Do you use IXL?

[Kanin]

I love IXL, but it's a lot. There is just so much in there. My students log in, click on their level, and see 200 skills laid out in front of them. They then have to scour the list to see which items I've "starred." There's no way to restrict what kids see to only the things the teachers wants them to practice. For my kids with dyslexia, it's even worse because they can't read the names of the things they need to do. 

I've had this beef for a while, and I finally contacted IXL about it. I have a phone call tomorrow to talk about how IXL works to make its site accessible to kids with learning disabilities. Yay! Guess I just needed to put the word "disabilities" in there to get some action. Lol.

My current ideas are:

1) Teachers/parents need a way to restrict skills to only what the the teacher wants them to practice. Dyslexic kids can't read all the titles. Kids in general are too young to independently navigate the site.

2) Video explanations rather than written explanations would be awesome.  

3) A big one - The way it is now, kids see the grade level of the work the teachers suggests. You can "hide" the grade levels, but then IXL labels them A, B, C, D, etc. and kids are smart enough to associate those with grade levels. It's too depressing for my 3rd graders who need to practice decoding CVC words to go to "Level B" when really they know it's 1st grade.

Anywho, if you use IXL, do you have any suggestions for how to make it more user-friendly for kids with learning disabilities? Or just kids in general? I'm tired of big edu-companies not caring about kids with disabilities. 

Thanks!

[Cymbol]

I Hi,

I use IXL for my son’s independent review.  He’s 7th grade working on 2-3 grade level.  If you are using the website, he can see the items you’ve starred under the recommended tab (top right).  I haven’t found that as useful as it’s supposed to be.  What I would really love is for all the starred items to populate within the current recommend wall or better yet on a separate wall.  That would be awesome.  Also, you may want the starred items to show up in the app (It doesn’t do that right now.)

I’ve tried different ways to use the program and end up with the following.  

Independent work - I have my son pick 3 math items, 3 LA items from the recommend wall and 2 diagnostic items.  My son uses the counter and does 10 problems for each item.  He checks off a table I drew up after he completes each item.   What he chooses to work on varies but I have found this works for us.  He can pick any skill except ‘next up’ or ‘try something new goals’.  It would be great to have the option to remove these.  I sent a comment to IXL that I wish I could turn off certain skills so they wouldn’t show up in the wall but they didn’t think that was needed.

Instruction time - We work on trouble spots and I pick out certain new topics I want to cover.  As we start these, they begin to show up in the recommended wall.  If I don’t have time for this and just want him to work on certain skills, I go his account and do a few problems I want him to work on.  I get them wrong on purpose so they show up on the wall for his homework.

 

Edited November 3, 2020 by Cymbol

[Kanin]

41 minutes ago, Cymbol said:

 If you are using the website, he can see the items you’ve starred under the recommended tab (top right).  I haven’t found that as useful as it’s supposed to be.  What I would really love is for all the starred items to populate within the current recommend wall or better yet on a separate wall.  That would be awesome.  Also, you may want the starred items to show up in the app (It doesn’t do that right now.)

Oh, I see the starred section now. Thanks! I agree it would be great if the recommend wall would go away, or just be starred items.