My Take
As a college freshman who has used IXL all throughout High School and Middle School, dont do this to your students. Please just dont do it, there are so many programs out there that benefit you and your class as a whole more than IXL, this program has just caused so much time WASTED and tears shed. I am watching my sister (Grade 9, pre-calculus) use IXL and it has somehow updated the program to be WORSE? Once you get to a ' smart score ' of 80, the questions only bring you up in increments of 2 -- which I think is ridiculous. This is just promoting so much negativity to learning, I can't even imagine how students that use this program feel right now. The steps used in the explanation arent even correct half of the time too! I am actually in shock that people still choose to willingly give this program to their class and think that it is benefitting them. There are programs such as Edgenuity and Khan Academy that I would've much rather have taken than IXL. Either way I had to use them both to teach me the things IXL couldnt. I also think it's really degrading to students by using an interesting choice of words for their score such as ' smart score ', why would you use these words in order to tell the student their score/accuracy? Could've just said score and avoided so much self doubt to younger students using this program. I honestly could add so many negative things but I do need to go and teach my sister the stuff that she is trying to learn through IXL since the program cant teach properly!
How I Use It
I have used this program throughout High school and Middle school. Did not work to teach or give feedback to students, if anything it made them feel degraded and insecure. I wouldnt use this resource, ever.