Kiddom

Kiddom is a hybrid gradebook and standards-based personalized LMS (learning management system). Sign-up is quick and guides teachers through creating classes: adding students (and parents, if desired) manually, via class code, or by importing from Google Classroom. Assignment creation can be as simple or as complicated as users choose, with options to attach standards, select lessons, upload files, and assign by class, individual, or mastery level. Support for Kiddom is robust, but it can take some effort to find what you need, due to the variety of features and resources available.

The overall look of the site is clean but fairly basic, and the navigation is a bit tiresome, leaving users to do a lot of back and forth between pages. What sets Kiddom apart are the partnerships with many popular edtech companies, allowing users to add ready-made lessons and accompanying standards directly to their assignments. Teachers will need to spend some time up front exploring school and district policies and account creation options for the various resources (some of which require student emails). While Kiddom supports grade transfer from some sites, such as Khan Academy and CK-12, teachers will have to manually enter grades for other assignments. Grade entry can be a bit laborious without a fill-down feature or mass grading option of some kind. This, along with better autosave capabilities, would be a helpful feature to add.

In the right hands, Kiddom provides a viable solution for effectively using data to drive and differentiate instruction. Using it as a blended learning tool, teachers can connect students with relevant, challenging content and encourage student growth by providing access to resources that foster critical thinking, promote skill practice, and ideally, lead to concept mastery.

In terms of homework, Kiddom supports a flipped classroom model and can be an excellent way to provide written feedback and reach students who need more targeted in-class instruction. The ability for teachers to see which students are struggling, which ones are progressing, and which ones are breezing by can help teachers make informed decisions about content and avoid teaching to the middle. It allows teachers to leave the one-size-fits-all model behind, replacing it with assignments that promote student accountability, engagement, and growth. Such easy access to resources could lead to lazy instruction, however. In order for true differentiated learning to occur, teachers wanting to meet the needs of their students must be thoughtful and deliberate about their content choices.