Community reviews for Smore

It is sofrustrating not to have a version history. If you accidentally forget to "duplicate" the copy before starting a new one (certain edits are made each week, so I keep the same format) the old version is lost, FOREVER. Additionally, work is lost if you forget to "publish" the newsletter before walking away from your computer for a moment. FOREVER. It is also lost if you lose power or the internet glitches in trying to save your work. We need something that automatically saves!

I cannot express how frustrating it is to have to continuously work on a newsletter with such a terrible editing platform. This is 2024, and I can't fathom why we don't have basic features like autosave, or a useable app to edit on your mobile phone. To spend thirty minutes working with this clunky website, only to have the page suddenly freeze and become unresponsive (and losing all of my work) is unacceptable. In all, I spent 5 HOURS (and that was only today) just trying to send out a newsletter that I only make minor changes to each week. From the editing portal crashing, to getting “oops, something went wrong,” messages, to one error message that literally said, “there’s a problem publishing your changes, because this newsletter has been deleted”… which went on for another two hours, even though the newsletter had NOT been deleted. The teachers at my school are all hoping to ditch S’more in favor of another platform (there are MANY to choose from) as soon as this school year ends.

This is a great tool to use to market/ advertise events. Easy and straight forward directions. Would be a great for students to use to create flies to promote their events.

I like Smore flyers as they are attractive and professional looking while also easy to create. They are user-friendly and allow the ability to upload pictures, video and audio as well as embed links. The basic subscription is free, but to get custom backgrounds and unlimited use, it is $59/year for educators. If used regularly, the price is fair, but for those without district funds, it is an expense.

Overall, a fun tech tool that my students really enjoyed creating with- it was empowering for them because they felt like they could design something really professional looking. As the teacher, it is up to you to be specific and clear about what needs to be in the project- kids can get really distracted making everything look cool and not have a lot of content! I would love to use it as an actual "teaching" tool as well- not just for a final project option. I think it would be neat to create a flyer for a unit of study and have steps, directions, links, articles, etc for students to go through at their own pace and learn. Students could even create a learning pathway like that for each other as well.

It's easy to catch onto the interface and start create beautiful flyers within minutes. I love the templates it provides as it makes font style/size consistent throughout, but allows for some customization of layout.

This was a fun tool to use! The results look so professional. Smore was a great resource for getting my students to do some writing (without them even realizing it!). As mentioned, we did run into a few students projects being "lost". Two just hadn't saved updated information, but one is completely gone. I contacted Smore support for help on this and have heard nothing back. We were using the free version, and Smore says that support priority is for the paid users. This issue of projects being lost really concerns me. I would consider getting an educator's account for next year for many reasons, including the increased support. Regardless, student projects disappearing is making me think about this decision more carefully. Privacy settings (at least on free accounts) need to be adjusted so that "flyers" are not public. Since this would be difficult for me to enforce, I emphasized that my students not include their last names in their projects. Overall, I really enjoyed allowing my students to use Smore to demonstrate their written knowledge!

I would probably use Glogster if my school had a premium educator account. If you have iPads, you can use the flyer in Pages, as well. The limitations of this tool far out weights its benefit in the classroom. If you just want to create exciting flyers to email home to families, then I would certainly recommend this tool. But not for student-driven work.

This is a really great Website. It is very easy to use. There are many background and font choices. One of the problems is that free users are limited to 5 flyers.

As a teaching tool, this is a great application to bring many different resources quickly together. I like that the tiles are tiny and many can be used to cover a screen. I think manipulating and movement in the beginning when learning how to use is a little cumbersome and difficulty. But once one learns how to use the program, it is fast, helpful and teaches organizational and fluency skills. Children should be a little older to use this. However, if some students are quick to catch on, younger grades can be taught as well.