My Take
Over the past few years, mammoth heights elementary school has been using the system such as i-Ready learning. This system in general is good for student learning, but there are huge problems to be solved. While i-Ready may be a reliable source for learning, there are several flaws to be fixed and we should most definitely stick to physical learning for these reasons.
One of the flaws with this system is the lessons. Students that may already know a lot of subjects but are missing just one will be sent to a lesson on that one, but instead of filling in the gaps on other subjects or don’t know on i-Ready, they immediately get sent by algorithm to the next set lesson on “My path” meaning they may just be getting retaught the same subjects over and over and over again. This may mean that students will get bored, disencouraged, and maybe even have a drop of productiveness. This will counter the meaning of i-Ready lessons, and all together will lead to multiple disadvantages. While others may argue that i-Ready expands lessons in creative ways, while that may be true this still does not counter the fact that it can be the following lessons I just listed. And as if that wasn’t enough, some schools require students to do i-Ready a certain amount. If not, a grade drop is possible.
Another flaw of i-Ready is how the actual lessons work. A lot of the time when you get something wrong, the lesson teaches you what you did wrong and teaches you creatively how you can get the answer. While this is good as a teaching perspective, occasionally it gets out of hand and it will take around 2 for the lesson to explain the right answer. I’m ok with this, but there is no prolonging of explaining needed. It would solve this problem to ask the student how familiar you are with the subject, and depending on what they say you get more or less explanation. This would change a lot of flaws with the system of i-Ready. Additionally, if this were in place we could also make i-Ready monitor how well you're doing at lessons. If you haven’t failed one, it could up the level, opposite for if you're failing a lot. This would help out with what level to find, as eventually the failing ones will find just the right lessons and the successful will find all the challenging lessons, and if they fail the next level, they would get sent back a level on a not done previous level lesson. i-Ready is not nearly as effective learning wise when it comes to physical education.
Yet another flaw of the iready system is that it only teaches one way. It teaches straight forward and doesn't allow many people with disabilities to engage. It also shows some questions that have multiple answers and only allows one answer as “correct”. Multiple of i-Ready’s reading lessons have questions that could be purely based off of opinion, and the source “Common Sense Education” even goes as far as saying that it's a huge waste of time and can even prevent students of all ages from learning. On their website they rated i Ready ⅕ stars on education. i-Ready is also able to cause stress, frustration, and burnout of students after just 1 or 2 lessons, and almost get no knowledge out of it. The community rating is 1.14 stars overall, and it is in need of improvement and fixing.
Overall in the opinion of mine and several others, i-Ready isn't a good learning program, and is in much need of work and improvement. Even though occasionally you can learn something from one lesson, a lot of it is mostly boredom, stress, anxiety, and frustration along with some students possibly getting the idea that their opinion is wrong. Thus this concludes why i-Ready is bad as a learning program, and only in 677 words.
How I Use It
i dont use this resource