Leaning apps - just me or are they really glitchy or not very good?

[drspouse]

We are really struggling with a lot of the apps the DCs have access to! Is it just us?
My Maths - doesn't seem to work on any tablets - so not much use if you don't have a laptop or you are using it for work. Also the wording is quite hard for Y1.
Mathletics - the app keeps crashing. I can't find my way round either, and should we be able to get harder work? Or do we have to ask the teacher?
Purple Mash - ok maybe I haven't used it enough but I can't find anything and the supposedly easy Maths is too hard, or at least gets hard too easily. DS is supposed to have folders with his work in but everything keeps moving around. And am I supposed to be able to see other children's work?
Phonics Play - poor DS gets very frustrated as the matching cards keep crashing, sometimes you can't even enter text.
Oh and Class Dojo - how do you mark notifications read? How can you send just a text update? I can only send pictures.

Clearly they are preventing me from spelling "learning" properly.

Yes, they are shit. Is it any wonder kids would rather go on YouTube . The apps are clunky and irritating. Lots barely work on tablets. My maths is notorious for not working on tablets. Purple Mash frustrating to find anything yes. It depends how other parents / children have shared their work as to whether you can see it. We always just saved it where the teachers could see it but some parents save in the general class pages which infuriated me as it is always the parents who are having such a lovely time during this shitshow and baking and doing all the extra work Never used class dojo so can’t help with that sorry. The CBeebies / Bitesize games are far better.

For maths we like daily 10 and push the button. I do despair through, trying to motivate the kids is so hard at the best of times and then you waste so much time just getting the shitty apps to work. In contrast you can navigate YouTube and other games / apps with lightening speed .

In a nutshell I hate almost all of the apps. It’s not just you .

Phew!
We do quite like Doodle Maths and English but DS is in Y3 and quite behind and it's really helping so we'd like him to carry on (despite it being expensive) but he's got all the rewards in Spelling and Maths so it's only me saying "do this and you can play Minecraft" that keeps him going.
Oh and we had Maths 4-6 that DS just gamed and DD gave up because it kept having a really hard one in among the ones that were her level.

Oh and I just tried to log in to DS (school A) on Purple Mash and accidentally logged into DD (school B) and found a task for her which does not open if you click on it. So how are we supposed to return it or do it?

Oh gosh, are you supposed to put photos on Purple Mash too? FFS. We used Tapestry for YR and DS school uses Class Dojo (at least it's easy to put pictures up) but now I wonder if that's where all the boasty pictures at DD school are coming from. I only just found her class teacher's email and I didn't want to send loads of random pictures to that!

The best thing to do is ignore all boasty photos anyway .

I don't mind the ones at DS school TBH as it's a PRU and there are many other DCs with much harder struggles.
We send his in so he can get feedback but it's usually "he wrote out the alphabet for DD so he could avoid doing his English" rather than "he made the Eiffel tower out of spaghetti".