What Is Education.com? Lesson Resources for the Classroom

Creating lesson resources can be a huge time sink for teachers. Not only is it hard to ensure everything matches curriculum standards, but putting together a collection that can be used for multiple-year groups can take forever.

And, when it comes to technology, this isn’t even accounting for the numerous updates that will be needed to maintain everything. What if there was an easier way?

Education.com is a teaching resource site that spans multiple year groups and provides a variety of content for teachers to use in the classroom. However, is it a service worth buying to save time

Below, we’ll explore Education.com’s services and find out what they have to offer – especially in comparison with sites like Zenva Schools

Try out Zenva Schools with your students for free! Contact our team via this form and we’ll be in touch to set up your free access.

What Is Education.com?

Education.com is an educational resource service covering many grades (pre-K through to the 8th grade). They offer over 30,000 resources of teaching resources (both digital and printable) for teachers to use in lessons.

The resources they offer include workbooks, lesson plans, interactive games, and more.

They are primarily a subscription service, offering all their features for a premium subscription price, but they also provide a free tier with limited features.

Who Is The Education.com Target Audience?

There are two target audiences for Education.com: teachers and students.

Education.com focuses on teachers spanning multiple year groups to provide them with the largest selection of resources possible. Additionally, they aim to gain teachers from the lower grades and retain them as customers throughout their careers – even if they move to a different grade.

This being said, they also have a broad student target audience. They cover grades from Pre-K to the eighth grade. Because of the extensive age range, they make resources that are suitable for multiple grades and are built to be easy for students to use.

While great for younger students, it is worth noting they do leave higher grades out. Many other comparable platforms offer content with a wider scope. For example, Zenva Schools offers content from as early as Grade 3 all the way to Grade 12. Thus, Education.com is going to be of limited value for high school teachers.

What Is Education.com? Lesson Resources for the Classroom

Who Created Education.com?

Todd Schwartz is the founder of Education.com, which he created it in 2006. Before Education.com, Schwartz founded a company specializing in helping businesses with marketing. Although he didn’t have a background in teaching or education, he did have a background in marketing – which became useful for branding and marketing the content on Education.com.

What Is The Philosophy Of Education.com?

A great way to determine what type of teaching resource provider Education.com is to find out their company philosophy and what kind of content they want to offer to their audience.

We found four main points of the Education.com philosophy that accurately describe their goals.

  • They want to use proven learning approaches for their content: Education.com uses experts in the education industry to create all the resources for the site. In addition, they want to use proven methods to ensure that their content is up to the national education standard.
  • They want to empower teachers with their resources: One of the critical values for employees in Education.com is to empower the teachers to drive children to success. Therefore, they want to provide the best possible resources to enable them to do this.
  • They want to provide unique experiences: Along with making high-quality content, they want to make the content original and memorable. They make a wide range of resources to achieve originality, such as lesson plans, games, worksheets, and more.
  • They want their content to be as inclusive and supportive as possible: A strong value that Education.com has is to make content that includes and values everyone, including those from other countries, those with a disability, and more.

It is worth noting, though, that these goals can be applied to many other platforms as well.

To example one, Zenva Schools also aims to provide a wide range of digital technology resources for teachers. Along with full courses developed by industry experts, Zenva Schools provides additive content such as interactive activities and quizzes – all while empowering teachers and students to take charge of their education.

What Is Education.com? Lesson Resources for the Classroom

What Are The Primary Services On Education.com?

Lesson Plans

If you’re a teacher who doesn’t have the time to make a lesson plan from scratch, Education.com has many ready-made lesson plans. These come with various activities and simple instructions. They also require minimal effort for a teacher to learn and understand. In addition, the plans show the lesson objectives and a clear outline of the lesson.

However, these lesson plans could stand to be more robust. Zenva Schools (to name one platform), offers lesson plans as well which not only outline the courses on the platform, but are quite literally mapped to Australian and US curriculum standards. On top of this, Zenva Schools made the lesson plans easily editable, so teachers have full control over how they apply the lessons in class.

Worksheets

Education.com has a massive selection of printable worksheets to help a teacher form a lesson plan. They have worksheets for every subject on the sites, with worksheet topics including multiplication, spelling, and more. Additionally, all the worksheets on Education.com are available to assign digitally (if the school has remote working days).

Despite all their resources, it is worth noting that there is a distinct lack of content for digital technologies. As such, other platforms like Zenva Schools are better in this regard for technology teachers. To boot, Zenva Schools is designed so students can use it at home as well, so students are never far from the course content.

Games & Activities

There are multiple educational games on the site, mainly for younger children. Some of the types of games include memory, spelling, and math games. Additionally, those with the premium package can track students’ progression on the games.

Along with printable worksheets, there are also print-out activities. These are handout activities like writing prompts, art projects, and more. Parents can also print out these activities at home if the school has a remote learning day.

Like many other features, there are other options available, such as Zenva Schools which also offers interactive activities that can be accessed online even from home. Additionally, Zenva Schools offers something a bit better: game development courses. Instead of just playing games, students can learn how to make their own, which is not only fun, but teaches them valuable and transferable skills.

Ideas For A Science Fair

A unique feature on Education.com is its science fair ideas section. They provide ideas on multiple science sectors, including physical science, space science, life science, and more. In addition, they give you a visualization of the concept and instructions on how to carry it out. These experiment ideas can help teach fundamental skills to the students.

How Do You Use The Interface On Education.com?

Education.com has many features and teaching resources, so they need a good website layout and UI to make the user experience easy. 

You can see every teaching resource category on the site. However, within these categories, the teaching resources’ layout becomes more cluttered, making it a bit difficult to find the resources you might need.

When you click on any resource on Education.com, there will be some information on the page, including: 

  • A link to digitally assign the resource to a student
  • All the suitable grades for the particular resource
  • The included subjects
  • The Common Core state standards
  • Any related lesson plans or resources

With 30,000 resources, though, you can imagine finding the right material to build a proper lesson might be a bit challenging. In comparison, sites like Zenva Schools may be more suitable. Not only is Zenva Schools focused on having a more functional, minimalistic UX experience for teachers, but includes many of the same information on their course pages.

What Is Education.com? Lesson Resources for the Classroom

What Are The Best Education.com Features And The Ones That Need Improvement?

Education.com is a site with many available functions and features; some make them stand out in a positive light, and some of them need improvement. 

Education.com Pros

First, there are several features on Education.com that are competitive in the e-learning industry. Some of these features include:

  • Numerous teaching resources: The site’s main feature is the massive selection of teaching resources, including worksheets, lesson plans, games, and more.
  • Unique ideas like science fair projects: Along with the resources you would expect, there are some original ideas, like science fair project ideas for students.
  • A free version of the site: There is a free version of Education.com with some basic features. You can choose from most resource types on the site, excluding workbooks. However, you can only access 36 free resources per year.

Education.com Cons

Despite the extensive offering of resources and features, there are some gaps with Education.com.

One of Education.com’s biggest issues is that its layout isn’t as intuitive as it could be. For a teacher looking to save time, having to overcome the learning gap of how to find things on the site is not the best situation to be in. Compared with sites like Zenva Schools which has a much more intuitive layout, this is absolutely noticeable as well.

Second, Education.com lacks extensive analytics. There are no real “management” tools that can be used to track student progress or manage classes. So, while the resources are definitely available, if you’re teaching multiple classes, the platform has limited uses.

By comparison, Zenva Schools does this much better. Zenva Schools doesn’t just offer content, but an extensive system for classroom management. Teachers can assign students to classrooms, and then easily assign courses to the entire class with just a few clicks.

In addition, Zenva Schools is likewise able to offer class and student analytics so teachers can identify student progress and help students who are falling behind.

What Pricing Tiers Does Education.com offer?

Education.com offers two pricing structures with different levels of available features. The two pricing levels are:

  • The basic tier is entirely free and gives you the option to choose from every type of resource on Education.com except workbooks. However, teachers can only use 36 free resources per year, which means that the premium subscription is often necessary to take full advantage of the platform.
  • The premium tier offers every available resource on Education.com, including textbooks, lesson plans, games, and more. You can pay $119.88 for a yearly subscription if you are an individual. However, if a school wants to purchase the services of Education.com, they need to request a quote.

While there are a lot of resources to benefit from, other platforms offer a bit more value. As one example, Zenva Schools offers teaching resources via courses, classroom management, analytics, and more. Additionally, Zenva Schools charges on a per student basis per year, giving teachers a manageable way to budget the platform into their classroom.

It is also worth mentioning that Zenva Schools offers free trials with no limitations – so teachers can always evaluate everything the site has to offer first.

Key Takeaways

Overall, Education.com is a good platform if all you’re looking for is lesson resources. As mentioned, they offer tons of material in the form of workbooks, lesson plans, interactive activities, and more. It’s even better if you just need a few materials per year – allowing you to take advantage of the free tier.

However, Education.com is by no means the best platform out there. Zenva Schools can offer a ton more features for the price, and is a lot easier to use in the classroom setting. Zenva Schools is also perfectly suited for teaching technology – which Education.com has a noticeable lack of material on in a worthwhile measure.

At the end, picking the best platform depends on your needs – but Education.com is definitely one of those options if you need a small batch of learning resources.

If you’re from a K12 school and want to try out our platform, fill out the form below.

We’ll organize a free trial so you can test it out with your students in class!