There isn’t any shortage of online classroom services available today. From Google Classroom to Otus to Edmodo, every service offers something a little bit different from the others. Kiddom is the latest entry into this crowded space.
Kiddom is a free service that enables teachers to create online classroom spaces. In Kiddom you can create and manage multiple classrooms. In those classrooms you can distribute assignments to students to complete and return to you.
One of the things that Kiddom offers to try to make itself stand out is an integrated search for assignment materials. For example, fourth grade teachers can search for mathematics assignments that are aligned to standards of their choosing. When a material is found teachers can then assign it to their students as a homework assignment, as a quiz, or as a long-term assignment. Teachers can also create assignments from scratch by uploading materials and or importing them them Google Drive.
Another thing that Kiddom does to try to appeal to schools is offer standards alignment within the gradebook. Teachers can choose from a set of state standards or set custom standards to align to each assignment.
I registered for a free Kiddom account and created a classroom. The process of creating a classroom and adding students to it was relatively straight-forward and easy. However, creating assignments was not as quick and easy as I had hoped it would be.
To create an assignment you have can either search for existing materials within the Kiddom library or upload your own. I tried a bunch of searches for high school social studies materials and never got any results. Then I tried to search for elementary school mathematics materials and I did get some results. I ended up uploading my own materials to create an assignment.
Once you’ve uploaded materials for an assignment you then have to choose if the assignment is for homework, a paper, or a quiz. Once you make that selection you then have to choose how you will grade the assignment. Your grading options are “no grade,””points,” or “rubric.” If you choose rubric you then have to create a rubric in Kiddom. After choosing how to grade the assignment you then have to choose which standard(s) are aligned to your assignment. Finally, after making all of those selections you get to assign a start date and due date for the assignment. But wait, there is still one more step of choosing which student(s) will receive the assignment.
Fortunately, grading assignments in Kiddom isn’t quite as cumbersome as creating and distributing them. To grade an assignment you simply go into your dashboard and choose an assignment. Then select “grade” and you can quickly see each student’s submission and either assign point values or rubric values to each student’s submission.
Kiddom is probably a fine service run by good people. It is in a crowded market up against behemoths like Google and Pearson so they’re going to have to do a little bit more in terms of making the assignment creation process a little better in order to stand out. Kiddom does offer free iOS app. In an increasingly fractured mobile OS environment they should add an Android app ASAP.
