Fun learning tool

My overall opinion about Freckle is one of despise. One of the worst parts about Freckle is the placement system, which abhorrently misplaced my students' skill levels. Every single one of my students was placed at a far lower level than their real skill level, creating boring repetitive work. This is one of the most important things Freckle needs to fix right away. Secondly, another large problem with Freckle is that it does not teach anything. Instead, all of the "lessons" in Freckle are just practice. There is a system for teaching new skills, but it is sub-par at best, and a majority of the time, it doesn't introduce any new skills or strategies and just repeats the ones all of my students have learned.

its nice

Overall, I find this product to be suitable only for providing extra practice to proficient or advanced students, or for remediating those working far below grade level. Even in the case of remediation, there is not enough flexibility in Freckle's interface to individualize a sequence of lessons to meet a learner's profile. The adaptive math feature does not appear to adapt to the user's ability level despite being advertised as such. It is not possible for a struggling learner to access vertical, prerequisite skills without manually changing that student's grade level. Practice problems are not properly sorted by lesson and reflect high levels of DOK, while provided examples only appear to address the lowest DOK of the standard. While this is a user friendly program, I would not recommend it.