Montessori Compass

I have been using Montessori Compass in my Upper El classroom for 2 months since stopping by their booth at the AMS conference in Boston. I wanted a way to quickly record lessons and observations of students. Initially I downloaded the app with the intention of using it to gather information that I would analyze and reflect on at the end of the day and for generating reports for my parents. The quick add feature is too cumbersome as you must select the student then the lesson. The app shows all lessons in your curriculum with a search bar. It would be helpful if there was an option to show planned lessons. I had hoped this app would allow me to quickly record lessons in real time, capturing students who came to the lesson along with their chosen follow up work. It would be helpful to be able to upload pdf copies of observations like time sampling, physical map observations, rating scales and three column running records done in GoodNotes. Each time I attempt to use the app, I switch to using the web based in Safari to the pint I’m deleting the app and just adding a shortcut to my iPad’s Home Screen.

This app is absolutely horrible. First of all, you can’t even use the app as a teacher! You have to use the web version to update “trackers” for the student’s day. It is a confusing site to navigate, doesn’t share information with the parents in real time, and has so many glitches and faults. It has an option to add captions to pictures, but the app doesn’t even send the caption or description to the parents! It takes me over an hour to update the information for my classroom, and I don’t have the time to do that everyday. You are unable to upload videos, the site continuously crashes, it’s very difficult to delete messages or get rid of notifications and there are so many unnecessary extra features that no one needs to use. I cannot stand this app, and would rather do paper reports than use this

The update times are inaccurate. Should show real dates MM/DD/YYY. The versions have read “2 minutes ago” for months now. So there is no real way to know when the last up date actually occurred. The mobile app is not really that friendly. I use it mostly now for getting notifications that guides added something (ex messages or reports) I can read messages on the go). Composing messages is painful for new parents when you don’t know who to send messages to and when you do there is a lot of scrolling involved to find the person you want to contact. There is no way to sort or search. Events are listed, no traditional calendar view or method to search for “School closed” or sort events or see only events by classroom. Most MC features are best only available on a desktop computer. Our school would like to use it exclusively but, its just not there yet. Anxiously waiting for an update to both desktop and mobile version in the beginning of 2018. So I’ve heard from Customer support who is responsive, very polite and takes suggestions to the programmers. So figures crossed for a Happy New Year update.