Schoology Learning vs. SchoolSpeak

Schoology does the job well enough, but there are enough areas of contention that make advanced use of the system unwieldy. District staff does not have easy reporting ability to determine adoption and use of the platform without having to export to another program for analysis. The reliability of the system is a huge pain point as we need to deliver the curriculum but cannot count on it being available when we need to use it.

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Specifically speaking, SchoolSpeak is best used and only really utilized in education. From K-12 it serves a great purpose in terms of parent interaction and direct communication with parents about child performance, attendance, and scores in school. At younger ages, I think it will be even more appropriate for it to be used to create strictly parent platforms for helping them enroll in things they can do at home for their kids, teach their own children, and monitor their own children—especially if they are stay-at-home parents, homeschooling, or the children are not enrolled in school yet. I think a great idea would be creating a parent portal for newborns with daily activities to do from birth through age three, when they may go to pre-school. This is the only additional option I think that SchoolSpeak could serve.

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• Assessments - Much more interactive and have more grading options than Google Forms
• Auto-rostering - We are able to use Infinite Campus to automatically roster classes and there are no extra steps
• Family/Guardian access - Schoology allows families to have a sign in and see student grades & work.

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• One thing it does well is one of the tools it incorporation, volunteer forms. These forms work for parents, teachers, and students. One of the hardest things to do is to get confirmation sign-ups and support. This streamlines the process of organizing events.
• The gradebook interface is easy to use and understand. In order to take attendance, complete grades and give assignments, SchoolSpeak actually is an easy platform to learn and is smoothly integrated.
• Archiving of past classes is easy to do and important because schools need to retain records for a long time after students have moved on.
• The platform lets you organize students and find them quickly by graduation.

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• While this product constantly seeks to make improvements, certain features need tweaking. As educators enroll in various courses, these course tend to accumulate. If the educator is not an administrator of the course, it is next to impossible to get out.
• Switching from one course/group to another course/group takes several steps. Not always easy to find the course/group needed.

• It can definitely have room for improvement in the design and template options. Using a more appealing layout like WIX or WEEBLY offer, but integrating the school speak platform into it would be a wonderful layout and great functionality.
• I would love to see social media integration. For business courses and media courses, there should be the ability to have social platforms connect directly and load within ShcoolSpeak. Social Media is the newest marketing strategy and it is left out of functionality here.
• Custom font downloads would make the design much easier and more attractive. The fonts they allow you to use are basic and overly common.

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While we have taken time to re-evaluate our selected 1:1 devices, Schoology's impact on student learning is unquestioned. Students are able to connect with other learners, create and share products of their learning, and develop their digital fluency through their use of Schoology.

It's very easy to use Schoology. As with any LMS, it helps to learn some tips and tricks prior to getting started. But, each item is clearly indicated within the platform. If I want to add materials, it is right at the top of my screen. If I want to view the calendar, it is indicated to the right of my screen. Navigating a course and the platform is quite straightforward. Additionally, the benefit of Schoology's help center and user community makes asking and answering questions quick and easy.

Generally good, but issue self-reporting has become a problem. When there are issues, it can be 20 minutes to an hour before it gets noted on the status page

Course saves or transfers can take several minutes and up to an hour

We have county-level support and district-level support, but their HELP page offers everything that is needed to answer questions and to find "how-to" information for staff. This includes video and written directions for every available feature. Schoology has also worked with our district to improve their product.

Too surface level with no follow-up. A

Sit and get with very little hands-on time. 5 minutes to try out a feature/question type, etc. is not enough time. Once your training is done, there is no option for new employees to get that training without having to rebook and pay for the training again. If you pay for basic training, that should be available to a district to use in the future.

I have taught using both Edmodo and Google Classroom. While both were easier than Schoology was to get in the beginning, Schoology is infinitely more powerful than either of them was. I can do so much more, and differentiate so much easier using Schoology than I could with either of my previous LMSs.

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Moodle Rooms is a free platform but involves the need to be computer savvy. It is easy to use as well as SchoolSpeak. However, SchoolSpeak does have a direct communication platform with parents something that Moodle does not currently offer. This itself is a huge competitive advantage. The comparison then becomes, would you like to do less work but purchase SchoolSpeak, or do more work using multiple platforms but they are free. The SchoolSpeak platform does offer much more for the investment. Longer term and with full school integration, the investment is worth it. If you were to mandate using a platform, it should be SchoolSpeak because there are fewer risks associated with having to coach and education teachers, and less risk of complaints.

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We use it 5-12 so scalability is not an issue but sharing materials between departments including common assessments is difficult without paying for add-on features

• Using Schoology to build a foundation for a blended learning model has helped increase my students ABC rate between 15-20% in all classes!
• Using Schoology is forcing my students to become responsible for their own learning!
• The only negative thing I have encountered is the students resistance to change!

• Positively speaking, it has a positive ROI. Although expensive, the platform does solve issues that we as educators have in giving parents daily information about their child in school. It is difficult to email all parents or call all parents, but a one-click platform really saves time and is worth the investment.
• Negatively, there is a cost associated, and therefore, sometimes teachers can be given more work instead of buying a platform like this. Using other free tools could be more time consuming but cheaper.
• Using School Speak we have seen parent involvement increase.

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A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info