Technology has the power to greatly improve equality in learning opportunities in K-12 classrooms. Not every school can afford the latest high-priced learning management software, but what if all you needed was internet access?
I recently had the opportunity to demo the personalized learning platform Kiddom and learned about a lot of cutting-edge features that are streamlining teaching.
Kiddom was co-developed by serial entrepreneur Ahsan Rizvi, former alternative educator Abbas Manjee, and growth engineer Jordan Feldstein. Manjee is a teacher by trade who once worked with at-risk students in the South Bronx. During his 6 years as a public school teacher Manjee used the technology available to him (not much, and not very advanced) to figure out ways to better teach to the individual student. His system worked but wasn’t as streamlined as he knew it could be. Manjee also knew from talking with other teachers that their own students could benefit from a streamlined system and with the added expertise of Rizvi and Feldstein, that hunch became a reality.
Today, tens of thousands K-12 teachers use Kiddom, some just for the gradebook feature and others for the full-platform experience.
See, what Kiddom creators got right is this: most teachers are haphazardly using multiple resources, aggregating on their own, and using a less-than-stellar grade book option because it’s all they have at their disposal. All of that takes up too much time and can frankly lead to some understandable frustration. Kiddom cuts right to the heart of that conundrum by consolidating resources and placing everything a teacher needs for lesson planning, grading, classroom organization, student tracking, and assessments in a central, easy-to-use hub.
Kiddom contains standards for all 50 states and updates its offerings when those standards change, making it easy for teachers to lesson plan and write assessments. In addition to classroom teachers, homeschool parents and groups have also signed on with Kiddom as a way to create lessons, track progress, and monitor state academic standards.
The end goal of Kiddom tools is not to simply automate assessments, though. It’s to create richer, more engaging projects by providing more time (and accessible content) for teachers. It’s amazing what educators can develop for students when they aren’t being overburdened with constant quick-fire assessment creation, grading, prepping for high stakes tests, and related tasks. Kiddom frees up that bandwidth so teachers can provide better learning experiences for students.
Teacher Influence
Teacher input is important to growth of the Kiddom platform, so the company has a team of advisors called the “brain trust” that use the platform and offer insight and feedback. Anyone can apply to be part of the brain trust group, and there are also less formal teacher message boards and forums that give teachers access to answers right away.
Some of the unique features of Kiddom include:
- A teacher’s control center, with detailed reports on student progress that inform next-step instructional details.
- Content library, with material for assignments, quizzes, videos, games and more. Some of the content partners include Khan Academy, CK-12, IXL, and CommonLit.
- Third-party integration, so teachers can sync with other classroom management tools they already use, like Google Drive.
- Direct teacher-student feedback.
- Concise rubrics for students that guide them on what they should be doing and when.
- Easy setup, with one-click student roster setup from Excel, Google or Clever.
- Student access to real-time reports on what they’ve accomplished, what is still assigned, and where they need improvement.
- Alignment and sharing ability for assessment material based on Common Core, state, or custom requirements.
- The Kiddom mobile app, giving students and teachers all the classroom resources on-the-go.
The affordability of Kiddom (it’s free for teachers and students) makes it a smart tool for classroom management. Providing equity in resources is so important in our at-risk student populations and I’m so impressed that this message is at the heart of what Kiddom offers. I like that a public school teacher is part of Kiddom’s leadership team and that classroom teachers continue to drive improvements on the platform.
To sign up for Kiddom for free and request a demo, head to Kiddom.co.
