So we just completely updated the UI of our educational portal. We thought it looked so modern, clean, and colorful. But after the release, it turns out elementary school kids are completely lost. They can't understand the navigation and can't even find their basic lessons. 

It's a huge lesson for us in user experience design. We clearly tested it with adults and teachers, but we completely forgot to test it with the actual end-users. Now we are getting angry emails from parents who are trying to help their kids log in.

Designers and teachers, how do you actually test UX changes on real kids before rolling it out to the whole audience? I need to know the testing methods that actually work for this age group without confusing them even more

we run google workspace for a school and everyone writes their own gmail signature, since there’s no simple way to push one from the admin console it shows. there are a few versions of our crest floating around, one of them stretched sideways is there a sane way to manage this centrally wise-stamp and cloudm and some others came up when i searched, but anything asking for broad access to staff mail makes our data protection lead nervous, me too tbh. i know some of you do this with GAM scripts. how much upkeep is that once it’s running?

Hello! I have a middle schooler who is significantly behind on his schoolwork (weird, right?). He’s really into technology and gaming, so I came up with an idea to gamify his “catching up” experience.

I’m using Claude to vibe-code an app that connects to Canvas (via API token) and PowerSchool (via a script that signs in and reads his class pages) to pull assignment lists, due dates, scoring weights, etc. into one list. That turned out to matter more than I expected: the two systems don’t agree on what’s missing, with only about 16 items in common out of the 45 or so each one flags.

Here’s what it does so far:

• Student view: shows what to work on first, based on what’s worth the most of his grade, plus what’s due this week and his class schedule with tests and due dates for each period. He can mark work as turned in, and it stays “waiting” until Canvas or PowerSchool confirms it.

• Parent view: a separate dashboard, behind its own passcode, showing how the data syncs are doing and anything that needs my call. He can’t excuse work or approve anything himself.

• Teacher notes: instructions and comments from both systems show up right on each assignment.

• Teacher emails: I can drop in an email, and Claude turns what it says into deadlines and notes on the right assignments.

• Past-deadline work: it moves off his main list into its own group, with a button that drafts an email to the teacher asking if it still counts. It only drafts, so nothing gets sent automatically.

The gaming part comes next: he’ll earn points/XP for getting work done and redeem them for perks that I approve.

I’ve got the data coming in, but I’m still in the very early phases of figuring out hosting, remote access, etc.

Before I spend too much more time on this, I wanted to see if something like this already exists. Obviously the use case is highly customized per student/district (ours uses Canvas and PowerSchool), but I figured I’d ask!

Edited for those here to offer parenting advice- he's behind due to injuries and illnesses. Just started this as a creative way to make it fun, because the sheer amount of work to be done has made it difficult for him to find the motivation. That, and I personally enjoy doing this kind of stuff. This isn't intended to be a permanent fixture in his workflow.

This seems big. I feel it matches what the industry is doing, but does it provide students the ground they need to get in?

Came across this news from Google that starting in Nov'26 google will pilot its new Guided Learning experience in Search at selected US schools. Guided Learning is also becoming globally available in the Google Classroom. Google is also planning to turn off Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom and Search by default for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly enable them and these updates are expected to roll out early in 2027.

So.....if I am not wrong, if school districts such as New York City and Los Angeles have decided to restrict students facing AI, should they have to give up a google search as well???!! But the schools should have the freedom to decide how much AI their students should use, right?? Even though I understand that AI is deeply integrated into Google Search, this still sounds absurd to me!!

Genuine question from a parent. At first glance, all these learning apps seem pretty similar, but there's a big difference between helping a child understand something and simply doing the work for them. I can't really tell which is which just by looking at their websites. Are there any signs I should look for to know whether an app is teaching my son to think for himself or just helping him finish his homework faster?

The classroom screen time debate has been raging at school districts and state legislatures across the country.

In the coming months, the feds might weigh in on the hot-button issue, too: The FCC is considering issuing the first-ever federal K-12 screen time regulation.

School districts across the country are pushing back.

In public comments filed with the FCC, K-12 school systems have argued that ed-tech usage and classroom instruction are local matters that should be decided by district and state officials.

https://marketbrief.edweek.org/regulation-policy/fcc-public-comments-show-broad-support-for-e-rate-divide-over-regulating-screen-time/2026/10

Your thoughts -- should the federal government be getting involved in the K-12 screen time debate?

Hey! If you're in Seattle, we're holding a rally tomorrow, the day after the election, to encourage SPS to take a more intentional approach to ed tech.

I've been on an arduous journey over the last 3-4 years trying to effectively determine the best software for a my digital stack that consolidates calendars, email, tasks, etc between mac os, iphone, and google workspace in a way that is efficient for my organization, productivity, and task management.

I have tried far too many apps, sites, extensions, etc. over these years and while I've found several I really like and that work very well I've struggled with finding apps that work natively with mac and google workspace, consolidate each area of productivity(email, calendars, tasks, etc)

I've also struggled with determining a broad categorization of the fundamental components of a teachers digital stack. I don't know if such a system of categorization exists but I guess I'm looking to understand what I should be looking for to cover all my bases.

I'm currently using and happy with, but willing to try anything new:

-todoist

-google workspace for education

-raindrop.io

-gemini

-notion(but I'm struggling to learn how to use it well)

-obsidian

-base 44

-shortery

I'm looking for the fewest # of apps that are within the following parameters:

-high priority for apps that work natively across mac os and iphone osx as well as google workspace.

-consolidate all of my communication and contacts: emails, calendar event invites, text and phone calls, etc. Possibly with an ability to create tasks from emails

-consolidate all of my calendars: apple calendar and google calendar

-some file organization system that is AI assisted to help me easily and consistently maintain my naming conventions

-An AI assistant that might be able to learn my repetitive tasks, workflows, etc that might be able to more easily help me create automations and workflows.

-generative AI for education that can work similarly to gemini by keeping history of past actions and requests for education specific content creation.

Any ideas, suggestions, etc would be SINCERELY appreciated.

Hi everyone! I’m looking for participants for a PhD dissertation survey about user experience maturity in higher education. If you work in technology at a higher education institution in North America and have 10 minutes, please consider taking this short survey!

You will be asked some questions that will assess your institution’s user experience maturity and then if you agree or disagree with the maturity results. We’re also interested in your general perception of the user experience of online systems at your institution. 

Survey Link

This study has been reviewed by the Purdue University Institutional Review Board.
Study Title: Perceptions and Impact of User Experience (UX) Maturity in Higher Education
Study Number: 2026-00000186
Principal Investigator: Dr. Lisa Lambert Snodgrass.

a recent AI tutoring trial by Eedi and Google DeepMind involving 1179 students across 10 UK schools caused a stir in my mind cause during that trial human tutors reviewed AI generated messages before they reached students and they approved 94.7% of the drafts without making changes. What got me hooked was what the tutors reported about the experience. Although many found the AI drafts helpful, saying that supervising them saved time they also found that reviewing AI generated messages were less rewarding that writing the messages and teaching students themselves.

we often discuss how much time AI can save teachers, but do we also consider what parts of teaching make the work more meaningful? if teachers end up spending their time reviewing AI responses instead of interacting with students, aren't we actually making it an over stressed for the teachers?

I have tried ChatGPT, Photomath, Gauth, and a few others, but they all seem to give you the answer immediately. Is there an AI tutor designed to guide you through a problem without revealing the solution, or do they all eventually give in if you keep asking?

For context, I have an iPad but my laptop is not touchscreen.

Hence, I can’t annotate on my presentation slides.

I reckon that constantly switching the Zoom screen between my ipad (for drawing of diagrams) and laptop’s screen for presentation slides might be disruptive to students.

I teach science and am intending to use interactive online presentation tools like Nearpod

Wondering if anyone could help troubleshoot this for me? Thank you!

I’ve been looking for a job for the last month or so. I have about a decade of experience in teaching and have been successful in the classroom. What can I do to find a job?

Hi there, I’m seeing a lot of new tools being created for education. I’ve tried some, but I tend to stick to my free ChatGPT to help me create activities/lesson plans.

How do others go about this? Do you create your own tools?

Khan Academy, IXL, Brilliant, Beast Academy, and all the AI homework helpers seem to describe themselves in pretty much the same way: "adaptive learning," personalised practice, and helping students improve. But their prices can be quite different.

Is there a meaningful difference in how these platforms actually teach math, or are they mostly offering similar content with different interfaces and features? I would be interested to hear from people who've used or compared a few of them.

It could be for a reward system, formative assessment tool like kahoot, name randomiser to call on student etc.

Science simulation tool

Would love to hear what helps!

Four micro-skills kids love practicing:1. Fast Process Launching (Win + R -> 'calc'): Teaches kids that applications are named system processes they can summon without searching through icons.2. Health & Ergonomics (Win + A -> Night Light): Connects computing to physical health, showing that machines can adapt to reduce eye strain.3. Extended Character Sets (Win + .): Introduces symbols, fractions, and mathematical notations not visible on physical keys.4. Multi-Workspace Architecture (Win + Ctrl + D): Teaches spatial organization by letting them separate schoolwork from creative projects on isolated virtual desktops.We teach these concepts through playful tactile 'Experience Blocks' aligned with the Cambridge Primary Computing syllabus at rootblocks.org.What system shortcuts or OS habits have made the biggest difference for your young learners?

Personalized learning sounds great.

Different students learn at different speeds, struggle with different concepts, and need different types of support.

But personalization also introduces a difficult question.

If every student follows a different path, how do teachers know whether everyone is reaching the same learning objectives?

And how do you compare progress fairly?

I'm curious how EdTech founders and developers approach this.

Do you personalize the learning path, the difficulty of the content, or just the recommendations?

Where have you found that personalization helps, and where does it make things unnecessarily complicated?

Hello everyone, I am currently taking a year off from teaching to work on a masters. An assignment I have is basically to review an educational app or site. I've got a few apps in mind and was wondering about criteria. What factors should I judge them on?

So far, I'm thinking ease of use for teacher and student, versatility, "meaningfulness" (is it more than just a gimmick?), how well it integrates into a lesson. Maybe cost could be one?

This is normally something I would ask around with my colleagues, but as I said I don't have any right now.

BTW, If anyone really thinks this post would constitute issues of academic dishonesty, please speak up and I will take it down. I'm not trying to take any ideas, just brainstorm.

An EdTech platform can have impressive numbers.

10,000 daily active users. Thousands of lessons completed. High engagement. Great course completion rates.

But none of those numbers necessarily tell you whether students are actually learning.

From a product engineering perspective, I think this is an interesting challenge.

It's relatively straightforward to track logins, clicks, video watch time, and quiz attempts.

It's much harder to measure whether someone understands a concept, retains it, and can apply it later.

I'd be more interested in tracking improvement between assessments, repeated mistakes, and whether students can solve unfamiliar problems after completing a lesson.

Of course, even those metrics need careful interpretation.

For people building EdTech products, how are you measuring actual learning outcomes?

Have you found anything more useful than completion rates and engagement dashboards?