IXL App Review

 by Hallie Gardner

The app I decided to review is IXL. The IXL app is free to download on The App Store or Google Play, but students will either need a school account to login or families can pay monthly for a package to fit their child's needs with prices ranging from $9.95 per month to $19.95 per month depending on what subjects they plan to work on. The cheapest package gets your access to your choice of math or language arts practice, and the most expensive package gets you access to all four core subjects. After you download the app and login you have your choice of subject area and grade level. IXL is fully aligned with common core state standards, and it is easy to navigate to pick your subject, grade, and standard you want to practice!

Once you begin practicing a skill of your choice, the program is very easy. It gives you one question at a time, and if you get it right, it awards you with points, and moves you onto the next question. The more points you receive, the more advanced the questions become. If you get the question wrong, then points are subtracted from your overall score, and you are given feedback on what the correct answer was and why you got it incorrect. Within each skill there are up to 12 levels of scaffolding to ensure students are alway being challenged on the correct level. When students earned 90 points, they will enter the challenge zone. The questions in the challenge zone are the most advanced questions for that particular skill, and the goal is to reach 100 points on each skill practiced to show mastery. Once they have mastered a skill, then they receive a badge to show mastery on their IXL account.

Overall I would give this app a rating of 4 out of 5 stars. It was very easy to navigate, very organized when trying to search for a particular skill , it was engaging when working on a skill, scaffolding was awesome when working through a skill to gain mastery, and the explanations when answering the question incorrectly were easy to understand and helpful. I did not give it the full five stars because they are a lot of awesome and fun components IXL has on their website that is not incorporated into their app such as the diagnostic arena where students work on a variety of skills to find their strengths and weaknesses, and the recommendations page where students are given specific skills recommended to them individually to continue their learning in different areas. Also if a student mastered a skill and gets a badge, there is no where on the app where students can see those skills or badges anytime they want. The app is great for students who have a school account, have an assigned skill practice from a teacher that they didn’t finish in class, don’t have a computer, and now they have access to complete it at home on their phone. Unfortunately, if a family is paying for monthly access, then the app is not giving that family access to all the features they are paying for.

Cost: $9.95-$19.95 a month
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐