Edsby Reviews

Pros

Clear and easy to use.
Accessible in mobile and regular format.
"One-stop shopping" for your educational communication: space for anecdotal and numerical grades, ability to communicate directly with students and or parents, attendance entry and communication with the office.
Edsby allows parents to monitor their child's completion of assignments, grades, and what has happened each day in class. Students who are away on family vacations or sports trips can keep track of what happens in class. Teachers can post handouts as well, giving students the ability to complete homework even if they forget a binder at school.
Simple and clear format.

Cons

I am generally pleased with how Edsby works. Any complaints I have are with small details. For example, the reportcard portion of Edsby lacks some of the features of a dedicated gradebook program. Also, I asked the customer service message board if there was a way to print out the curriculum expectations that we select for assignments (which are already in Edsby) at the end of semester, but have not received a response - customer service was much more responsive a few years ago.

Pros

I appreciate the interconnectedness of all features and the flexibility of features. The features strongly support teaching practices through Ministry outlined documents such as "Growing Success". The Classroom (Parent & Students), and gradebook are very powerful features. The team is quick to apply feedback to make improvements to workflow and many time-saving features. Edsby offers the ability to collect qualitative data and process it quickly and easily in a manner that students, teachers and parents can understand. The capacity of the calendars and classroom river feeds far surpass many other platforms currently available. Students can have access to a modern classroom and new ways of learning that will support their learning immediately and in the real world.

Cons

The software often has bugs, and difficulty running some scripts. The platform sometimes creates redundancies through teachers and students. The number of redundancies sometimes make it difficult(slow) to use the platform efficiently. Ex. The form to adjust staff assignments and student assignments cannot be edited by admin since it can only be opened to all schools. Staff have access to more student records and other staff records that they should not. Looking forward to a sufficient solution to this problem and more consideration for classrooms that have different structures (ex. Special Education, students with modified schedules or schedules that are continuing to change).

Pros

I like the ability to be able to copy an assignment to multiple classes rather than creating it multiple times. I also like the ability to create assignments student can complete online with auto grading. That is a huge time saver.

Cons

There were quite a few things that could be improved. The reporting of progress alerts was not the best and the presentation of a line graph as the first view for students as opposed to actually seeing the list of assessments with scores was always problematic. Many students never figure out to click on the next tab and never had a good grasp on their scores. Also, there were some features that were really handy that I NEVER knew about in 3 years of using this product, until all the e-learning took place and there became a sea of information to sort through. Although overall a decent product, I could continue...

Pros

Edsby is an all in one solution. I use it for quizzes, rubrics, grade managing and reporting, sharing authentic online resources and scheduling. I love the fact that I can have students write a self-correcting quiz that automatically shows up in the Gradebook module. I have instant access to all my students' contact information, allowing me to easily contact them through messaging. Even though Edsby has a file management system, I can easily integrate Google Drive and other tools within it. It has made one step to closer to the paperless classroom easier. Edsby allows my students and I to stay organised and content and structure can easily be imported into the next school semester/year.

Cons

Some glitches are still present in the quiz maker where auto-saving sometimes corrupts the layout of the quiz. Attached files in quizzes get removed when transferring quizzes between folders. The end of unit/cycle names aren't visible in some-drop down menus if they are too long. Self-populating expectations no longer show up when you enter the expectation codes corresponding to them in the assessment creator.

All these are minor glitches that can be ironed out through the customer service ticket system.

Pros

Meets our government regulatory compliance requirements. Awesome gradebook. Solid report cards. Pulls parent contact information, student contact information, teacher contact information, rooms and schedules from our SIS nightly. Changes are not updated in real time, but are updated within one day.

Cons

New features and updates are rolled out seemingly at the last minute. (ie 7pm notification of an overnight upgrade). Does not match the school year. Pull integration only with our SIS. Rigid roles. Parent account creation for parents that we want to authenticate with AD is problematic. Support department is only 2 people. Attendance is difficult. Does not allow users with multiple roles, ie teacher who is also a parent. Developments don't necessarily match school year. Lacks a threaded discussion board. Planning does not support backwards design. Calendars do not at this point have iCal feeds. No internal auditing of planned absences, so if a planned absence exists for a group or a class, if there is a change in the enrollment of the group or class, the planned absence is not modified for the user who changed enrollment. No list of known issues.

Pros

Edsby offers a very successful communication tool to schools. Edsby links, Administrators, Teachers, Students and Parents with day to day knowledge of the academic and personal progress of students.

Cons

With COVID 19 is would be great if Edsby could integrate Edusafe Screening with their program.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Edsby

Pros

I think the GRADE BOOK is very user friendly. It is very easy to create, organize, update and display assignment evaluations for students and parents.

Cons

My frustrations are minor. Not being able to remove groups from MY GROUPS that are not relevant to my teaching activities is a minor issue. A more flexible consolidation feature in GRADE BOOK would also be an improvement.

Pros

Really like the electronic reporting system that allows parents and students to see students' cumulative learning via Edsby accounts. Communication with all stakeholders occurs very easily and reliably through Edsby, by way of class posts to share assignments, messaging, and sharing of results of assessments. Edsby has an unmistakable and positive influence on learning climate in school culture.

Cons

Messaging allows user to see current feed. It would be helpful to be able to search for particular information in feed sent previously.
Locating and linking to curriculum expectations in Edsby's Planner requires a fair amount of scrolling. I found this feature easier to use prior to August, 2019.

Pros

Edsby does an incredible job of making it easy to allow students and parents to see what is happening in class as access documents from class while away from school. It is a great place for teachers to be able to record grades, conversations and observations, which is required by the ministry. It is very user friendly and allows for most of the school needs to be in one place.

Cons

The grade book is wonderful to have, however many of my staff would love to be able to print out individual documents to share with parents or an easy way to print out the grade book.

Pros

Ease of access; ease of finding information; ability to tailor content specific to school's needs; user interface for administrators and end users

Cons

Wait times to speak with customer service can be frustrating

Pros

The all-in-one functionality of Edsby is most helpful. Grade book, attendance, announcements, calendar, parent and student records/communication, seating plans, library of course material and bulletins for overarching course goals.

Cons

The Library does not serve me. I have to reupload my course material every time I teach the course, even if I'm teaching the same course twice in the same semester. I have to delete auto-posted files from the feed that end up in the library otherwise it will become quickly over-run, confusing and ineffective as a communicative tool.

Pros

Edsby is very handy for grading and communicating with teachers, students and parents. It is essentially a social media platform that has been designed for a school community. I really like how functional the grade book is and how students can see their grades in realtime. The messaging and search features are also excellent and help keep everyone up to speed.

Cons

There are some bugs in some of the newer features like quizzes and polls.

Pros

The program is visual and easy to use.
There is an APP so students have easy access to information AND less paper is required eg. homework handouts, timetables. etc.
The parents can easily access their child's school information (attendance, marks, etc.)

Cons

One can't do a search within the posts in a group
Information doesn't always sync correctly from our main database.

Pros

Been using Esdby for years, on a daily base with classes, to share or collection information from my students/parents/staff. From the voting buttons, to notifying us when messages have been read and the classroom rosters sheets; Edsby is an Awesome classroom management tool - easy to use too! *****

Cons

I'm still waiting for them to put a time stamp feature - which would allow me to select when I want posts to appear to my students.

Pros

everything you need is in one software package
live adjustments allowed on attendance
instant communication with students and parents

Pros

It helps parents and teachers communicate.

Cons

There is no customer service to deal with issues that come up.

Pros

I love how easy it is to enter grades for my students and categorize areas.
It is easy to communicate with students and parents using this platform.

Cons

Not being able to utilize Terms. I hate seeing data for the entire year.

Pros

It's easy to collaborate. I like that we have staff groups and can easily update each other. I also like the observation feature to keep up to date with behaviour concerns and issues.

Cons

No notifications is tough because I often miss messages or notifications for things when I am busy.

Pros

Accessing attendance electronically via Edsby, marking multiple students and creating planned absences has allowed me to be more efficient in my day to day.

Cons

The ability to reach our whole parent/guardian community. In the past we've had a blog that we've posted news and events to. Edsby does not allow us to format an email - bold/italics, insert graphics, tables, bullets, etc. If a parent/guardian has not subscribed to Edsby, we have no way of getting information to them. Ideally, we'd like to be a paperless school, but without having the option to reach our whole community, we're unable to do so.

Pros

The ease of use and ability to create numerous pages and groups. In addition, the report card and assessment tracking system is all we could ask for. Finally, the privacy settings and ability to invite and block certain groups is seamless which is very important for a school

Cons

As many areas in education constantly evolve, so does the need for shifting the way we do things online. Edsby doesn't always have stock items already built into the software; so, occasionally we need to ask them to create it for us. However, they are always responsive and get this done in a timely manner

Pros

Edsby is a fantastic tool for educators. Unlike other Learning Management Systems (LMS), Edsby is easy to use and does a great job of integrating teachers, students, and parents into the ecosystem.

Cons

Sometimes Edsby pushes out incremental upgrades without warning and the results are often buggy.

Pros

The ease of use. The ability for us to accomplish many things in one platform. We can keep our calendar, grades and report cards all in one place.

Cons

We need to add a few more features for it to meet our SIS needs. Although it's not an SIS, it is very close. If we could input items related to health cards, health information and a few more customizable inputs, it would help us even more.

Pros

Edsby is a great place to keep everything organized for your class. You can do a lot with it, and really helps with students who accidentally keep losing all the handouts you give them.

Cons

There are a few little bugs that can be annoying. It needs to work far better as a mobile app. On a computer it's great.

Pros

Communication. With parents, students, collegues and clubs. Having a central hub for communication has been amazing.

Cons

I would like the gradebook to be more transparent and have a bit more functionallity wrt weighting. Also, it can be a little frustrating uploading images, and the library doesn't give enough information about the files I've stored in it.

Pros

Access from anywhere but the teacher app needs more functionality.

Cons

The LMS feature could be more intuitive and the teacher app needs improvements for marking.