Edsby reviews

It is exactly what I've been looking for.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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

K-12 Social Networking Based LMS

Opmerkingen: Overall, the Edsby platform excels at social communication and K-12 school management. I wouldn't necessarily call it a proper LMS just yet because it only recently added the functionality to build asynchronous courses and import SCORM based learning modules.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

Good in single classes, too labyrinthine for a whole courseload.

Opmerkingen: I've taught and learned via a host of LMSs, and as currently configured Edsby just isn't up to scratch for complete online learning. It works well enough as an adjunct to in-person learning, especially at the elementary level. Parent contacts works well, although my own classes are missing emails and I'm unsure why that is. I haven't used the gradebook yet so I can't comment.
If I was to ask the dev team for 2 things they would be:
1) Make courses pinnable, and possibly even mutable. Allowing user customization will go long way.
2) Separate tasks and discussion. Student comments should never bury teacher announcements.

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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.

Best K-12 LMS I've Seen

Opmerkingen: We run a school of nearly 900 boys. We communicate with parents and students. We run online courses and we managed to remain fully active throughout the COVID 19 pandemic without missing a day of class.

Pluspunten:

The set up is very easy, the functionality is incredible, and the end user experience is great. Whenever I show new teachers how to use Edsby, they are amazed at how simple it is and just how many features they can use to enhance their classroom experience.

Minpunten:

There are a few customizations that would be helpful - the messaging feature could be improved with the storing of messages in folders for easier access for example.

The Best Educational Management Tool Solution

Opmerkingen: I find Edsby is the ideal all in one classroom management tool. Edsby allows me to present lessons with a variety of image and video formats, evaluate, post results with comments in a way that resonates with students and is accessible to parents.

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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.

Excellent LMS that organizes learning in one place

Opmerkingen: Overall, I have had an excellent experience with Edsby because of how it organizes all of the important educational resources into one place. I also appreciate how many different features it offers, including courses and groups, and look forward to trying them all out in greater depth.

Pluspunten:

Edsby is a one-stop shop for educators. It combines all the basic everyday functions, like taking attendance, updating daybooks/lesson plans (journal), and assessing learning, into one convenient place. The journal feature is especially useful as it allows students to follow along with a course if they are absent, saving teachers from needing a "what you missed" folder. In the journal entry, teachers can type up the class agenda, include links to resources, and attach any necessary documents. For evaluation, the Edsby Gradebook allows teachers to set up course breakdowns at the beginning of the year (easily copy from one section to another) and then create a wide variety of assessments that directly get entered into the Gradebook or formative assessments that allow educators and students to track learning over time without impacting a grade. Edsby also allows users to select various methods of assessing learning, such as letter grades, percentages, learning skills, creating rubrics, or simply entering a "mark out of". Then a variety of reporting formats are available, including generating a report of incomplete assignments or filling in report card comments. Edsby also allows for creating whole courses that can be shared between teachers, a feature I am still exploring. Outside of courses, Edsby's groups allow for collaboration between teachers and students. Professional Learning Communities are especially useful and allow teachers to share resources.

Minpunten:

Though Edsby's messaging feature is convenient for communicating with students and parents, the interface is not as well organized or sophisticated as other messaging platforms. Not being able to sort chats, rename a group message, or thread messages makes it difficult to organize messages. The Edsby phone app is also difficult to use. The interface is clunky, making it difficult to navigate to the pages one is looking for.

Edsby for the Classroom

Opmerkingen: Overall, Edsby has become part of our daily routine at home and school. It is utilized by students, staff and families on a daily basis to keep us connected and organized while providing the opportunity to communicate with each other at a time that suits one's schedule.

Pluspunten:

Edsby is an educator's dream tool for the classroom. It is an online system that provides the opportunity to plan, create, support and stay connected to each student and their family. Uploaded grades in the Edsby grade book are live as they are shared with a click so students have access to their overall grades at all times. Students have access to their results all semester long versus waiting for midterm and final reports. This enables students to access their learning outcomes and goals while gaining a better understanding of course weighting. As an educator, you can send a broadcast out to students and their parents to update them on upcoming field trips, projects and learning goals. A daily journal keeps students focused on what needs to be submitted as well as insight for students who may miss a day of classes. Edsby interconnects every aspect of learning in the classroom into one multifaceted online program to support the entire educational journey for both the student and the teacher.

Minpunten:

The learning curve was not that hard and it did not take long to integrate this into our school community Looking back it was worth the effort to get everyone on board.

Useful all in one educational package.

Opmerkingen: I think Edsby overall is a fantastic tool that allows teachers to stay organized and allows easy communication with both students, parents and staff. It has made many of the routine tasks of teaching easier.

Pluspunten:

I think the GRADE BOOK is very user friendly. It is very easy to create, organize, update and display assignment evaluations for students and parents.

Minpunten:

My frustrations are minor. Not being able to remove groups from MY GROUPS that are not relevant to my teaching activities is a minor issue. A more flexible consolidation feature in GRADE BOOK would also be an improvement.

Awesome classroom tool

Pluspunten:

Been using Esdby for years, on a daily base with classes, to share or collection information from my students/parents/staff. From the voting buttons, to notifying us when messages have been read and the classroom rosters sheets; Edsby is an Awesome classroom management tool - easy to use too! *****

Minpunten:

I'm still waiting for them to put a time stamp feature - which would allow me to select when I want posts to appear to my students.

Edsby review

Opmerkingen: I enjoy using Edsby as a means of communicating with students and parents.

Pluspunten:

Easy to use and helps meet the needs of classroom teachers.

Minpunten:

Messaging system should be more like email. Deleting and forwarding messages. Report card functions not reliable. Must have folders to store and retrieve comments.

I use Edsby as a teacher in high school.

Opmerkingen: everything is now in one place.
the privilege of spending way more time entering marks and calculating final percentages

Pluspunten:

I like that 'everything" is in one place. I like that communication with parents (theoretically) is streamlined.

Minpunten:

I hate the gradebook. It is inflexible and does not give me the information I want. I don't like that every change is communicated so precisely to parents (for example if I change a grade, it adds a comment - isn't changing the grade enough? I can add a comment if I want to.) I don't like that each item gives parents the percent it is worth out of the total. It takes away from my professional judgement and allows parents and students to calculate their overall percent which is something our board has opted NOT to tell parent.s

I use Edsby as my class website, to track student marks and as my complete daybook.

Opmerkingen: The best part for me is the Course Plan with the daily organization allowing me to include PPTs, videos, notes, etc...

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

Edsby - best of breed and most comprehensive LMS

Opmerkingen: Overall: Excellent!
The support is not always as good as it should be, but that is really the only weakness.
The product is second to none.

Pluspunten:

Comprehensive - it does it all. See https://www.edsby.com/comparisons/?locale=en SO easy to use. The least number of "clicks" of any LMS for a given task. I actually had 2 teachers hug me in the halls after implementing Edsby - it is so much better than muddling along with "freeware" or the many other partial options out there.

Minpunten:

There is a constant development of new features, which is great, but is one more thing to keep track of!

Mostly positive--I like being able to do my planning and documentation and gradebook in one place

Opmerkingen: Better communication with parents and students and more timely feedback. Helps me build a better portfolio on each student so I can look at the whole picture during reporting.

Pluspunten:

User friendly and intuitive. It's a great communication tool to connect with parents, too, as they can see feedback. I like that I can make observations about students and record anecdotal notes.

Minpunten:

Uploading documents to attach to lesson plans rarely works--I often type a whole lesson and then when I try to attach resources it doesn't work and I have to eventually close and then my lesson isn't saved. I don't like that I can't print my lessons, either. I've asked several times for this to be an option.

Default Sort By First/Last Name

Opmerkingen: Over all I believe Edsby has a TON of wonderful features and could only be improved with some minor tweaks.

Pluspunten:

I like that I can change the Sort order of the students to sort the list by First Name instead of Last Name.

Minpunten:

I don't like that I have to set the SORT order EVERY time I go into my student gradebook - it should be either defaulted to the last setting or let me set my preference globally and have it stay that setting. I also think if I set it to sort by First Name the list should show the names as First Last - instead even though I select to sort by First Name it displays the names in Last First order. :(

I like that it's very similar to Facebook, a medium most people are familiar with.

Opmerkingen: Keeping parents informed quickly and easily. I try to post photos every day.

Pluspunten:

It's pretty easy to use. Similar layout to Facebook, which most parents are familiar with. Students can login pretty easily and get around.

Minpunten:

Tech glitches: signing on via iphone app, parents being able to post replies to posts, parents getting personal messages sent, etc.

Excellent way to communicate

Pluspunten:

I like that parents have the ability to be as involved as they want in what is happening at their child's school. It is easy to use, from an administrative perspective, and also from a parent perspective. Students have the ability to stay up to date on all their work, even if they are away. They are able to communicate with their teachers and the administrators of their school.

Minpunten:

I had a few issues with the classes not having room numbers last year, but that was quickly resolved! As of this moment, there isn't anything I would change.

Edsby is a great school management tool

Opmerkingen: Edsby is a great teaching and learning tool, but it needs to move forward to be more user friendly for synchronous learning.

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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.

The program works, but is not intuitive. You don't naturally figure it out.

Pluspunten:

There is a chance for technological support. They will try to answer your questions and solve your problems. They do not always come up with a solution right away.

Minpunten:

I find that I have to scroll down to do anything because the boxes you need to fill out for the journal entries are too big to fit on a screen. When you make an entry in the journal the first time you need to reopen it to add a unit title...a strange waste of time. When you print off marks, seating plans etc they are WAY too small for most people to see. A seating plan with pictures needs to be big enough to see the faces! Seating plans for split courses cannot be blended together...so they are useless.

Edsby in school office

Pluspunten:

Accessing attendance electronically via Edsby, marking multiple students and creating planned absences has allowed me to be more efficient in my day to day.

Minpunten:

The ability to reach our whole parent/guardian community. In the past we've had a blog that we've posted news and events to. Edsby does not allow us to format an email - bold/italics, insert graphics, tables, bullets, etc. If a parent/guardian has not subscribed to Edsby, we have no way of getting information to them. Ideally, we'd like to be a paperless school, but without having the option to reach our whole community, we're unable to do so.

Makes it possible to manage your course and communicate with students and parents easily.

Opmerkingen: It would be nice to be able to send messages to selected groups of students within a class. Currently I can only post a message to the entire class on the home page, or send individual email messages to students or families.

Pluspunten:

Available online and as an app - very portable. Prompt customer support. Email notification when someone has sent a message.

Minpunten:

Grade calculations are sometimes wonky, particularly at the beginning of the marking period. Messages are forwarded to email, but cannot be answered from there.

Appreciate being able to connect with teachers but not as easy to do as it should be

Opmerkingen: Better way to communicate with teachers to ensure messages get back and forth and can have a few communications before the child even gets home from school

Pluspunten:

Love the ability to: - connect with teachers - see homework & due dates - see extra learning materials - child being able to hand homework in

Minpunten:

I find navigation not always easy to do to find teachers or materials. I've tried to message a teacher to ask a question but had to look for an old email to reply to it instead of starting a new thread of conversation I'd appreciate it being very easy for my child to look up their schedule and what school day they are on for the upcoming dates Practice materials would be SO awesome to have sinc KPDSB doesn't like their students having homework in the Primary grades - afraid of parents doing the homework -- understandable but then my child comes home with results less than their capability without having some practice to help understand the materials. Thanks

It's been a great tool for our school community to keep all stakeholders engaged.

Pluspunten:

The ease of use. The ability for us to accomplish many things in one platform. We can keep our calendar, grades and report cards all in one place.

Minpunten:

We need to add a few more features for it to meet our SIS needs. Although it's not an SIS, it is very close. If we could input items related to health cards, health information and a few more customizable inputs, it would help us even more.

Robust Tool

Opmerkingen: It's a lot easier to stay organized with Edsby.

Pluspunten:

Edsby is a great place to keep everything organized for your class. You can do a lot with it, and really helps with students who accidentally keep losing all the handouts you give them.

Minpunten:

There are a few little bugs that can be annoying. It needs to work far better as a mobile app. On a computer it's great.

I've been using Edsby for 3yrs now and I find it far better than EdLine or BlackBoard

Pluspunten:

Communication. With parents, students, collegues and clubs. Having a central hub for communication has been amazing.

Minpunten:

I would like the gradebook to be more transparent and have a bit more functionallity wrt weighting. Also, it can be a little frustrating uploading images, and the library doesn't give enough information about the files I've stored in it.