Product Review of Study Island

Study Island is an all-in-one practice website for learners to work on literacy, math, science, and social studies skills. It is built specifically around state standards, so regardless of your school’s location, you can rest assured that the content and practice provided on the website will align with your classroom teaching. Study Island is a great tool to use for high-stakes testing preparation and provides real-time progress monitoring for educators and parents. Beyond simple practice, Study Island can also be incorporated into classroom lessons for formative assessment and differentiation. It even allows educators to import NWEA MAP assessment information for individual learners and calculates a targeted learning path to fill in knowledge gaps!
Website: https://www.studyisland.com/
What Users Love About the App
“There are so many lessons available for each grade level, subject, etc. They have Common Core, US, and state standards. It is very organized!”
“It’s great for looking at data and grouping your students. Students love being on the computer and you can choose whether or not to have games incorporated into the lesson.”
“Students can keep track of how well they are doing and it provides them with instant feedback. Many times my students tell me their scores before I (get a chance) see them!”
“It’s easy for me to see what my students do in their core reading class (I’m a reading specialist.) I also love how my district has synced the Clever extension so passwords are no longer needed.”
“Study Island is very easy to use for both instructors and students and offers technology based assessments that engage students and allow them to visualize their progress.”
What Users Dislike About the App
“I can tell you with absolute confidence, every single student I’ve ever known hates this with a passion. The questions can be so confusing sometimes, to the point in which I don’t even understand them anymore and get the answer wrong.”
“When you get one question wrong, it lowers your grade so much to the point that you can’t even get more than a 91 again. Some of the questions are literally WRONG, just flat out wrong. If you wanna try again at the lesson and reset it, guess what? YOU CAN’T.”
“If you’re going too fast, a text will pop up on the screen and read, “Are You Guessing?”. Are you guessing… are you kidding me?? How are you gonna make someone literally WAIT for a half minute because they are going too fast? Maybe they wouldn’t be “Guessing” if you had coded a reset button, but no, they’re too lazy to do that.”
“To sum it up, with the amount of inconsistency, greediness, laziness and just in general poor management of this website, this is clearly not worth it. Coming from 3 years of torture, here’s what I have to say; parents, please don’t have your children do this. Schools, please don’t assign this. Study Island, improve your godforsaken system.”
“It takes my parents my college level sisters and I a whole lot of time to TRY and figure out the questions and then we try about a hundred different solutions and none of them work and then we try our absolutely best possible answer and get the questions wrong. We check the explanations and they basically say: “our answer is right because it is.””