Schoology

I’m a longtime teacher and instructional designer in the Metro Nashville Public Schools Learning technology Department. We are fully into our first year of implementation of Schoology.

Simply put, Schoology has an incredibly intuitive user interface and a remarkable adoption rate even without training/support. Our teachers are struggling less with learning what all the “buttons” do and how to navigate the system. We are seeing them use Schoology’s more advanced and impactful tools right out of the box. Schoology lets teachers focus on instructional planning and provides standards-based data for timely decision making. It also allows for quick and easy “personalization” by providing the ability to create grading groups and assign content individually. If you’ve never tried it, sign up for a free account and give it a go. If you’re a district selecting your next LMS be sure to include Schoology in your decision making process. Questions? Visit Schoology’s fantastic Help Center – https://support.schoology.com/hc/en-us.

Schoology helps teachers provide more of what students need (content, resources, ability to engage in 4Cs, rich feedback on assignments and assessments) and helps them get more of what they need from students (progress on where they are achieving, communication, collaboration, etc).

The Archbishop of York Youth Trust has been running social action awards for over 5 years throughout the north of the UK. However, our vision was to allow the award to run by any school internationally. After a comprehensive analysis of LMS and VLE platforms, we settled on Schoology. The platform we chose needed to allow for excellent communication, a superb facility to deliver excellent bespoke content and equally as important the facility to collect both teacher and student evidence. We needed a platform we could lock down where needed and open up if required. Schoology ticked all out specific boxes.

Pros:
+A huge community of teachers and learners looking to sharing their experience and support one another in the usage of the platform.
+A recognisable user interface which makes the learning curve for new users simple and intuitive.
+Superb flexibility to create bespoke learning environments for teachers and learners.

Cons:
– Some limitation of iframe embed due to the HTTPS protocol requirement. Use of HTML code editor often strips the inclusion of more advanced features such as Java functions.
– Limitation toe badge and gamification of learning.
– LTI integration not fully functional, relying on apps developers to plug the gaps.

Return on Investment
• Positive feedback from instructors who find the platform easy to use.
• Excellent feedback from stakeholder investors who are able to see transparent elements of the platform through unique profile settings.
• Positive feedback from Administrative staff who find the platform simple to use and yet complex enough to complete day to day tasks.

Alternatives Considered
• Campus and Blackboard

Schoology’s community of teachers is huge and built within the platform which means you feel supported from day one in the platform. The free ‘basic’ accounts also mean that you can experiment with the platform before signup to the enterprise version.

I use this tool as a learning management environment for my classroom. Students are able to work through their units at their own pace. This allows me to work with struggling students and at the same time encourage those flying by to advance their studies further. Schoology has a strength in making it easy for the elementary student navigate their site. In addition, the Google Drive Assignments allow for an instantaneous feedback where the user can also provide gamification badges directly in Schoology. In my situation, I customize Schoology by making everything easily accessible to my students. I create a folder of challenges that students personalize to their learning.

I would recommend Schoology to any district with a 1:1 computing initiative because it brings the learning experience full circle through the ease of use and the incredible workflow that allows it to be the district’s one stop shop.

I currently use Schoology for professional development needs throughout my district. I create varying modules on edtech tools and pedagogy trends that teachers can access and complete at any time they like, and work throughout the year to complete at their own pace. Previously, I used Schoology as a classroom management/organization tool, then proceeded to use all of its tools within to gamify my high school English classroom. Schoology boasts a lot of nice features- enhanced google drive integration( coming soon), online test/quiz builder, badge creation, and an embed code feature to integrate other edtech tools. You have the ability to share things with the whole class, or groups/individuals, however, you are unable to share an entire unit/folder of stuff with an individual. This makes it a tedious task when assigning individual materials to individual students. Currently, I have customized Schoology to best fit my current district’s needs with professional development. I have continued to revamp our professional development model to include a fun, gamified atmosphere. Comparing Schoology to other LMS programs out there, I would HIGHLY recommend Schoology to others in education. There is a wealth of tools and abilities housed within that truly make it a personalized learning space.

We are using Schoology as the perfect compliment to our 1:1 Initiative with Chromebooks at the middle school level. Our students have been collaborating for years but Schoology gives them more access to materials, organized resources and a way to communicate with teachers. Schoology has given our students and teachers what they need to maintain a digital classroom while offering so much more. We are using it to create team pages, blogging, parent updates, communication, assessments, data review and progress monitoring. I would recommend Schoology to anyone for its robust capabilities, simple customization and ease of use.

I’ve used several different LMS’s over the years (Blackboard, Angel, Moodle…)  When I tried Schoology I was pleasantly surprised by the easy of use, clean interface, simplicity. Imports common course cartridges from other LMS’s easily. (Even Moodle mbz files.)  Media library takes a variety of different video types, converts them (ala YouTube) to a format that will play online on multiple devices.  The iPad app works cleanly and can do just about everything the web app does – it’s not a stripped down version. In fact, I know many teachers that prefer the iPad version to…

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So far Schoology has been the only LMS that has met the majority of my needs: Easy, Flexible, Aligned, Parent connection, Shareable with other teachers, calendar, grades (total points or weighted), Rubric Grading if wanted, Paperless, Google Drive integration, Assessment tools, and so much more. Oh yeah, FREE. That is music to my ears. Students are as engaged as you allow. If you utilize the features Schoology offers, they will be quite engaged. Most common comment from students: “Everyday I know exactly what is going on in class.” The only fault I see is that it sometimes gets “stuck” loading something and I have to refresh the page and reload. I highly recommend Schoology.

Unbelievable classroom tool! Our entire school uses the website for our classes to keep track of grades and attendance, keep students and parents up-to-date on daily activities, provide copies of important files and links, create discussion boards to aid student discussion, assess students with online tests/quizzes, and much more! The Schoology team is always listening to its users and tries to update their site to fit everyone’s needs. They also have apps for apple and android devices. Our teachers love the fact that teachers, students, and parents can all have separate log ins so parents can see their children’s grades and attendance and keep track of the class with them. We also love the facebook-like messaging system within the site to allow easy contact with parents and students. I highly recommend this to every teacher I meet! It is an unbeatable system!

Full-function classroom management tool, social networking platform, online learning tool. API integration with other popular apps. Instructional components are free for teachers and students. Parents can join student courses to follow along and monitor child progress. Facebook-like in appearance and navigation. Easy to use and easy to teach. One-stop document workflow. Classroom communication can be public or private. Mobile apps for Android or iOS. Outstanding collection of resources, many helpful groups to learn with! Highly recommend this excellent learning tool – Schoology.com