I was a victim of this website.
I had to go through this website when I was in high school.
NoRedInk is a terrible way for students to learn basic ELA. The first thing is that instead of students' taking their time to look at each question thoroughly, it is instead much easier to just rush through each question instead to attempt to complete the assignment in the fastest time possible, which hinders their true learning experience while using this website. The second thing is that this site uses a very harsh system for penalizing mistakes. If a child gets a question wrong at any point during a NoRedInk assignment, the program automatically imposes three extra questions which the child must correctly answer in a row, in which don't even contribute to the final score, and the counter resets if another question is incorrectly answered. This 'penalty system' approach can be very demotivating and especially brutal to students since it makes them do extra questions just for simply making an incorrect answer or making a tiny mistake and accidentally placing a word, etc. in the wrong location. This hinders their learning process and it takes much needed time out of their days, with some assignments reportedly taking well into the late hours of the night when children are supposed to be sleeping instead of focusing on school or any kind of homework for that matter.
The next thing is that NoRedInk genuinely causes harm to the students - harm that can cause negative effects to them later on in their lives. Students are not motivated when they are forced to do these assignments because they take too long to complete and it makes them do even more questions for every single incorrect answer. Instead of providing a true, honest learning experience for the very students in question, it makes them stressed out and unmotivated. This causes them to want to rush through the assignments instead of paying attention to each question carefully, because it causes them severe stress. The stress that comes from this program is very, very harmful and can cause permanent damage to them later on as adults. This site can cause things such as multi-personality disorder, sleep deprivation, depression and anxiety, and a lot of other things. This site has even caused some students to have severe thoughts about offing themselves to get rid of the pain the site has caused them. The fact kids are wanting to commit should be a giant red flag in the first place and force severe change to the ecosystem of NoRedInk, most notably penalizing mistakes in a much more friendly manner. It ultimately ends up ruining the days of students, lowers their grades, and severely harms their mental and emotional health to the point of suicidal ideation. Yes, it's true. I've heard about attempts to do it over this site online.
Also, the site doesn't even give the students any useful tips when it comes to the hints the site provides. Whenever a kid gets stuck on a question, they can click on the hint to have NoRedInk tell them what they need to do for the assignment. However, the explanations the hints give are way too broad and are very hard to understand even for a teacher. It uses broad and vague wording that the kids cannot comprehend, and the hints don't go into detail and don't leave any lasting impact on the kids to the point they'll know what to do - they'll just be confused. It doesn't help the fact that every time a kid needs to rely on the hint, they're given a warning beforehand about using the hint during a question, and if they have to rely on the hints, they will have to do, again, three extra questions in a row and answer them all correctly. This makes students not even want to rely on these hints, because they know if they use a hint, they will be penalized by being forced to answer three questions in a row. So, not only are the hints not helpful for the students, but they also might as well not even bother to look at the hints to begin with, because it will always result in them getting punished with three extra questions, that again, they will have to answer correctly in a row.
On top of that, there's no true reward for completing a lesson, let alone an assignment. All you get is some stars on the lesson in question, and that is it. This does not make students determined to complete the NoRedInk assignment, since there is no reward on the other end that would make the several hours of work worth it, let alone a reward at all. It doesn't give you anything for completing a lesson - just stars saying you've completed the lesson at the end of the lesson, and then, back to your main home screen with an inspirational quote. Making students determined to complete these lessons would require a real reward on the other side, such as access to a fun activity, or even a fun video going over the topic of the lesson. Rewards like that would make students want to complete these assignments, and it would severely boost student productivity and it would result in better marks.
And speaking of activities, there are no activities on the site at all. It's just a boring, generic educational website that only has the bare necessities that qualify it as such. There are no fun games, activities, or anything at all that make NoRedInk a fun experience: just assignments that do nothing but stress out and push students to their limits for no reason in the name of 'homework'. An equally despised site is one under the name of Study Island, a website with a quiz-like system for assignments. The website had fun games that students' could play in their downtime while waiting for further Study Island assignments, or just to pass time when they're done with their work. There are no games on NoRedInk at all, which severely hinders the enjoyment of the site and makes Study Island feel like a far more reasonable investment over NoRedInk, since there's nothing 'fun' about it.
And also, this website makes teachers' jobs so much harder as well. Why? Well, since they assign so many NoRedInk assignments, it makes it much harder for teachers to do their jobs since they need to look over each and every assignment by each and every student in every hour they teach. It takes time away from a teacher that could be spent on doing far more important things, such as tutoring kids who are struggling with the assignments being assigned to them. It creates a heavier workload for teachers who now have to do twice as much work looking over each completed NoRedInk lesson, and it can cause teachers to become overwhelmed and exhausted with how much of the work they need to take a look at on top of the other assignments they have assigned for their class. Their job is already hard enough as it is, and NoRedInk just forces them to work 2 times as hard to the point it drives them to exhaustion. It makes their jobs harder and even more difficult, since they're having an extra layer of work to look over.
And speaking of such, the site also causes students to work 2 times as hard as well. NoRedInk assignments have reportedly been caused to take multiple hours to complete due to the harsh penalty for simple and honest mistakes. Some reports say it took students 3 hours, some 5 hours, and even some longer than that, sometimes to the point where it keeps them up late to the point they are well up past midnight, which affects their sleep schedule in a very negative way. The typical time that it should take to complete one of these assignments should be around 20 to 30 minutes max. It should not take longer than half an hour to complete a lesson on this site. But, some students have gotten especially unlucky when it comes to NoRedInk lessons, and that is because it is reported that some students are multiple days late on some of these and are still not done with the lesson. It wastes students' time and it takes much needed time out of their days that they could be spending on doing other, far more important things. But, the sheer volume of how many NoRedInk assignments are given, and how it all too often takes too long to complete one of them, diminishes their time value they could be spending on doing assignments for other classes, and it adds on to an already heavy homework load, of which they have enough of it already. They are already tight on homework as it is, and NoRedInk only gives them even more of it on top of the homework they've already been assigned (or are about to be assigned). Not to mention the fact that the amount of times that they are given these NoRedInk assignments takes much needed time away from a child's development that should be used on developing them and introducing them to the world, it's beauty, and lots of other things.
This site also causes bad student behavior - some students have experienced severe emotional outbursts in the middle of class due to NoRedInk's toxic learning structure. Some of them have ended up destroying school equipment (most notably school-issued laptops) or home devices they took with them to school. Students have expressed severe anger at this site sometimes, and emotional breakdowns in the middle of class due to it are all too common in personal stories about the site online. You will constantly hear stories about how NoRedInk caused them to break a personal device or caused them and/or their classmates to get very angry and frustrated. The emotional response students have to this site is nothing short of completely negative. If a learning tool is harming students enough to the point where they actually start showing anger, then the teachers need to re-evaluate what programs they are using to teach said kids. Some students have actually given up on some lessons at times, and just ultimately refused to do the work, and some students are genuinely frustrated. But, they are most notably scared. They are ultimately scared of failure. Why? Because failure means more NoRedInk, more copy and paste questions, and more anger and frustration. But, some students have even ended up dropping out of school due to NoRedInk, because they got sick and tired of the website and its constant, stressful environment.
And lastly, NoRedInk fails at leaving a meaningful mark on students and actually teaching them ELA. With all of the core factors contributing to students, teachers, and even parents not liking the website, it fails at leaving an impression in a ton of different ways. But, the most notable part of this is that it doesn't help them with retention of the material that is taught to them. Because students are being forced to rush through assignments instead of looking over them carefully, students will end up easily forgetting about the material taught to them, as NoRedInk did nothing to actually help them understand the material fully, and it will leave their brains quickly as a result, in a month at maximum. There is a video game called Timez Attack that teaches kids multiplication through video gaming, as the creators of the game, Big Brainz, actually did in fact consist of former game developers who made games for the PlayStation 2. The addition of Timez Attack being a full-on 3D computer game full of various worlds, like a Machine world and Lava world, made learning multiplication fun and engaging. The developers wanted to get away from traditional methods of learning like NoRedInk, and so, they wanted to create a fun way for students to learn their multiplication facts. And as a result, students (players) who came out of Timez Attack ended up getting extraordinary final marks on their post-credits scores - with the highest being an eye-popping 95% fluency. And guess what? Those students were able to hold on and continue to memorize and understand those multiplication facts, because it was a full 3D game. That game helped students retain those facts, and it is the reason why teachers recommended this game to everyone they could find: student grades improved exponentially. NoRedInk does not have anything that makes it engaging in any way, and combined with the need to rush through each lesson and the penalty system penalizing small and honest mistakes, makes it extremely hard for kids to retain basic ELA lessons. They did nothing to innovate or improve. It's just another generic website that has no staying power in kids' minds, since there is nothing about the site that helps these kids with retention of basic English. I'd give it a week max, and then poof, the material they learned would be gone.
In summary, this site is nothing short of ineffective, and it does a lot more harm than good to not only students, but also teachers. This is not a site that you should be using as a tool to teach kids English in school. There are far better ways to teach kids English and this site is absolutely not one of them. There are too many negatives that completely outweigh any of the positives about this site, and it doesn't leave any meaningful impact. This is mediocre at best and atrocious at its worst, and it's more usually atrocious than anything mediocre. If you are looking for a site to teach kids ELA, I'd recommend you steer clear away from this site and look for alternatives that will actually help kids understand the material. Throwing them onto NoRedInk is just setting them up for failure and it will end up with frustration, tears, and quite possibly holes in the wall. Avoid it at all costs.
LOOK OUT
he's a spiii-iiii-iiiider piiiiiiiiiiiig