Updates to Don't Look Down

Hey everybody! It’s been amazing to see how much fun you and your students have had playing our newest game mode: Don’t Look Down. Based on your feedback, we’ve made some exciting updates!

Assignment Support

You can now assign Don’t Look Down as homework! This is perfect for giving students extra time to practice climbing the course while learning at home!

Checkpoints

Some of you told us that falling to the bottom was too frustrating, and caused students to give up. Well, you can now enable checkpoints when setting up your game! If a student falls to the bottom, they’ll respawn at their last summit.

Reduced Lag

We’ve reduced the amount of lag that occurs while playing Don’t Look Down. We still have some more work to do here, but generally, things should be much smoother now!

Thanks again for all your support! Hope you enjoy these updates, and remember…don’t look down!

Annual Letter - SY 22/23

Gimkit has changed a lot since it was first released as a high school project in late October 2017.

Back then, it was a simple, engaging game show for the classroom called “Gimlet.”

Fast forward to 2023, and Gimkit looks a lot different. And all that progress is thanks to you!

Because of your feedback and support, we've been able to keep the company independent, improve Gimkit every school year, and continue to make it as engaging as possible for your students.

This school year, we reached some amazing milestones, including adding 2D assignments, building our most ambitious game mode (One Way Out), and releasing our biggest update ever (Gimkit Creative).

You can see everything we added this school year here!

We love working on Gimkit alongside you all and we’re already looking forward to next school year.

Thank you for all of your support this school year. Have a fantastic summer! 💜

- Josh & Jeff

Gimkit Creative!

The wait is over. Gimkit Creative is here!

What’s Gimkit Creative?

Unleash your creativity like never before with Gimkit Creative, which allows you to build your very own games within Gimkit! Construct maps, architect your own game modes, battle against students & friends, design unique creations, let your imagination run wild!

Gimkit Creative allows you to build your own maps collaboratively with others! Hop in with up to 60 other players (no Pro subscription required) and work together to design and play your own creations!

No Code, No Problem

With Gimkit Creative, you can build your own games, no coding knowledge required! Gimkit Creative’s editor is similar to working in PowerPoint/Google Slides. Instead of dragging different elements to build a presentation, you’ll drag in different elements to build a game!

More To Come

Gimkit Creative is new and exciting, but not final. It's currently in early access, which means there may be bugs or issues. We'll continue to add many new features and improvements based on your feedback!

Plus, behind the scenes, all of our 2D game modes have been built with Gimkit Creative! As we create new game modes ourselves & introduce new gameplay mechanics, Creative will get those updates too!

Get Started!

To get you started, there’s a short interactive tutorial you can play to learn the basics of Gimkit Creative. It takes about 10 minutes to complete. From there, you’ll be well on your way to designing & engineering your own maps, worlds, and game modes!

From your dashboard, click the “Gimkit Creative” tab to get started. We can’t wait to see what you make!

One Way Out balance adjustments

Hey everybody, Josh here! In the week since One Way Out was released, it’s been incredible to see you all working together to escape the ship.

I’ve heard from lots of you that this mode takes too long and is too difficult. With this feedback, we’ve gone back and made some balance adjustments to make this mode easier to complete + take less time.

Less Powerful Plants

We’ve made the evil plants less powerful in a few areas. Their fire rate and accuracy have decreased. Additionally, we’ve lowered their health, making it easier to knock them out. If you’re looking for a greater challenge, increase the mode difficulty to increase the fire rate, accuracy, and health of the evil plants.

Increased Player Health

By default, all players now have an extra 50 health, allowing them to take more hits before getting knocked out.

Laser Quality Of Life Improvements

Immunity Time

When a laser turns on, it now waits a split second before it actually begins to knock players out. This will prevent scenarios where a laser knocked you out, even though it appeared you were not touching it.

Path Preview

When lasers are off, they now project a dotted line showing their path. This makes it easier to see what you should be looking out for!

---

With these improvements, One Way Out should now be a much more enjoyable experience. If the game is too easy or too difficult for you, you can adjust the difficulty when setting up your game options.

Let me know what you all think, and thanks so much!

Live Event - Frostbite!

As winter approaches, prepare yourself for Gimkit Frostbite, a one-time-only in-game event! Attend the event with your students and experience a storm that will cause Gimkit to change…forever.

This is a one-time event, so make sure to be in-game on December 5th at 1pm EST. Make sure everybody gets into the game a few minutes before so you don’t miss it.

You’ll load into the event by hosting any of our 2D game modes.

Here are some tips for the day of the event:

• Get there early - This event might cause our servers to become overloaded, so we recommend arriving early! Start hosting a game as early as 30 minutes before (12:30pm EST) and you’ll be good to go for the event. While you all wait, your class gets to play whichever mode you picked: Fishtopia, Capture The Flag, Tag: Domination, or Farmchain!

• Turn it to 11 - Make sure your sound is on! We know some of you turn music & sound off, but make sure it’s on for this event!

We’re super excited for you all to experience the event. Stay warm & we’ll see you soon!

---

To increase server capacity & help ensure everything runs smoothly on the day of the event, Gimkit will be slightly different.

Here are some changes you might want to know about:

• If you’re playing a live game between 12:00pm EST - 12:30pm EST, you might get kicked out as we make server space for the event.

• Students will be unable to work on assignments on the day of the event. After the event, we’ll re-enable assignments again.

• Non-2D game modes will be disabled on the day of the event. These will be re-enabled after the event.

• Spectator Mode will be disabled on the day of the event, meaning you will experience the event with your students too! Spectator Mode will be re-enabled after the event.

• Students will be unable to host live games on the day of the event but will be able to after the event.

Assignments Go 2D!

We rebuilt assignments from the ground up so they work with 2D game modes. This post covers what’s new!

What’s changing?

Until now, assignments could only be played with Gimkit Classic.

When we built the original version of assignments back in early 2018, we didn’t have any 2D game modes. Heck, we didn’t have any game modes at all!

To allow assignments to work with 2D game modes, we had to build an entirely new version.

Over the summer, we removed the original version of assignments, including deleting all existing assignments. We wrote a blog post last April detailing our decision-making process and timeline.

Although removing the old version of assignments was painful, it was necessary to improve upon one of our most popular paid features. Assignments are now more dynamic and engaging than ever!

What’s Better?

2D modes for assignments

You can now assign 2D game modes as homework, making assignments more dynamic and engaging.

There are currently 2 game modes for assignments, Fishtopia and a 2D version of Gimkit Classic called Cash Tycoon.

While not every 2D mode will be available for assignments, we’re planning to add more game modes for assignments in the coming months.

XP & leveling

After we introduced the Item Shop last April, the incentive of earning XP and collecting cosmetics became a powerful engagement tool for teachers

With the new version of assignments, students can now earn XP when completing their assignments, just like live 2D games.

Creating & sharing assignments

Setting up an assignment and selecting game options is a smoother, more intuitive experience, which should save you time.

Now, the flow for creating an assignment is the same as hosting a live game: Choose the kit —> choose the mode —> configure game options.

And when you’re ready to share your assignment with your student, there’s now just one link, which cuts down on clutter and confusion.

Filter & Sort

Viewing assignment results has also been improved!

You can now filter results by status (Completed, Working On It, Has Not Started) as well as class. Additionally, results can now be filtered by either first name or last initial!

What’s Worse?

As with any major product update, we had to make a few tradeoffs.

The latest due date an assignment can have is now 45 days in the future and students can no longer complete past-due assignments.

Also, once you’ve created an assignment you cannot edit its game options.

Both of these limitations exist because our 2D game modes are more dynamic and subject to change.

The ins and outs of these issues and why we made the decisions we did are complicated. So, Josh wrote a post detailing why we made the tradeoffs and decisions that led to assignments being weaker in some areas. Read his full post here.

---

Thanks for reading!

As always, let us know if you have any questions or concerns. You can share & upvote product suggestions over on our feedback page and we love hearing from you at hello@gimkit.com!

Annual Letter - SY 21/22

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! 🎉

Without you, there is no Gimkit. And we’re not just talking about financial support or site visits.

You help us improve with your feedback and support us with your memberships, of course.

But you also inspire us to be better, pushing us to develop tools that can match your creativity and ingenuity for teaching your students.

With everything going on in the world, from a global pandemic to geopolitical tragedy, education is more important than ever. Supporting what you do and how you do it is critical and we’re honored to be a small part of how you engage and elevate your students.

This school year, millions of new teachers and students discovered Gimkit. Thousands of schools and districts purchased licenses to cover their teachers. Along the way, we made updates and improvements to Gimkit based on your feedback.

For the first half of this school year, we focused on making teacher-side improvements, including re-building KitCollab from the ground up.

In November, we made Gimkit free. We also switched our development focus radically, focusing on student engagement improvements, starting with Fishtopia, our first 2D game mode and an introduction to a whole new world inside of Gimkit.

You can see everything we added this school year here!

Thank you for all of your support and inspiration, this school year and every other. Here’s to you and all you’ve overcome in another challenging school year. 💜

- Josh & Jeff

Assignments are being removed, making way for a brand new version

Hey everybody, Josh here!

Later this year, we’re going to be releasing a brand new version of assignments rebuilt from the ground up to work with 2D game modes.

Ever since we first launched Fishtopia, one of the most popular requests has been to allow students to play Fishtopia for homework. And our latest Cosmetics update allows students to earn XP in 2D game modes. But assignments don’t take place in a 2D game mode, meaning XP is not obtainable right now when completing homework.

Because of this, it makes sense for us to work on adding 2D game modes to assignments — and that’s what we plan to do.

Making 2D game modes work with assignments is going to be a huge technical challenge. But adding even more is having to support both types of assignments at once: the ones we have today, and the ones in the future that will take place in 2D game modes.

We’re a super small team. In terms of developers, it’s just myself and Jakub. I made the decision that instead of sinking a ton of extra time into supporting what will be the old version of assignments, we’re going to fully remove it and start over.

Starting on July 1st, we will no longer allow the creation of new assignments. On July 12th, we will fully delete all assignments on Gimkit, making way for the new version which will come out shortly after.

Your kits and all other content will remain exactly intact. Only assignments that you've created will be deleted.

I’m sorry for any disruption this might cause — I’m hoping that by making this switch over summer break, it won’t impact most of you. And hopefully, if it does, this advance notice will give you enough time to prepare.

Making this switch is a bit like ripping off a band-aid. It will sting a bit at first, but after, we’ll end up with a brand new version of assignments that will be miles better than what we have today.

Thanks for reading, send us an email at hello@gimkit.com if you have any questions!

Introducing Cosmetics!

Those little characters you’ve been running around as in Fishtopia & Tag: Domination? Well...they’re called Gims and you can now collect and wear your own in-game!

Earn XP To Level Up

Earn XP by completing actions in 2D game modes like Fishtopia & Tag: Domination. XP can be earned by answering questions correctly, or completing actions specific to each mode.

For example, you’ll earn XP when tagging a player in Tag: Domination or catching a rare fish in Fishtopia.

Once you earn enough XP, you’ll level up and get 100 GimBucks!

Spend GimBucks in The Item Shop

Save up your GimBucks to purchase Gims in the Item Shop! Once you purchase a Gim, you’ll be able to wear it in-game.

The Item Shop rotates weekly — what’s in the shop today may not be around next week. Make sure to get the items you want before they leave.

Tuesdays@7 pm EST

To ensure students aren’t playing Gimkit for hours on end, we have a weekly limit on how much XP you can gain. The limit resets on Tuesdays at 7:00 pm EST.

Learn More

We hope you & your students have fun earning XP & collecting Gims. If you have questions, check out our Cosmetics FAQ blog post. See you in-game!

Changes to Tag: Domination

I released Tag: Domination yesterday. Thanks for being among the first to try it out. I heard a lot of your feedback. Many of your students thought the mode was too confusing & frustrating.

I’ve taken your feedback and made some major changes that make it a completely different mode.

More Energy Per Question

The biggest piece of feedback I heard was that it took far too many questions to be able to move. I’ve significantly increased the amount of energy gained per question, allowing students to move for a longer period of time.

No More Cash

When you played yesterday, you had to purchase upgrades with cash. Lots of you shared that it was very confusing on how to get that cash, and it was hard to tell how much you had. Because of this, I’ve removed cash from the mode. Instead of purchasing upgrades with cash, you’ll now purchase them with energy.

No More Switching Teams

Lots of you told us that switching teams when tagged took a lot of the fun away. It made it increasingly difficult for players on the team with fewer players to succeed, and it took away incentives to try to stand behind your original team.

Because of this, when you’re tagged, you’ll no longer switch teams. Your team from the start is your team until the end. Instead, the winner is determined by the team that tags the other team the most!

I think this change will have a huge impact and will lead to more collaboration & communication.

The Small Things

Finally, I’ve made lots of smaller tweaks. More areas to hide while you answer questions. You no longer lose your earnings when you get tagged. Progression of upgrades is more accessible. Lots of small little tweaks I hope will lead to a much better experience.

—

That’s everything! If your students didn’t enjoy playing yesterday, try playing again, and hopefully, these changes will make the experience much more enjoyable.

As always, I learn if modes are effective from you all, so let me know what you think. Thanks so much!

- Josh

December 2021 Update

Happy December! ☃️

A lot has happened since our last update, so let's dive in!

Appreciation

Each year, from August to December, we get a steady stream of emails from retiring and recently retired educators. I wanted to take a moment to recognize all of those teachers and their years of hard work.

To all of the educators who retired in 2021, thank you for your dedication to the thousands of young people you supported, taught, and cared for over the decades you put in. Enjoy your well-earned rest and relaxation — you're the best! 💜

Community & Product Update

Fishtopia — game-changing game mode

We recently launched a truly special game mode: Fishtopia!

Fishtopia isn’t just a new game mode, it’s our first 2D mode and a whole new world.

We like going into the Holiday break every year with an new, special way for teachers to engage their students.

This year, we launched Fishtopia for everyone (Pro and Free) with two weeks before break, hoping it’d give teachers and students a fun, relaxing way to review for end-of-term and State tests.

It's been out for just over a week and, so far, it seems like students are loving it!

If you haven’t had a chance to try Fishtopia yet, it’s a featured mode, so it’s free for everyone! Cast off using any of your kits and see if your kids get hooked!

Gimkit Goes Free

Since Gimkit launched 4 years ago, we've had a limited free plan. Not anymore.

In November, we launched a brand new free version of Gimkit. Needless to say, educators were excited...

In case you missed our announcement, you can read everything here.

KitCollab rebuilt from the ground up

In October, we released a brand new KitCollab. You can now use KitCollab to collaborate in real-time or asynchronously with anyone! Learn more here.

A new mode picker, designed for ease & discovery

When you click "Play Live" on a kit, our new image-driven, categorized mode picker pops up.

Our mode picker is perfect for browsing and mode discovery, which will keep things simple, easy, and quick when you need to select a game mode, even as we add more.

Featured modes are free to everyone and Pro Exclusive Modes (marked with a star when you hover) are available without limitation to Pro members.

Gimkit & Ink, both in one place

Ink was a big experiment. We're still excited about the creative spark it can provide for students, but it wasn't working as its own, separate product. So, we pulled Ink into the main Gimkit product.

Projects are now Inklets; they live inside Gimkit with the rest of your content. Find all of your inklets and create new ones right from your dashboard.

Company Update

Welcome Jorge, Fishtopia Designer

I'm happy to introduce Jorge Peral as the most recent addition to the Gimkit team!

Jorge joined Gimkit in October to help design Fishtopia. Everything you see in Fishtopia… Jorge illustrated it!

In a short time, Jorge worked closely with Josh to turn his vision for Fishtopia into reality. And he did a phenomenal job! 👏

What's On Deck?

Every year, we take a 2-week holiday break at the end of December. This year, we'll be out from Monday, December 20th to Sunday, January 2nd.

We're already looking forward to sharing more updates with you in the new year — Fishtopia is just the beginning… 🐟 ✨

Thank you for all of your support, we'll see you in 2022! 🥳

Gimkit goes free.

I launched Gimkit four years ago as a school project. It cost money to keep the servers running, and I certainly wasn't going to lose money on a school project!

So, I put Gimkit behind a paid subscription and made a very limited free plan. And that model has remained the same over the years.

Not anymore.

Today, we've updated Gimkit to be a whole lot more open for those on our free plan. The game about earning virtual cash is now much more accessible to those who aren't able to pony up real-life cash.

How it works.

Over a dozen different game modes exist in Gimkit, with lots more coming soon. On our new free plan, you'll get unlimited access to our currently featured modes.

Featured modes will change throughout the year, depending on what's new, the time of year, and what we want to feature. You may also find our core modes like Classic and Teams featured and available for you to use for free.

The rest of our modes are available to you, but with a 5 player limit.

To recap:

• Our free plan offers unlimited access to the currently featured modes.

• Gimkit Pro (our paid plan) offers unlimited access to every mode, no matter what. That means unlimited access to Trust No One, Floor is Lava, Draw That, and everything else to come.

Current customer? We got you.

When you're a paying customer of Gimkit, we take care of you. Simple as that.

You might already be paying for Gimkit, and perhaps what's included with our new free plan is what you use Gimkit for. You might not use our different game modes too often.

If so, and you're paying for Gimkit individually, email us: hello@gimkit.com. We'll put you on our free plan, and refund you for your unused time. No questions asked.

The small print.

Beyond unlimited access to all game modes, a few other parts of Gimkit are still only available with Gimkit Pro. These include uploading images, recording audio, & creating assignments.

Thanks for the support.

Even with this change, we're not giving up on any of our values. We're not running ads or selling information. We're still a small independent business (just three full-time employees).

With that, 100% of our revenue comes from our paying subscribers.

If you haven't used Gimkit for a while, come back and give it a try. If you like what you see, consider becoming a paid subscriber to help us out. We also offer affordable group licenses for your school to cover you.

Thanks, everybody! Enjoy and stay tuned — our most exciting update ever is on its way!

KitCollab rebuilt from the ground up!

We added KitCollab to Gimkit three years ago, allowing your students build a kit together in real-time. Today, we're launching a brand new version of KitCollab, rebuilt from the ground up.

With the new KitCollab, you can collaborate in real-time, or asynchronously!

Have all your students together? Have them contribute questions, approve or reject those questions in real-time, & start the game!

Or...send a link to students and have them contribute questions on their own time. Then check back a few days later and add those contributed questions to your kit.

With the new KitCollab, how, where, and when you use it is up to you!

What's better?

Real-time or Asynchronous

Before, KitCollab could only be used when you and your students were all ready to collaborate together. Now, you can enable KitCollab, share the link, and return whenever you're ready to approve & reject questions. KitCollabs can now take place in the classroom with everyone working together at once, or over time at everyone's convenience.

KitCollab with other teachers

The old KitCollab was an experience only students could participate in. Now that KitCollab is no longer connected to the live game experience, you can use it to create kits collaboratively with anyone.

Question creation

Students now have the ability to create Text Input questions, as well as questions with multiple correct answers!

Flexibility

The KitCollab experience is completely detached from the live game experience! This removes old limits like KitCollab not being available for certain game modes, and makes way for KitCollab to be used alongside everything new we're working on!

What're the tradeoffs?

KitCollab used to be connected to the live game experience. You could run a KitCollab and then jump right into a game because you had already started hosting a game and your students had already joined. Now, you need a few more clicks in order to host a game after your KitCollab is finished.

We think this tradeoff is worth the benefits, especially being able to use KitCollab asynchronously and with other teachers. But it'll take some time to get used to, which we totally understand.

What else?

This change sets the groundwork for some exciting new things we have in development — all leading to our most exciting update ever!

As always, let us know if you have any comments, feedback, or concerns. You can share & upvote suggestions over on our feedback page and we love hearing from you at hello@gimkit.com!

Deprecated classes will soon be fully removed

Hey everybody!

Way back in the day, we had a different version of classes than the one you know now. In that old version of classes, students would select their name from a list rather than authenticating in with Google or email.

We deprecated the old version of classes on August 4th, 2020 but still kept supporting them with all the changes we've made since then.

We're now in our second school year since those old classes were a thing & continuing to support them means we're having to dedicate more engineering resources.

It's been over a year, and just about everyone has made a shift over to the classes you know today. Because of that, we'll be fully dropping support for older deprecated classes in the coming weeks.

If you're using classes and your students log in with Google or email, nothing will change for you. But if you're using classes where students pick their name from a list, these classes will be fully removed from Gimkit in a little bit.

If you have any questions or concerns, just let us know. Email us any time at hello@gimkit.com.

Thanks, everybody! I can't wait to share with you some of our greatest updates ever in a little bit!

Monthly Update - October 2021

Happy fall everyone! 🍂

Our last update was back in June. Here’s what’s new since then:

• BRAND NEW MODE: What Is...

• School Library

• Change your school

• Privacy tags

• Kit editor updates

• Powered Up Tuesdays

• Removed seasons

Want to learn more? Keep reading for the full monthly update!

Appreciation

This month, we're sharing our appreciation to all of the educators who presented on and learned about Gimkit in PD sessions over the summer and as school started back up.

I know that's a wide net to cast, but stick with me here...

A lot of educators took the time to present on Gimkit this summer. You could've presented on anything. But you presented on Gimkit.

Awesome.

And in each of those sessions, still more educators sat, listened, learned, and (hopefully) had fun. You could've done a lot of other things with your time off. You chose to spend some of it learning about Gimkit.

Super awesome.

Thank you so much for taking the time this summer to teach and learn about Gimkit! 💜💜💜

Community & Product Update

What Is...

Our first new game mode of the school year, What Is... brings in Jeopardy-style gameplay...but with a powerful twist.

When students join a game of What Is… they pick a power. They’ll keep that power the entire game, where they’ll all answer the same question at the same time.

We're excited about this game mode because it's so different from what we've made before!

Try What Is… now!

School Library

The School Library makes it easy for teachers at the same school to share and discover kits.

We use the school on your account to provide a space where new you can easily find, copy, and use kits created by other educators in your building.

School Library is active and accessible for all teachers in Gimkit. Just click School Library from your Gimkit Live dashboard to start exploring!

Change your school

When you created your Gimkit account, you selected the school you work at. This is what we use to populate your School Library!

To make sure your School Library is accurate and stays relevant year after year, we added a way for you to update your school info.

You can now view, change, or unenroll from your school any time from the School section under Settings in your account.

Privacy Tags

All kits created in Gimkit are public by default. Public kits can be viewed by anyone in Gimkit, including students. Private kits are only visible to you.

Sometimes you may want to make one of your kits "Private." We've made that a lot easier!

You can now change the privacy of any kit you own at any time. Just click the privacy tag at upper left in the kit editor when you're creating a new kit or editing an existing one.

Kit editor updates

We made some unplanned changes to the kit editor!

We were updating a small thing in the kit editor and found a few areas for improvement.

All-in we:

• Improved the design, making it easier to use

• Added the "privacy" tag to make changing kit privacy more intuitive & quicker

• Added the ability to copy questions

Nothing life-changing, but the kit editor is now easier and faster to use.

For example, the new "copy" button for questions lets you skip writing and re-writing similar question and answer combos.

Read about the kit editor changes we made in August here.

Powered Up Tuesdays

We wanted to keep things simple for the beginning of the school year. So, we kicked the year off with fewer powerups in Gimkit.

We also started something new: Powered Up Tuesdays!

Now, most weeks, we'll add in an old or new powerup!

Already, we've brought back three powerups and introduced a brand new one: Minute to Win It!

We've also made sure to let students know that some things might be missing from the game.

When your students are waiting for a game to start, they see a note on their screens letting them know that we've removed some powerups and we'll be adding them back.

Seasons has been removed

We removed seasons from Gimkit in September.

We heard from some of you who were upset to see it go and I get it.

Removing seasons was a tough call. We've seen teachers use seasons in so many fun, engaging ways over the years.

This decision is part of an upcoming update we're excited about and, often, we have to move or remove things to make room for new things.

Unfortunately, seasons doesn't fit in with where we're taking Gimkit and it isn't used enough to justify keeping.

That said, the idea behind seasons is something we're still committed to. We're excited to iterate and expand on the kernel that made seasons exciting: The ability to make Gimkit progress meaningful over a period of time.

That's it!

All right, that's what we've got for this month!

We'll have more for you in November — we're working on some exciting things we can't wait to start sharing...🤫

Until then, take care and have a wonderful October! 🎃

Kit Editor Updates!

We gave Gimkit Live's kit editor a mini-facelift. Nothing huge, just a few tweaks to smooth things out and save you time.

What’s changing?

We didn't shake things up too much this time.

All-in, we:

• Moved the "all change saved" note to the bottom left of the editor

• Swapped out the "Finished" button for a more clear "Done" button

• Added a "Copy" button; Use it to copy questions while creating & editing kits

• Put a privacy tag at upper left; click it to change the privacy of your kit

Here's what our kit editor looks like now:

This is a pretty minor update overall.

But the kit editor is now easier to use. Plus, these changes should save you some time!

What’s been improved?

Privacy tag

All newly created kits in Gimkit Live are public by default. You can modify kit privacy at any time.

You've always been able to modify kit privacy for your kits, but finding how to do so wasn't intuitive.

Now, when you're editing or creating a kit, just click the privacy tag at the upper left of the editor to select private or public.

Copying questions

Another improvement that will save you time is the new "copy" button for questions.

Just click the "copy" icon to the right of any question to copy it and its answers.

Educators have been upvoting this suggestion on our feedback page for a while because it can be tedious (and time-consuming) to write and re-write similar question & answer combos.

Now, just click that copy button as many times as you need and then edit each question to make any tweaks!

What are the tradeoffs?

For this update, we didn't have to make many compromises.

We cleaned up the design and added in a few improvements. Nothing really got more difficult or more complicated.

If you're used to the old kit editor, some of the design changes may be confusing. We didn't remove anything vital; just some shuffling and re-wording.

Using the kit editor a time or two should catch you up to speed. And, creating and editing should be a little quicker and simpler now.

That's it!

As always, let us know if you have any comments, feedback, or concerns. You can share & upvote suggestions over on our feedback page and we love hearing from you at hello@gimkit.com!

Introducing School Library!

We're excited to welcome educators back for the new school year with something brand new!

The School Library for Gimkit Live gives you a place to discover kits made by educators at your school.

If another teacher at your school mentions that they made a kit, you can check the School Library for it.

Or, if you're new to Gimkit and teachers in your building already use Gimkit, visit the School Library to access their kits!

To get to your school's library, go to your Gimkit Live dashboard and click on School Library in the left panel.

Once you're in your school's library, you'll see a list of all kits created by teachers at your school, organized by creation date.

If you have any other questions at all, check out our School Library article here or reach out at hello@gimkit.com!

Welcome back to school — have fun sharing and exploring! 🥳 ✨ 📚

Everything We Added This School Year

Alright, here's everything we added to Gimkit in the 2020/21 School Year! Thank you for making all of this possible with your support. Enjoy!

Assignments V2

https://blog.gimkit.com/blog/2020-assignments-updates

Floor is Lava

https://blog.gimkit.com/blog/the-floor-is-lava

Forever Modes

https://twitter.com/gimkit/status/1336660620146405380

Trust No One

https://blog.gimkit.com/blog/trust-no-one

Quick Link for Live Games

https://twitter.com/gimkit/status/1354796370494844930

Taking Gimkit Carbon Negative

https://blog.gimkit.com/blog/carbon-negative

New (and Improved) Search

https://twitter.com/gimkit/status/1359145025309822977

The Hub

https://blog.gimkit.com/blog/the-hub

Gimkit Ink

https://twitter.com/gimkit/status/1356603276586676224

https://www.gimkit.com/ink

https://www.themerrillsedu.com/blog-1/2021/2/5/how-to-use-gimkit-ink

Privacy Tags for Ink

https://twitter.com/gimkit/status/1364578326174572549

Draw That

https://blog.gimkit.com/blog/draw-that

Student Commenting for Ink

http://blog.gimkit.com/blog/student-commenting-in-ink

Smart Repetition

https://twitter.com/gimkit/status/1385227891529732098

Read To Me

https://blog.gimkit.com/blog/read-to-me-for-gimkit-live

New Powerups (Quadgrader, Streak Saver, Cash Concealer, Outnumbered)

Quadgrader - https://twitter.com/gimkit/status/1324457768871317505

Streak Saver - https://twitter.com/gimkit/status/1367486488917798917

Outnumbered - https://twitter.com/gimkit/status/1382698222968266758

Quick Add & Quick Send for Groups

https://help.gimkit.com/en/article/how-to-purchase-a-group-license-122ub4c/

Pay for Me

https://help.gimkit.com/en/article/how-to-have-your-school-or-department-pay-for-you-zkf0ks/

Come Back Mode

https://twitter.com/gimkit/status/1387042598892756992

GiveKit

https://www.gimkit.com/givekit

Monthly Update - May 2021

Happy May!

A lot happened in April — let's dive in!

Appreciation

This month, we'd like to share our appreciation for Sam Kary!

Sam is an outstanding educator who does a remarkable job sharing, promoting, and explaining EdTech. This appreciation is for all of that work and for the truly perfect Gimkit tutorial video Sam created and shared in March.

Sam, thank you for all of the work you do and for taking the time to share your tools and approach in such a clear, effective way with other educators! 🥳👏

Everything New

Here's a quick snapshot of everything new we added to Gimkit Live in April!

• Read to Me 🔈

• Smart Repetition 🧠

• Come Back mode 💫

• Improved Group purchasing process 🎒

• Outnumbered powerup 🌟

This is just a quick run-down. Starting now, I’ll include a quick look like this each month so I (and you) can have an easy-to-see, visual of what's new each month.

As always, I’ll also include detailed notes on the month’s highlights. Check out April’s below!

Community & Product Update

GimCoin

For April Fools this year, we launched our very own cryptocurrency called GimCoin!🤑

While we didn't get rich from it or trick a ton of you, we did get a bunch of requests to keep GimCoin in the game.

We understand having a non-currency symbol might be useful in certain situations and for younger grades. Something similar has been made as a product suggestion over in our feedback center: https://gimkit.nolt.io/634.

You can share and upvote any ideas you want to see in Gimkit anytime here!

Draw That became a Forever Mode

Typically, we treat our modes like movie releases.

They come out for a limited time, go away for a while, then come back as a Forever Mode. Kind of like the traditional model for movie releases: Theater → Unavailable → DVD/VOD.

For Draw That, we looked at the calendar, saw the end of the school year coming up fast, and just made it a Forever Mode immediately.

In early April we let everyone know. There was some excitement, to say the least...

I'm happy we were able to make this adjustment to keep Draw that available! For future modes, we'll still follow our normal formula.

You can play Draw That anytime by clicking "Play" on any of your Kits and selecting it on the game mode selection screen. Learn more about how Draw That works here and check out the student art gallery here!

Come Back Mode

To add some more fun to end-of-the-year learning, we put out the brand-new Come Back Mode, which has all removed powerups, including music powerups.

This is basically a retro mode, where you can play Gimkit with only the powerups that have been removed from Gimkit. Plus, whenever a powerup leaves the other modes and regular game, they'll show up in this mode.

Come Back mode is available now for a limited time, so get those games in!

Smart Repetition for Gimkit Live

Our most upvoted product suggestion in our feedback center, Smart Repetition was a big release for us this month!

Thanks to you all and to Fadi (who built the thing), students now see questions they struggle with more often in Gimkit Live — for live games AND assignments.

Until this update, once a student answered all of the questions in a Kit, we started showing them the questions again at random.

Now, after a student answers every question, they still see the questions again at random, but with a new weighting system that prioritizes questions they answered incorrectly the first time around.

While this doesn't mean your students will only see questions they missed, it does mean they'll be more likely to see those questions.

Thank you to everyone who used our feedback center to request this update!

Read To Me for Gimkit Live

This one was another popular request on our feedback page (and another Fadi project)!

With Read to Me, Gimkit Live questions and answers can be read out loud in the language the Kit was created for.

This improves accessibility in Gimkit Live in a big way. It should also help those of you who use Gimkit with lower grade levels.

I'm so excited that we were able to get this one out to you all — it's been a long time coming!

And That’s It!

Thank you all for another incredible month!

This school year has been especially trying and difficult in a singular way. You’re almost there.

You’re doing amazing work and impacting your students’ lives in ways they’ll carry with them forever. Keep it up and enjoy your (much deserved) summer break! 💜

Read To Me for Gimkit Live

We're excited to release a new accessibility feature for Gimkit Live called Read to Me!

With Read to Me, your students can choose to have questions and answers read aloud.

This should make Gimkit Live more accessible for more of your students, including K-2 students and students with hearing and learning impairments.

Read to Me is controlled by students inside of Gimkit Live. So, as the teacher, there's nothing for you to do, turn on, or select.

Your students can turn Read to Me on and off in-game by clicking the menu on the upper right.

Once they click that menu, the drawer will open on the left of their screen. There's now a little gear icon at the bottom of the drawer.

Students click the gear icon to open up their in-game settings to toggle on/off Read to Me.

As a note, turning on Read to Me has to be done game to game. So, if a student uses it in one game and you play another immediately after, they'll need to turn it on again.

Once Read to Me is turned on, it will start reading the question and answer options out loud, highlighting each as it goes.

Students can click the Read to Me icon up near the top of their screen to have the question and answers read to them again anytime.

If you or your students need more information, we have a how-to helpdesk article with a quick explainer video here.

Have fun and I hope Read to Me helps your students get the most out of Gimkit!