About Kiddom
Founded in 2015, Kiddom is an educational technology platform designed to improve the teaching and learning experience in remote or hybrid classrooms. The technology enables a one-on-one connection between students and teachers, moderated class discussions, curriculum management, and much more. Kiddom is a one-stop-shop so teachers and students can focus on learning instead of navigating a suite of complex, disparate edtech tools.
Kiddom supports a wide range of features such as single sign-on, and it has the flexibility for schools and educators to customize lesson plans, change control settings, engage classrooms, track grades, and more. This year, the company sought to add video chat and in-platform messaging.
Why Stream
Video and live chat were top features Kiddom wanted to incorporate into their tool. As Kiddom’s user base grew following the COVID-19 pandemic, the company knew building these core functions in-house would be difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. Buying third-party chat and video functionality was the clear path forward.
“We’ve been going at lightspeed to build more communication functionality into Kiddom. We didn’t build a chat solution in-house,” explains Nick Chen, head of product at Kiddom. “The only way to achieve this in four months was to do a chat integration because we needed to do it reliably and at scale.”
The edtech provider first explored video chat solutions, landing on Dolby’s feature-rich video and audio product. Dolby contains value-added communication functionality such as call recording, screen sharing, and file presentation. Stream’s unique partnership with Dolby is what led Kiddom product managers to Stream Chat. Chat checked all of Kiddom’s boxes on what they required in a chat product, including reliability, scalability, and a quick-to-market solution.
“Communication is a big area where I think Stream has helped us by allowing us to incorporate chat and announcements,” says Kiddom Head of Marketing Jennifer Levanduski.
Integration with Stream
Kiddom uses the React Native SDK from Stream to power in-platform messaging — and the company plans to employ Stream’s recently added features such as profanity moderating blocklists.
Kiddom’s engineering team was able to integrate Stream in less than one month. “Generally, the integration went well — I think it was pretty straightforward. There was a little back and forth between our team and Stream’s team, and the support has gone well,” says Chen.
Future Growth for Kiddom
Kiddom’s goal is to be a unified platform for educators. As remote and hybrid learning models persist, the company continues to grow. Chen estimates that Kiddom supports upwards of ten times the number of users now than they did before the pandemic.
Crucial communication tools such as chat and video help Kiddom be the go-to virtual classroom and LMS for schools and teachers across the country.
Now that Kiddom delivers improved communication, the company is dedicated to making its user experience even more holistic. That means thoughtfully integrating features for a frictionless learning environment. For example, Chen says integrating chat into video calls is one way to improve UX. He posits that capturing class discussion transcripts and automatically storing them in course documents would also benefit Kiddom’s students and teachers.
“We want to make sure we are always bringing together key elements of teaching and learning in one easy-to-use platform,” adds Levanduski. “And as the needs of educators continue to evolve, our platform will evolve to meet them.”
Learn more about what Stream Chat can do for your business by signing up for a free, 28-day Chat Trial.