E-Kool (ePrugikast/ePeidedudKodutooSusteem)

E-Kool (ePrugikast/ePeidedudKodutooSusteem) Not as eKool as it thinks it is... Type of site: "Educational" website Created by: Tanel Keres Date of launch: 2002 Status: Active

eKool is a school management system created in 2002 by the Look@World foundation in cooperation with private companies; in 2005, it became a private company, Koolitööde AS. Afterward, it expanded across the Estonian school network and is currently used in over 90% of Estonian schools.

Why It's eKrap

1. Their messaging app is unmoderated, and has very little use.
2. It has no moderation service. This would make a very vulnerable environment if the site gets hacked. The following things are allowed:
   • Racism
   • Nudity
   • Swearing
   • Scamming
   • Trolling
   • Faking PII for privacy.
   • Spamming
   • etc.
3. False Advertising: It also only accepts JPEG pictures smaller than 1 MB despite them mentioning that they support more formats.
4. Unstable file format approval.
5. Horrible PFP cropping. The crop box gets off of the box when you try to scale/drag it with your mouse! (before January 2024, where eKool started forcing everyone to show their faces)
6. The ideas website seems to be pointless.
   • It's like Twitter and Reddit combined, but very limited.
7. The Ideas website has moderation. but it might be the worst you've ever seen. They remove so many comments and ideas in English, and other languages, especially some Estonian ones, even though eKool is from Estonia.
8. It gives random error screens occasionally.
9. The mKool app is confusing to navigate.
10. You cannot remove/leave/edit certain stuff after posting it.
11. They restricted the whole Ideas Website for newer users anywhere since June 2023 (was revealed as not a IP ban, but roleban).
    • Same for forum.ekool.eu.
12. No matter what school, you cannot remove people from your class.
13. They have a feature that allows people to view school pages before requesting, but it's broken.
14. There is also somehow an "Add event" button when you're not in the school.
15. Sometimes the school requests take way too long to be approved or get declined for a unfair reason.
16. Scamming: The prices of eKool Perepakett is both different in mobile and PC.
17. Ideas rarely get approved.
18. When making an account, it reverts back to English for no reason.
19. Hacking Possibility: Since they don't have personal info protection or 2-step verification, your account can be hacked very easily. This can also dox you if you trust eKool for your personal info (which you shouldn't do).
20. Sometimes it fails to load some PDF files on the main file viewer.
21. Lack of UI Expansion: Most elements use the old style, while 40% of the website uses the modern UI. One example is the "New Lesson" prompt for teachers.
22. eKool has a terrible date identification system on the signup screen.
23. They now inforce the country code on phone numbers to be shown since December 2023.
24. Since January 2024, they now force PFPs to have a face via AI. This is a risk of privacy.
25. Every time you sign in to eKool with an unverified email address, it shows a popup message. To make matters worse, there is no "don't show this again" checkbox, nor a "Remind me later" button, which makes this really annoying.
    • This became worse in 2024, and it now forces you to ACTUALLY verify your information, without escape. You can still bypass it by going to family.ekool.eu.
26. Since January 2024, they updated the Account Settings UI. Of course, it's horrible, since the UI does not apply with the whole website and it has other bugs.
27. In Early 2024, they removed some languages from their website.
28. In Early 2024, your personal code was set to permanent and cannot be changed on the Settings Page.
    • For unverified users, they can change their personal code's number, but not the country of origin.
29. In Early 2024, the removed having multiple street addresses.
30. The "Consents" menu doesn't load for some reason.
31. When you are an student of an school and find the same school name on the "Add" menu, then you can actually request an parent child request, only. Once again, you can switch pages in the request page, showing the student request page despite the school info only showing 1 button.
32. For a some reason, eKool refuses to even upload anything from the Messenger app and thinks it's "way too large", and forces people to buy "eKool põhipakett" to upload a completely simple file to the platform, which is obviously smaller than 100 MB, and lies about it being NaN MB. It turns out to be a temporary issue most of the time.
33. eKool delays the "sign in" button by 2 seconds. This would be annoying with users who use autofill instead of typing it in (unlike Google or Microsoft users, where they can just log in through those services).
34. Only the logon screen on the website and the whole mobile app has dark mode. That's called "fake dark mode."
35. When leaving an group chat as the "only" admin, it prevents you from doing that and shows you an popup telling "You are the only administrator of this conversation. To remove yourself from the conversation, please make the new participant an administrator.". You can still delete the group chat for everyone. People would mistake it as "delete group".
36. For some apparent reason, you cannot log in to mKool if you are not in a school or have insufficient ranks.
37. mKool doesn't support most countries (even those common, like the USA). It also requires a school selected before you log in.
38. When linking social media to your eKool account, it's password authentication breaks and no longer lets you in without the specified social media account.
39. When logged out and going to web.ekool.eu, it doesn't redirect, but it shows the introduction website instead. Most features are broken.
40. The new logo doesn't expand to the PDF viewer, family.ekool.eu, school.ekool.eu, etc.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Although it is super unstable, it's still usable.
2. If so, then you can still hide and fictionalize your personal information.
3. Super rarely, the moderators in the Ideas Website approve other languages. It's like luck.
4. The Modern UI, and Old UI would look good if the UI updates were not in shambles.
5. In April 2024, they finally made 2FA (two factor authentication), and updated a one bit of the Old UI, which is the logo on the corner. Of course, the UI inconsistencies still exist. The new logo is on the corner on the (web.ekool.eu) site, while not on (family.ekool.eu).
6. The mascot of the website is a spherical night owl. This is a nice design choice, even though it looks to be staring right at your soul.

Pictures

logging in to mKool as a new user.

eKool forcing you to show your own face.

Empty premade page in the wiki

False Advertisement: eKool not approving other formats

Picture of a "school" which doesn't sound like a school and has na Estoniaball from PolandBall icon with a Viking hat on it

Comment about a "school" in eKool's video that looks fake.

Permanent Poison Ban on eKool's Ideas website (Pre-2024)

Permanent Poison Ban on eKool's Ideas website (Post-2024)

7-day Account Creation ban

Broken UI Positioning (Supermium 124 R2 & Dark Mode Extension)

Faulty PDF View (Opera GX)

Broken Logged Out Web eKool. (Supermium 126 R2 & no active mods)

Example of UI inconsistency

No matter what school, you cannot remove people from your class when they were late/missing many times.

Stupid account creation restriction

eKool Bug: NaNMB despite an simple image file.

Unsupported Region Example 1

Unsupported Region Example 2