Toddle?

By Claudia Ng & Ella Wong

This year, RCHK students opened their computers to a new school operating system – Toddle. The new platform serves as an all-in-one solution for receiving grades, assignments, communication, and other (hidden) tools and learning experiences; with avid promoters presenting it as the shining beacon of teaching and learning technology…  but not everyone is so convinced. 

In previous years, the school's main platform was Google Classroom, a web-based learning management system developed by Google; a helpful tool for teachers and students to organize classwork and assignments. In addition, PHI at Renaissance College was used to organise and present essential information, allowing students to view core announcements including student/staff updates, as well as reports, timetables and attendance records. 

As a newly introduced platform, Toddle has all the hallmarks of a useful system - an AI powered app used for communication announcements, task setting, releasing report cards, and educational purposes. 

But why the sudden move to a system previously untested and untrialed at RCHK? 

We asked Mr. Wheeler, Head of Secondary, for more information.

The primary reason for the shift was because it’s mandated by ESF, RCHK’s larger governing body. “We’re part of the second wave [of ESF schools switching to Toddle]. So we didn’t go first,” Mr. Wheeler says. “Last year, other schools were the guinea pigs. We’ve really benefitted [by learning from] from their difficulties. It doesn’t mean we don’t still have our own difficulties, but our former systems, particularly PHI, were just not good enough for the things we wanted to do; for example, the way we want to express our curriculum, share it, and report on it.”

He says that PHI was unreliable and that “we couldn’t trust it at all. It was often losing information.” 

Toddle is meant to be a safer, more secure all-in-one platform, centralising the functionalities of PHI and Google Classroom into one easy, convenient location. It has a unified workflow that’s able to combine curriculums, gradebooks, and portfolios while collecting data on attendance and student progress. For example, where previously teachers needed to download data from and cross-reference multiple systems to officially record grades for students, Mr. Wheeler says the process is now much more efficient. Likewise, the ePortfolio for lower Secondary students is now included “systematically” within Toddle.

This streamlined workflow should appeal to both teachers and administrators. And since Toddle was created quite recently (2019), advanced features like plagiarism checks are a real bonus for teachers and students. So, on paper, Toddle sounds like a win/win for all.

“Basically, the more that one system does something, the better,” Mr. Wheeler says. “As long as those things are just as good, if not better, than what we had before.”

But is Toddle truly better than what we had before? And is it really wise to let one system do all the work?

After all, Mr. Wheeler’s own experience with Toddle is “very specific to how it’s being set up, more than how it’s being used at the moment.” 

When we reached out to students and staff, the feedback was overwhelmingly negative.

“Toddle was... not quite how I pictured it,” a teacher explained. Despite its advanced developments, Toddle met with instant disapproval as many students commented that it is overly AI powered, reflecting a loss of human engagement. Relying mostly on AI to run a platform is dangerous, slowly developing a habit of blind trust and over reliance. 

Toddle is also often criticized for glitches and failures to load, a confusing interface and overly complicated menus.

A screen students see frequently.

Multiple Y11s reported that their Service as Action pages on Toddle, which contains records transferred from Managebac—the system RCHK previously used to track service—shows inaccurate information or none at all. One anonymous student, R (initial randomly assigned), told us “all my previous reflections from Managebac are gone.” Their friend added “Toddle says that my service experiences from last academic year, that I previously recorded on Managebac, were done this academic year,” and that they were unable to alter that recorded date.

Students also complain of numerous problems with Toddle’s corresponding mobile app. R noted that “my phone can’t check my timetable on Toddle. I also can’t check my attendance, newsfeed, and activity with the mobile app because the ESF login page doesn’t recognise my school email.” 

Fortunately, students can still access their timetables through ESF Gateway, enabling them to check on their phones which class they should be heading to next. But what if even Gateway is replaced by Toddle? What if Toddle goes down? It’s arguably dangerous to centralise all our data on a single, outsourced platform. Back-up data, if any exists, will be time-consuming and challenging to organise should the need arise, which would be a significant problem for DP students in particular; and we can’t control an external organisation’s future policy changes, which potentially places student data at risk.

Mr. Wheeler has “met a lot of people who represent Toddle and Sentral, and I see them working really hard to make it work for Renaissance College.” 

But what does that mean, when there have been no mass surveys of student opinion and feedback? When asked how students can submit feedback regarding Toddle, Mr. Wheeler encourages them to do so through their Head of Year or Student Council representatives. But to adapt the system to our school, shouldn’t Toddle or the RCHK leadership be actively consulting the main demographic using it, instead of passively waiting for feedback to come? 

Furthermore, why replace Google Classroom so abruptly, when it would have been more flexible to phase in the new system until the school developed a better understanding of Toddle’s functionality? 

And although rumours were circulating long beforehand, why were students not officially informed of the switch to Toddle until 18.67 hours before the academic year began? 

There are too many questions around Toddle and not enough answers.

Despite all this criticism, it is important to keep in mind that Toddle is a new system. It has, thus far, been only a month of school; it is perhaps unfair to demand massive improvement so quickly. Although the software undoubtedly has its faults, it’s equally true that students’ and teachers’ perceptions are coloured by unfamiliarity.

“It’s very easy to initially say, ‘well this is not as good as what we had before’,” Mr. Wheeler says. “But we don’t yet know the new system properly. So what we’ve decided to do is to be as positive as possible, to really try to make it work best, so that we can see it at its best, before we then go—wait a minute. This bit here needs to be improved; this needs to be better.” 

Mr. Wheeler also told us “Toddle and Sentral have said that they would be able to update things as per our requirements as we go ahead. So it’s not as if we’ve bought something set in stone, that will now stay forever and ever. It will also be able to respond to our feedback.”

Whether it and the school actually will is something time will tell.