Format: Website and apps for iOS and Android

Website: www.freshgrade.com

What does it help with?

FreshGrade enables deeper conversations about learning in the classroom. The portfolio and assessment platform captures learning in real-time while encouraging student ownership and increasing parent engagement. Designed for K-12, the suite of applications allow teachers to record evidence, provide feedback and track progression of standards and custom district objectives. Students, teachers, and parents develop a richer understanding of achievement and progress with a portfolio that documents the process, not just the product, of learning.

For Teachers

• Capture student learning through photos, videos, audio recordings, and notes.
• Store and/or share evidence of learning in students’ digital portfolios.
• Add region-specific objectives to activities to track specific outcomes.
• Set custom goals and objectives allowing you to support individualized education programs (IEPs) and connect with students in a way that supports their learning needs.
• Provide personalized feedback in student portfolios or create custom quick notes to save time by providing frequently used feedback.
• Streamline reporting choosing an assessment tool or create your own and seamlessly assess each activity in our Gradebook.
• Encourage student ownership by having students self-assess their work and reflect on the learning journey.
• Engage parents with push notifications and emails when student portfolios are updated, or information is shared. Parents can view and comment on portfolio items and track their child’s progress.
   

For Parents

• Get a window into the classroom through secure portfolios.
• See what a student is learning through photos, videos, audio recordings, and notes.
• Stay up-to-date with notifications and class-wide announcements.
• Engage in conversations about their child’s learning journey, beyond scores and percentages in a typical parent portal.

For Students

• Capture learning through photos, videos, audio recordings, and notes.
• View and self-reflect on all learning posted to the portfolio.
• Upload activities and artifacts for teachers to review and assess.
• Engage in continuous feedback with teachers and parents.
• Stay up-to-date with class-wide announcements.

What grade and age range?

FreshGrade is designed for K-12.

Is this core/supplemental/special needs/extracurricular/professional development or what?

FreshGrade supports capturing learning and assessment in all subject areas, including core subjects and electives. It can also support learners with special needs and can be used to support students on individualized education plans.

What subject, topic, and standards is it mapped to?

FreshGrade is appropriate for use in any grade level or subject area.

What lesson time does it use?

FreshGrade is designed for use within the ebb and flow of the classroom. Students can capture video, audio, and photographic evidence of their work and upload it to FreshGrade within seconds. Teachers can use FreshGrade to support continuous assessment, capturing notes and observations from the classroom during a lesson, or on the go.

What is the pricing model?

FreshGrade is free for teachers and offers a paid School and District Product with additional features. Pricing consists of an annual student licensing model with teacher and parent accounts included at no cost. Exact pricing varies depending on the size of a district or school and scope of services included. For more information, contact inquiries@freshgrade.com.

What are the services around it?

FreshGrade is proud to offer a dedicated account manager for each School & District team who can address questions and provide support during the implementation process. We provide technical support to configure the system to meet your needs and are able to integrate with Single Sign-on systems including Active Directory (ADFS), Shibboleth, Google, Google Apps for Education, Microsoft Azure, Clever’s Instant Login and more. 

On an ongoing basis, we offer professional development for educators in the form of premium workshops and on-demand webinars. We pride ourselves on prioritized customer care to your teachers, students, and parents ensuring your users receive help when they need it. Each month we provide our FreshGrade for Schools & Districts accounts with unique data, trends, and insights on student, parent, and teacher engagement to shed light on the learning in their district.

What makes the app unique?

FreshGrade provides enhanced communication and engagement for all stakeholders — teachers, students, and parents. Our research-backed portfolio platform allows teachers and students to quickly capture learning as it happens in digital portfolios.

Rather than treating a child as a grade on a test score, FreshGrade changes the goal of assessment to supporting and guiding learning and demonstrating evidence of continuous progress. With our platform, teachers can provide feedback and track progression by using a variety of custom assessment tools. While parents are given ongoing communication through mobile notifications about learning, students are given the opportunity to self-reflect on their growth. To enhance parent engagement, we integrate with Google Translate to offer our School & District users the ability to translate their feedback in over 100 different languages.

A description of the characteristics — how is it designed for user interface, user experience?

Above all, FreshGrade is designed to support the needs of our users, teachers, parents, and students. We support our users in their many contexts, from a teacher sitting down at their laptop during reporting season, to a student snapping a photo of wildlife on a field trip.

Because our users agree that conversation should be around an individual student's learning, we purposefully designed student portfolios as hubs of communication. We aim for a simple and consistent user experience across our platform. The FreshGrade portfolio is simple enough that teachers and students can capture learning as it happens. Not only that, FreshGrade is consistent enough to share documentation across devices and platforms including web, iOS, and Android.

Click here for a product demo.

Reviews:

School Administrators:

“FreshGrade has supported our district commitment to personalize learning for every student, fostered student ownership, and offered a rapid feedback cycle for students.” - CHRIS THOMPSON, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, ELMBROOK SCHOOL DISTRICT, WISCONSIN

“FreshGrade has allowed us to continue building parent-teacher communication in a way that further strengthens parent involvement and improves student achievement.” - WANNY HERSEY, SUPERINTENDENT, BULLIS CHARTER SCHOOL, CALIFORNIA

“We selected FreshGrade for parent communication after consulting our school community. To our surprise, the most impactful benefit was an increase in student pride and ownership of learning.” - MARY DUNLEVY, PRINCIPAL, DENTON ISD, TEXAS

Teachers:

“FreshGrade will change the way I teach. It’s always been a bit of a hassle to share information with parents. This makes it super easy to send them anything. And I have an instant record of the student’s work.” - MAX SCHAFER, FENTON PRIMARY CENTER, LOS ANGELES

“FreshGrade allows me to differentiate instruction and to send a quick message to parents when I see great work or a downward trend in performance. Students know if they are meeting standards before it is a grade in the Gradebook and they have a chance to rise to the challenge. Everyone can see so much more than just a name of an assignment in the Gradebook. Students can upload messages from their pals, show evidence of completion of online drills, and just share things they find interesting.” - JENNIFER HAYES, METAMORE TOWNSHIP HIGH SCHOOL, ILLINOIS

“Before using FreshGrade, I used to compile student portfolios for the end of the year with pictures, videos and scanned documents. It took soooo much time, and I also thought it was a shame to wait so long to share this information. Now, I can share all of those things in real time and keep things organized, so the parents have access to their child’s work. It has made my life easier and also informed parents and students of the wonderful learning taking place.” - MARGARET NICKERSON, IRMO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, SOUTH CAROLINA

Parent Users

“I feel like I’m being kept in the loop with my son’s work and grades. Very easy to use and a nice tool to bring up discussions about what he is working on in class.” - Kaz Zvanitajs

“As a mother of a kindergartener, with helicopter tendencies, I felt I was missing out when all I heard about a day at school was “it was fun,” “It was great” or “nothing much happened.” I love to see the pictures and videos of activities posted by her teacher. Now, if I ask about a specific math exercise I’ve seen in a picture, she will tell me all about it. Thanks for creating a great tool to get us talking!” - Nadine Dillabaugh