Edmodo (discontinued) vs. Inno vs. PowerSchool Student Information System

I find Edmodo to be especially suited to secondary school. It is a great way to accommodate the busy schedules of teens who are often working their first jobs or attending sports and have limited time for homework, but can benefit from looking up assignments or receiving reminders on their phones. It also prepares them for college in that it resembles many collegiate LMS systems

Incentivized

I can think of no business or scenario that would benefit from any relationship with this company. They are horrible from the initial sale, to the installation, to the billing, to the customer service, to lies posted in response to unfavorable reviews of their company. Literally the worst company I have had the displeasure of dealing with in over 21 years in business.

PowerSchool is great for schools to keep track of student information, schedules, and grades. It integrates with other programs to make setting up classes easier and faster. PowerSchool gives teachers a singular place to find information or input students' grades. It also has an app for parents or guardians to use to check their student's grades which is very useful.

Incentivized

• Edmodo is an excellent communication tool. Its Facebook style of posts makes it a familiar environment for teachers to communicate what's happening in class with both students and parents.
• Edmodo's ability to submit and grade assignments online is easy to use and very similar to some other popular LMS platforms. Assignment collection is straightforward and the digital grading tools are simple and effective.
• Edmodo makes it extremely easy to get both students and parents into the the LMS system. Edmodo also has an easy to use subgrouping feature as well, allowing teachers to divide individual classrooms into smaller groups for particular assignments.
• Edmodo's online testing feature is fairly easy to use. I have found this a useful feature for both informal and formal assessment of students.
• Edmodo's polling feature is simple and effective. There are many uses for polling both in and out of the classroom.
• Edmodo's messaging feature is a nice way to communicate between student and teacher or parent and teacher.
• Edmodo's app (Android or iOS), although not as feature rich as the website, works well with many of the features already listed above.
• Edmodo has a very nice Calendar feature, allowing the teacher to easily post important information and/or due dates of assignments.
• Edmodo makes it easy to share folders, either with the public or with your classes.
• Edmodo, like many other popular LMS platforms, integrates nicely with Google Drive.
• Edmodo has a great many community forums. This really is an amazing feature of their LMS. It is so very easy to connect with other teachers and bounce ideas off of each other.

Incentivized

• switch up contracts

• PowerSchool houses student or staff information that can be easily accessed by those teachers and administrators who need the information. This allows everyone to go to one place to access information.
• Parents can view their child's grades at any time with their protected login on a parent portal. This allows teachers to keep parents informed and involved in their child's progress at school. When everyone works together it increases our students' chance for success.
• PowerSchool offers videos to train new users. When we have new employees, the videos can be accessed at any time the employee needs as opposed to them waiting for someone to help them.

Incentivized

• Google Classroom is more stream lined, offers students the same functions as Edmodo, and is preferred among majority of students.
• Students are often locked out of their classrooms after 14 days, forget passwords, and have trouble finding class folders.
• Edmodo's platform has been relatively unchanged for the past several years and students seem to want to try newer applications and technologies.

Incentivized

• unscrupulous contract record keeping/amending documents
• ironclad contracts that allow no buyout for things like COVID
• billing practices where THEY got new software and could no longer autodraft but explained it like we didn't pay on time

• The user interface could be more intuitive. Because of the many features, it can sometimes be difficult for administrators to find what they are looking for.
• A recent upgrade allowing for more flexibility in the relationship between students and parents was long in coming and didn't go very smoothly. We are now dealing with a ton of clean-up after the upgrade. Even after we have cleaned everything up, there is still a ways to go before PowerSchool is on par with other SIS systems in that area. In their defense though, they are actively working on getting caught up.

Incentivized

Edmodo is a LEARNING tool. Not "one more thing" I have to use or integrate. It was my one stop shop for everything for my classes. More importantly, I was able to watch my students grow. My students who were timid, and quiet, became my discussion leaders. Students who didn't do their homework, never missed an assignment once I started doing "e-tickets" and discussion groups. Everyone felt they had a voice, which made our classroom community that much stronger.

The district is unlikely to change systems due to the cost of training and tech support to facilitate such a switch.

Incentivized

If used for its intended purpose, Edmodo is a great service. It's free, meaning teachers can actually afford it. Plus, it offers a lot of tools that make communicating with students and parents simple and painless, in addition to allowing basic assignments and quizzes. It's totally easy to learn, making it less intimidating to teachers who don't have a lot of time and who may not be completely comfortable with technology.

You can't use a kiosk within a hospital that is shut down for COVID; furthermore they put the wrong ad in the wrong place (reversed two of our ads)...the public facing ad was put in the employee break room and the one intended for healthcare providers was put in the ER waiting area. We only discovered this months later when we personally visited the hospital. They did reverse them but no concession was made for their mistake.

Great features, but it can feel very cumbersome at times

Incentivized

If there is an issue, concern, suggestion, or question, Edmodo support is helpful and willing to listen. Many Edmodians are former teachers and have a sense of how classrooms work. This is crucial when building a platform to use in education. Edmodo does an excellent job of staying connected and collaborating with teachers.

Incentivized

Overall, I have not had to use support for PowerSchool Student Information System because our school district gives us training in each area in which we will be utilizing PowerSchool Student Information System. In terms of in-user support, I feel that there is mild to moderate user support that is built into PowerSchool SIS.

Incentivized

Plan a little extra time to let them play with the platform with fun assignments. This made them comfortable submitting work, finding items, communicating with me or each other

When I first decide to think about changing our teaching method from traditionary to modern, online method, Google Classroom seems to the best one, because it is from Google, and everyone knows Google is the best, I lost so much time to receive the access for Google Classroom. So I researched about other online classroom platforms and when I found Edmodo, I gave it a try. And I can say that now, it's a good experience and I love It.

Incentivized

Each software I used in my career had special features which were specifically unique for them. PowerSchool Student Information System was an impressive software that offered the ability to ease student registrations and admissions online using web forms where students and parents could submit and upload their information and necessary documents to the school/institute with just a few clicks. Even though this feature is available on a few other similar software, PowerSchool Student Information System was the only software that was specialized in this area.

Incentivized

• Definitely better customer service! Once the parents figured out the tool and students were proficient with it. It was an excellent way to communicate student's strengths and weaknesses in their learning.
• Increased employee efficiency. Especially since teachers can share assignments easily too. And, as I've referred to many times, the grading feature is a huge time saver!
• A negative impact is we have had some cyberbulling. But, used the blocking features and handled it with face-to-face interaction with the students in question and their families.

Incentivized

• zero ROI...ZERO!
• huge expense of over $23k for NOTHING

• Having one system within the school district is beneficial. Teachers are able to access a variety of information and also do input all within the same program.
• Communication with parents has been impacted greatly, as they always have information at their fingertips without teachers having to call or email them with a grade update. Parents are able to check student's grades at any time.

Incentivized