Teachers: we know that many of you are adjusting to setting your students up with at-home learning, and at IXL, we’re working hard to provide you with the support you need. We recently released a variety of exciting and helpful new updates to IXL that we hope will make distance learning and teaching a little easier to navigate for you and your students. Read on to learn more!

 

eLearning Library free to all teachers for rest of school year 

We’ve made the eLearning Library fully available to all teachers free of charge for the rest of the school year. The library contains on-demand video PD for every feature of IXL and strategies to effectively personalize learning for your students. You can and even earn a certificate for completing an hour of PD! 

 

SmartScores shown in Suggested Skills hover 

We’ve updated the suggested skills hover menu to display each student’s current SmartScore in that skill. Having this information at your fingertips can help you more easily decide whether to suggest or de-suggest a skill for each student! 

 

Import rosters from spreadsheets 

To make importing and setting up rosters easier, you can now upload a list of students in spreadsheet format. This new method is faster and less error-prone than typing in students’ information manually, especially if you have a large class! Just look for the “Import students menu” at the top right of your roster. 

 

Email usernames and passwords to students

You can now send an email to each student with their username and password! Just look for the link at the top of your roster. This feature will be available for the rest of the school year to help students get signed in to IXL while they are learning at home.

Audio support for science

We’ve added audio for science questions! Similar to other subjects, audio support is available for everyone in grade 2 and can be optionally extended to grades 3-5 from your Profile & Settings menu.

 

More Real-Time Diagnostic data in IXL Analytics:

 

• Diagnostic usage data now available in Students Quickview and Student Details: The Students Quickview and Student Details reports now include Real-Time Diagnostic usage data, such as the number of diagnostic questions a student answered and how much time they spent diagnosing. With this update, it’s much easier for you to hold students accountable for answering Diagnostic questions regularly!

 

At-home learning guides

To help you use IXL effectively with students while they’re at home, we’ve added 5 implementation guides to our At-home learning hub. Each guide offers 3-step strategies on how to utilize IXL and keep students progressing while they are away from the classroom. Check out all of the implementation guides, now available here.  

 

“Get students started” section on teacher hub 

We have added a new “Get students started” section to the teacher hub that provides helpful resources for you to share with students and their parents to help them get up and running with IXL at home. This includes:

• A brand new student video, which covers signing in, finding skills, understanding SmartScore, and more. 
• A redesigned Quick-start guide for students, which provides a step-by-step overview of skills and awards.
• A student-friendly Diagnostic Quick-start guide that walks students through the arena, their strands, and recommendations. 

Check them all out here.

Suggested skills list on iOS and Android apps 

We’ve added the suggested skills list feature to our iPad, iPhone and Android apps! Previously, a student had to scan through all the skills to find the ones that you suggested for them to practice. Now, students can tap on the “From your teacher” button (iOS) or the star at the top of their app (Android) to see all of their teacher-suggested skills in one place!

 

Recent-questions popover in Live Classroom

In Live Classroom, teachers can now click to view any student’s most recently answered questions all in one popover. This helps you quickly gain an even clearer understanding of what students are currently working on, which students may benefit from your input, and what guidance you can offer. You can even do a quick review or reteach without leaving the Live Classroom report at all!

 

Skill jumps for teachers in science and social studies 

We have added a “Jump a stage” area on the skill practice page for science and social studies skills that allows you to preview different skill stages, which can serve as a useful lesson planning tool. This feature looks and works similarly to the skill jump already present in math, language arts, and Spanish skills; the main difference is that in science and social studies skills, you will jump between stages rather than skill difficulty levels.

 

Skill sharing changes 

We’ve made a couple of changes to the skill sharing area on the skill pages that make it easier for you to share skills with your students. We’ve added a button that you can click to easily copy the URL of the skill you are currently looking at. And, we’ve moved the social sharing area to the top right of the page so that it’s easily accessible.