Lilly B.
I Wished for Death
(It won't let me put the date of experience to be accurate. No, I am not currently 7) As someone who is much older than when I used IXL, and someone who genuinely values and appreciates their education, I hated IXL. I primarily used IXL in second grade, when I was about 7. I was also in extra help classes because I had a condition that essentially acted like dyslexia. This caused me to have a very hard time with learning, reading, and math. My school would give a certain amount of time nearly every day for how much time we had to spend in school working on IXL. I don't blame IXL completely for this part, but I was bullied and isolated from other kids because I had a much lower IXL score. Thankfully, I don't still use IXL, but when I did, I couldn't work on it at home, and IXL certainly didn't teach me anything. I remember sitting in a corner in a classroom, using one of the grubby iPads they would give us, attempting IXL. I was hiding the fact that I was crying, because I just didn't understand what I was doing wrong. Most teachers use this because they don't have to grade or anything like that, but this, this app was torture for me. If you are a teacher, I can give you some great alternatives that still grant you more time to grade other assignments or things like that: I-Ready- You can give assignments or just have them do their pathway. You do have to have massive tests to place the kid where they are, but you will get a ton of data from it. I-Ready also can't share your data, and by doing assignments, they can get coins to play games, or they can play math-related games. You can also see how much overall time they spend on their assignments a week, how well they do on the assignments, and more general data on them.They only have English and Math, but it's so much better than IXL Khan Academy: This one is a classic, but here is some information if you don't know. They have videos and mini articles, they have things for most ages and most classes/types of information. NEWSELA: I don't know if this one counts, but I find it does. They have many articles, and in each article, you can choose the reading level. Teachers can see how well students do, and they have some quick tests. They typically have these: A vocab test, a comprehension test, a written answer test, and sometimes more. ABCMouse: Yes this is for little kids, then again, I loved this app. There is a subscription, but for ages 10 or so and below, this game is geniunely so fun, interactive and I actually learned from it. They have most genres, and maybe if you're a parent, you may find a lot of benefit. So if your kid is struggling with IXL and they are young, think about ABCMouse. Quizlet/Knowt: These two are very similar. They both have flashcard features, test, and vocab features. There are also some games, but you can see if the kids are mastering or learning some information. Blooket/Kahoot/Gimkit: You likely know Kahoot, but you may not know Blooket or Gimkit. They act almost identically. For a class, you could input all of the terms or questions for a test or something, and then it is a game. Kids answer questions to win various types of games, and you can see what kids generally struggle with. EdPuzzle: I don't use these often, but they do help people learn. Essentially, they have videos, whether they are made by someone else or by you, where there are questions about the video. I don't know much about the teacher's side of these, though. I'm certain there are more. I hope this helped, though. I don't want to just dog on teachers, so I gave many different other things. Please don't force your kids/students to use IXL; it hurts them.