Edmodo (discontinued) vs. Unique Learning 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 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.

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

• Differentiated into 3 levels but cover the same assignment.
• Ability to assign lessons for the week or the unit to help streamline planning. I can adjust as the unit goes on if needed.
• Keeps scores and data from their daily unit lessons.
• Unit pre and post tests are mirrored for good data collection.
• Benchmarks tie into lessons.
• I can get data for IEP goals too.

• 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

• 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.

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.

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.

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.

I still find it difficult to track student progress within Unique Learning System using unit checkpoints. Scores seem to disappear and I end up giving pre-tests again at the end for some students. I need a step by step visual for using GPS and how to use it to plan for IEPS. I find it difficult to change student modifications on the spot when I see the student can do more on a given day with less support. Planning for math is more difficult for me - the units seems disjointed and without comprehesnive lesson planning support. Recipes and Experiments are difficult - many fails from recipes or experiments that don't seem to be classroom tested. It is expensive on a teacher's budget to run trials for expensive recipe ingredients.

Incentivized

errors will show up

Incentivized

there have been few issues with login or glitches

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

The individuals helping have always been great. The response to requests for changes in functionality or reporting less so.

Incentivized

it was all over the place hard to follow along

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

good product

Incentivized

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

Unique Learning System is far superior to Newsela. The symbol support alone makes Unique Learning System much more appropriate for my students. One thing that I like about Newsela is the integrated comprehension questions within the reading. The students cannot advance until they get the questions correct, and I think that is a valuable way to reinforce their reading attentiveness.

Incentivized

todays weather would not load sometimes

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

• Time on planning - Unique Learning System provides a great pacing guide and lesson plans to use for all of its content. We have made a pace that makes the most sense for us, but are able to pull from the lesson plans different activities, modifications and accommodations, leveling ideas, resources, communication boards, standards, and objectives to provide to our administration.
• Data collection for SPMs - As Polaris keeps track of mastered and progressing goals, our administration is able to open our Polaris account and see in one small snapshot how our learners are doing towards our department goals.
• Quarterly Progress Reports - As all of our data for learners towards their IEP goals are housed in one spot and there is a "progress report" feature embedded within Polaris, it took the job of creating progress reports from taking several days and many hours to 2-3 hours for my roster of 15 learners. It has saved me so much time and energy.

Incentivized