously adding materials
The layout of the website isn't the most user friendly, but most teachers are able to navigate easily after an initial training
The administrator side of things isn't super straightforward, reports can be confusing to find/run, but the one on one meetings always provide clarity.
Normally it has everything I need for my work, today I was able to make a video call and chat from my cell phone and this adds more positive points to Veracross.
I appreciate all the various resources that Unique Learning System has to offer. However, due to my limited interaction with other resources similar to Unique Learning System I do not know enough to compare it against other programs. I also am not a person in charge of renewing Unique Learning System for my organization.
We will continue to use Veracross for the simple fact that we have one database across all of the departments in our school. Veracross continues to listen to customer feedback and improve and enhance the system.
There is a lot of content in Unique Learning System. It can sometimes be time consuming to navigate through everything. I appreciate the depth and breadth of the resources, but it can also be tough to use when I need a worksheet or packet for my students. The use of Unique Learning System on the computer is great, but my students seem to learn best when they have a pen and paper in front of them.
LOVE the Technical Response Team - the first line of help at Veracross. I can quickly submit a ticket and receive a response knowing that they have looked in our system and know what we are trying to do! Our account manager is also amazing! So nice to have a person within the company who knows our school and our needs!
Classtag allows teachers to earn points for interacting on their platform. Teachers use points to purchase things in their store. Although this is a nice feature on that platform, you also have a lot of ads that pop up. I like classdojo because your not overwhelmed by ads, its user friendly and most actions can be completed through a few clicks.
We viewed Encore by TeachTown. The product seemed to be a notch above Unique Learning System and included workbooks and other books but was very expensive. The downfalls of Encore was that it did not include the Profile Assessments like Unique Learning System and also the monthly checkpoints which are very valuable.
Veracross has better built-in integrations with other platforms/systems. IT is much simpler and easy to use. It keeps records in a much simpler way and can be accessed through different modes of reporting. It is very easy to keep track of the progress in any training, project, or assignment with Veracross.
Ease of planning is #1. I am able to plan an entire lesson or a week's worth of lessons during my 30-minute planning time.
Data that is collected for IEPs is so valuable and reports are parent-friendly.
Students are able to work on the alternative path toward a diploma because this curriculm is covering all of the standards they need to see in order to earn their diploma.
