Edsby

Avantages

Accessible to teachers, students, and parents
Maintains current grads, feedback, and announcements
File sharing of assignments great
Allows for confidential communication
Helpful for everyone involved in education

Inconvénients

There is nothing I dislike about Edsby, because it seems like everything bad gets patched quickly in their updates

Avantages

Its the best platform for students. We don't need to provide Mailbox to the users. They can see all school activities on Edbsy. They can communicate with anyone in organization.

Inconvénients

Sometimes it gets really slow. In general support is great but when we need a timeline to resolve the problem, they don't have it. It takes some times to get the new release out.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Edsby

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir Edsby 

Logiciel antérieur 

Pourquoi passer à Edsby

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir Edsby 

Pourquoi passer à Edsby

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Edsby

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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 day to day re: schedules - so attendance is often difficult to get correct. There is not enough flexibility to do so on our end. So the entire product looks shoddy to parents and students because times are rarely correct. It is tough for our attendance person to determine who is at school and who is not.

The calendar is cumbersome. It takes too long to enter items and it is no easy to read. We have to use a separate calendar system.

Messages are difficult to sort through (though the new sort feature is a great addition).

Looking at past semesters is not easy. There are too many clicks. A single screen with all past grades and links from it would be much better.

Avantages

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 about class updates and messaging. My students enjoy it too as it makes it easy for them to keep up to date on what's going on in their classes - NO MORE SURPRISES!
As a district software administrator, Edsby is incredibly easy to manage. The super search feature allows me to quickly and easily access student or teacher information when assisting schools with troubleshooting questions. Granular permissions make sure that the correct people have access to the correct information and not more than they need. EdsbyLink ensures that data imports match our current Student Information System.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

-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

Inconvénients

-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

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

It helps parents and teachers communicate.

Inconvénients

There is no customer service to deal with issues that come up.

Avantages

I love the ease of use and knowledge it provides.. tells me grades and what is due and when to keep track of my child..

Inconvénients

I didn't feel anything was missing...
I felt good about it all..

Avantages

What I like most about Edsby is the ease of use for teachers and students. This year, I've been working to save time and money with limiting photocopies. By posting work on Edsby, the students can view the assignment without printing. The students can complete the assignments and submit it online without any additional system. This software works great and it is a great communication tool.

Inconvénients

It is difficult to modify grades on a mobile device. In addition, I've request a gradebook filter so that teachers do not have to view the entire gradebook. It would be nice to have a filter for each grading period.

Avantages

It has everything in one: class lists, marking, calculating, parent communication, groups for student communication, at a glance information.

Inconvénients

I kept may marks on Edsby and had a student move away out of province. His profile immediately disappeared. When there were questions and issues about his marks from the new school, I was unable to provide history. When I wrote for support, I received no response.

Avantages

I like preparing exams on the site that can be graded automatically and sent to the grade book. I like that they can be timed or not. The fact that a teacher could build a huge library of tests that simply are dropped in to the right spot at the right time is very efficient.

Inconvénients

There are a lot of steps and boxes to tick when using the exam bank capability.

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

Good features, mostly intuitive and easy to use. Mostly timely and responsive customer service. -- although they may have set the bar pretty high. :-)

Inconvénients

I would like a bit more flexibility to customize to meet a specific community need.

Avantages

The best part about Edsby is all the amazing features it includes. You can store students grade and share them with students and parents, it's a means of collaboration space for the teacher, student, and parent to stay connected and up to date on student learning and progress. It also allows teachers to create test that can be assigned to students and the grade automatically populates in the grade book.

Inconvénients

I have no complaints about this software it is awesome!!

Avantages

everything you need is in one software package
live adjustments allowed on attendance
instant communication with students and parents

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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.