Edsby Reviews

The ease and familiarity of a social media platform with the security and transparency of educational software. I can respond to my students questions from anywhere in the world at anytime and I know that our interaction is transparent for their security and mine.

The gradebook takes some getting used to and doesn't have all of the functionality of a dedicated platform.

The company is based in Ontario, Canada and focuses on K-12 education which is exactly where my school lands. As a result, many of the changes and customization are geared towards my school. Most the major LMS companies are based in the US so their focus is naturally there.

It seems like the number of customer service staff has not grown at a rate that can accommodate the number of clients that Edsby is accumulating. This has resulted in excruciatingly slow response times, especially around September and October.

I mainly use Edsby for it's gradebook and report card features. I find it very easy to work with and like to it auto-saves information that is input.

It is not as user friendly for students and parents as it is for teachers and administration. It freezes and locks students out often.

Generally intuitive and clear. Student and parent contact info is easy to find. Posts are easy to make.

It is remarkably easy to get lost or miss important items as a user of any type (teacher, student or parent). There is no ability to prioritise certain classes or threads, and the only way to post items is in the rolling general chat thread. The pinned item space is a limited area in the left margin, so to find anything you have to (1) go into the correct class/course and (2) scroll down past all other posts (including student chatter) to hopefully find the right thing in the timeline. If students or teachers are registered for multiple classes, there is no way to pin, prioritize or re-organize the order of classes, either for yourself or for your students. This means that 'Homeroom' is buried under a mountain of inactive classes or classes I'm no longer teaching.

I'm sorry you're having an unsatisfactory experience with Edsby. Edsby was built in Ontario for the needs of Ontario educators. If you haven't used Edsby's ON Ministry Growing Success-friendly gradebook, you're missing a huge part of the value of Edsby. Re: ordering Edsby classes and groups, click and drag them on your Edsby desktop into any order you like. Your reordering is respected on all devices....

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1. Intuitive layout 2. Very user-friendly for both teachers and students 3. The ability to incorporate various attachment formats such as .jpeg hyperlinks and .wmv files

I wish when accessing assignments for marking in the grade book the list on the right-hand side would show I have marked it and not require I click on the assignment on the list on the right in order to affect the number of unmarked assignments. I open the assignment and add comments by clicking on the assignment from the list on the grade book screen.

Clear and easy to use. Accessible in mobile and regular format. "One-stop shopping" for your educational communication: space for anecdotal and numerical grades, ability to communicate directly with students and or parents, attendance entry and communication with the office. Edsby allows parents to monitor their child's completion of assignments, grades, and what has happened each day in class. Students who are away on family vacations or sports trips can keep track of what happens in class. Teachers can post handouts as well, giving students the ability to complete homework even if they forget a binder at school. Simple and clear format.

I am generally pleased with how Edsby works. Any complaints I have are with small details. For example, the reportcard portion of Edsby lacks some of the features of a dedicated gradebook program. Also, I asked the customer service message board if there was a way to print out the curriculum expectations that we select for assignments (which are already in Edsby) at the end of semester, but have not received a response - customer service was much more responsive a few years ago.

Edsby offers a very successful communication tool to schools. Edsby links, Administrators, Teachers, Students and Parents with day to day knowledge of the academic and personal progress of students.

With COVID 19 is would be great if Edsby could integrate Edusafe Screening with their program.

Thanks, Jeanne. Appreciate you taking the time to share your impressions of Edsby. We're looking at how to best capture medical screening data. Watching for data standards to solidify.

VERY Student Friendly. Kids can easily navigate and find work

I wish the weighting of assignments and not just the points that could be scored.

Edsby gives us the ability to connect learners, parents and teachers so that all parties can rally behind the learning and experience of students. It is easy to use and yet has depth which allows our savvy teachers to continue to discover and share features.

There are always ways in which Edsby needs to adjust to new circumstances, but they are quite adept at responding to these new challenges.

I enjoy the way a class is organized in different subjects and how teachers can be co-administrators.

There is no way to set up a post to be published in the future or to pin it to the top of the conversation.

Thanks, Julia. To capture a sent post at the top of an Edsby class or group, hover over it (in a web browser) and select "Pin," like you would "Like", or "Reply." It's there. Looking at incorporating more features specifically for remote learning.

I appreciate the interconnectedness of all features and the flexibility of features. The features strongly support teaching practices through Ministry outlined documents such as "Growing Success". The Classroom (Parent & Students), and gradebook are very powerful features. The team is quick to apply feedback to make improvements to workflow and many time-saving features. Edsby offers the ability to collect qualitative data and process it quickly and easily in a manner that students, teachers and parents can understand. The capacity of the calendars and classroom river feeds far surpass many other platforms currently available. Students can have access to a modern classroom and new ways of learning that will support their learning immediately and in the real world.

The software often has bugs, and difficulty running some scripts. The platform sometimes creates redundancies through teachers and students. The number of redundancies sometimes make it difficult(slow) to use the platform efficiently. Ex. The form to adjust staff assignments and student assignments cannot be edited by admin since it can only be opened to all schools. Staff have access to more student records and other staff records that they should not. Looking forward to a sufficient solution to this problem and more consideration for classrooms that have different structures (ex. Special Education, students with modified schedules or schedules that are continuing to change).

Thanks for the candid feedback. Researching your issues, I learned Edsby had some problems at your district -- YRDSB, 123,000 students on Edsby at 200 schools! -- the first few months of this school year (2018-2019) but we're confident we've solved many of them. Re: staff access to student panoramas in some cases (such as in groups), we're looking at making all of these cases customer-configurable....

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The connections that it allows among families, students, teachers and administrators. The overall look makes sense with grades on one side, the feed in the centre and the courses and libraries on the other side. It is easy to read and fairly intuitive. As an administrator, I like that I can see most everything so with one piece of software, I can get a good sense of what is going on overall but I also can get granularity, as I need. I like the ability to Broadcast messages. I like the ability to get an overview of a student, current as well as past, and a peek into the future re: courses and grades. The Report Card feature works well.

NUMBER 1 by far: There are no administrative master switches to do things such as turn off all grades or make them universally the same for all classes. There are certain times of the year that the look for parents and students should be the same. I either have to get each teacher to do it or give someone access to get it done for everyone. This is annoying. The inability for Edsby to change from...

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Thanks for sharing your views on Edsby. Am pleased to share that your number one concern is unfounded - there IS a way in Edsby to do what you seek: you can push class setup options from a course model. Our head of customer success would like you to contact him so he can describe how to do this so you never have to manually do this again! He'd also like to find out more about your schedule concerns. You can reach him as bob(at)edsby.com or toll-free: +1 (877) 337-0070.

As a parent, I want to be able to see everything my students are doing quickly and easily. Edsby allows easy access to all of my students (I have 4 at 4 different schools!) from one dashboard for any grade level. It doesn't matter if I'm on the mobile app or in the browser, the information is easy to access. I can also reach out directly to their teachers. Recent updates have also enabled push notifications...

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New features come fast! Its hard to keep teachers informed of new features as they arrive and help them use the features to their fullest capabilities.

Edsby is an all in one solution. I use it for quizzes, rubrics, grade managing and reporting, sharing authentic online resources and scheduling. I love the fact that I can have students write a self-correcting quiz that automatically shows up in the Gradebook module. I have instant access to all my students' contact information, allowing me to easily contact them through messaging. Even though Edsby has a file management system, I can easily integrate Google Drive and other tools within it. It has made one step to closer to the paperless classroom easier. Edsby allows my students and I to stay organised and content and structure can easily be imported into the next school semester/year.

Some glitches are still present in the quiz maker where auto-saving sometimes corrupts the layout of the quiz. Attached files in quizzes get removed when transferring quizzes between folders. The end of unit/cycle names aren't visible in some-drop down menus if they are too long. Self-populating expectations no longer show up when you enter the expectation codes corresponding to them in the assessment creator. All these are minor glitches that can be ironed out through the customer service ticket system.

Meets our government regulatory compliance requirements. Awesome gradebook. Solid report cards. Pulls parent contact information, student contact information, teacher contact information, rooms and schedules from our SIS nightly. Changes are not updated in real time, but are updated within one day.

New features and updates are rolled out seemingly at the last minute. (ie 7pm notification of an overnight upgrade). Does not match the school year. Pull integration only with our SIS. Rigid roles. Parent account creation for parents that we want to authenticate with AD is problematic. Support department is only 2 people. Attendance is difficult. Does not allow users with multiple roles, ie teacher...

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Easy to use and view all schoolwork. Stay on top of my children's daily work and know what their grades are.

When you open an individual class it will not allow you to view the graph and assignments at the same time. Instead you have to go back to the class to open them individually. It makes viewing much slower. It would be easier if once at the class you could view both.

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No cons were added to this review

-Edsby effectively aggregates all my school-related info in one place - the class page is the most useful in showing lesson content, unit plans, daily journals, and upcoming assessments on one page -I can (obsessively) check my current grades for any class at any time -It's easy to keep up with school news and extracurriculars in different groups -Office Online integration enables me to view Word/PowerPoint/Excel documents without having the desktop apps installed

-Certain features from the August 2018 update are undeveloped, such as the Emoji confidence indicator and document preview in the Content library -The iOS app feels slow and buggy; it can take several seconds to load some class pages or groups

I loved the pedagogical documentation features.I can take a picture or a video of my student and all their hands on work. This is work that when my students would finish, it would be lost, the manipulatives would be placed in bins and their thinking would not be documented unless I would go around and had enough time to take anecdotal notes for all students on that project. Edsby saves me time, helps me organise my students work, values students voice and participation, helps record all of the assessment as learning done in the classroom.

I feel that the planner feature needs a lot of improvements. I would love to do all my planning online and then have a potential supply have direct access to them before coming to my classroom. It would also be a great tool to creating equitable working environments where all teachers use the same planners and are not "judged" on their technological literacy.

I like the fact that I can communicate with students and parents in terms of due dates, test dates, missed work (I post what I do in class everyday and attach any assignments), as well as progress in the course (missing assignments, marked assignments, etc.).

I don't like how I can't enter multiple mark sets at time. I also wish there were attendance sheets with dates at the top (not the blank mark sheets). I also wish we could make our own names for what goes in the mark bucket (the drop-down list is good, but I wish I could choose the names of some of my items - example: "Fitness" for phys ed class). I wish there was a save function for report carding because I've had it happen where I've lost my internet connection and therefore, lost my recent comments for students.

I like the organization of the Course plan as I appreciate the daily record of my notes and resources. I appreciate the interactive aspect of the wall for classroom participation. It's helpful that handouts can be posted to reduce photocopy waste especially since students often interact comfortably with online text.

The online platform that I used to use for my class website was a lot more visually appealing. The Grade book aspect is a little not-userfriendly and has less functionality that the previous program I used. I would REALLY appreciate the ability to separate formative assessment from summative. For example, I like to use the online multiple choice questions the gauge their thinking as we go; however, when I am looking at their marks, I do not want them to be included. It is significant enough that I will either stop using the online quizzes or I will choose another software for keeping track of marks.

Really like the electronic reporting system that allows parents and students to see students' cumulative learning via Edsby accounts. Communication with all stakeholders occurs very easily and reliably through Edsby, by way of class posts to share assignments, messaging, and sharing of results of assessments. Edsby has an unmistakable and positive influence on learning climate in school culture.

Messaging allows user to see current feed. It would be helpful to be able to search for particular information in feed sent previously. Locating and linking to curriculum expectations in Edsby's Planner requires a fair amount of scrolling. I found this feature easier to use prior to August, 2019.

The all-in-one functionality of Edsby is most helpful. Grade book, attendance, announcements, calendar, parent and student records/communication, seating plans, library of course material and bulletins for overarching course goals.

The Library does not serve me. I have to reupload my course material every time I teach the course, even if I'm teaching the same course twice in the same semester. I have to delete auto-posted files from the feed that end up in the library otherwise it will become quickly over-run, confusing and ineffective as a communicative tool.

Roy, you should contact the Edsby prime at your school or our support team at support@edsby.com - you can INDEED re-copy class libraries, and any curriculum you've developed in Edsby, from class to class. No need to reinvent the wheel every time.

Gradebook Messages Posting of Class content for reference Parent accounts

Unexpected changes - I know they get announced to us, and this is part of development How cumbersome it can be for parents to create an account and link to their students The mobile apps need upgraded in view and performance

Teachers can take attendance and send it to the office easily. I like being able to send messages to students and parents.

It is hard to find a thread of conversation in messages and I am not able to forward a message to someone or add a person to the conversation thread. It is sometimes difficult to maneuver from student to student when comparing or updating information. The same for parents.