For our EdTech Group Inquiry, our group decided to look at how FreshGrade could be used inside and outside the classroom, as a beneficial tool for students, parents, and teachers. We started by looking at what exactly FreshGrade was and how it could be used, we learned that FreshGrade was an online system that was designed to keep teachers, students, and parents connected. FreshGrade allows for teachers to design their lessons and schedules, give assessment and feedback on students’ work, and keep parents up to date with what their children are learning in the classroom. We learned that FreshGrade can also be beneficial for administration as principles can now use FreshGrade to create a community within their school, where others work can be showcased and everyone can engage. There were a ton of benefits to using FreshGrade such as the planning and organizing features, communication with parents and students, and the assessment features, but there were also some cons to using FreshGrade. FreshGrade does not support drawing, narration, or speech to text tools and it can become another task for teachers to keep up with, resulting with many not wanting to put in the effort. As we were researching for this inquiry we learned a lot about how FreshGrade can be beneficial for parents, and even had the opportunity to speak with a parent from school district 61 regarding what they thought about the program. In our interview, we learned that getting the most out of the program all depended on how the teacher was using FreshGrade in the classroom. Our interviewee said that he loved that his children were excited to show what they had learned at school that day and that this always sparked conversation about their day, and what they did in the classroom. He did mention that what you get out of FreshGrade all depends on what the teacher is posting, many teachers barely use it while others keep you updated with constant pictures and descriptions about everyday activities. He also explained that much of what his children’s teachers posted was not child specific, and did not include any form of assessment. We also learned about some of the cons that other parents experienced such as not having access to technology in order to view the site or that many parents are not comfortable having photos or videos of their children being posted for others to see. As we continued to research, we all realized that FreshGrade is an amazing program that would be very beneficial for future educators to get familiar with, especially here in BC as many of our school districts are using FreshGrade everyday in the classroom. FreshGrade offers many professional development day programs online to help educators learn how to get the most out of the program and can show how other teachers are using it within their classroom. We highly recommend that teacher’s check out our link below to look into signing up for their free class to learn how to get started with FreshGrade. We are very happy that we choose to research this amazing online program as it will be very applicable to our future careers and look forward to learning more about it in the future.
Link: https://learning.freshgrade.com/p/getting-started-with-freshgrade-1
