Gimkit Guide to Remote Learning

Hey everyone!

To be honest, I wasn't planning on writing this. With COVID-19, I'm sure your inbox has been inundated with every single company reaching out to share what they're doing.

A bunch of that stuff is helpful and cool, but it's a lot of stuff. And perhaps the last thing you all need right now is more information thrown at you.

However, over the last few days, many of you have shared with us how you're using Gimkit remotely. And even more of you have asked how to use Gimkit remotely. With that, I thought I would compile it all together in one place: The Gimkit Guide to Remote Learning!

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Assignments

The easiest way to use Gimkit remotely is with assignments. With assignments, students can play Gimkit at anytime and anywhere! That means you don't need to host a live game, share a game code, or even be online at all!

When you create an assignment, you'll select a Kit you want students to play, and how much money you want each student to earn. The target cash amount you set will depend on your student's comfort with Gimkit and the upgrades.

By default, we set the target cash amount to $500,000. For someone that is moderately comfortable with Gimkit and the content, this takes about 15 minutes to reach. Feel free to adjust the cash amount as you go!

After you create an assignment, you'll get a link. Just share that link with students and they'll be able to play the assignment. The link never expires!

Assignments work a bit differently than live games. Instead of students competing against one another, students attempt to reach the cash goal at their own pace. What that, the game is focused on just the individualized elements. That means no Icers, Reducers, or other powerups that involve other players.

When a student completes the assignment, you'll see it on your end along with their accuracy.

And that's what you need to know about Assignments. Click here to learn more about creating your first assignment.

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Video Conferencing

While assignments are great, there's nothing like a live game of Gimkit! With your students not in your class, video conferencing is the best way to make it feel like your students are still with you!

In terms of the video conferencing software, we've seen educators use Zoom and Google Meet to share their screens and host their games. However, I'm sure there are many others out there that would work well!

So if you're looking to recreate the classroom remotely, hosting a live Gimkit game over a video call is the way to go!

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View The Leaderboard

If you're unable to do a video call and still want to host a live game, we just added a new feature into Gimkit that should help!

Students can now see the leaderboard on their own device. They will just need to click the leaderboard icon on the top left.

With that, students can see who's in first place, and where they rank!

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Classes

Using Classes will help make using Gimkit remotely a whole lot easier. Here's what you get when you use Classes!

No need to share game codes

Part of the challenge of getting everyone in a remote Gimkit game is sharing the game code and them entering in their names. With Classes, no need to do that. As long as students have joined your Class using an email or Google, as soon as they go to gimkit.com/play, they will instantly be brought into your game. It's like magic!

No outsiders

With everyone at home, it's super easy for students to share game codes with their friends. With Classes V2, only those in your class are allowed to join.

View those that haven't completed an assignment

Another addition for assignments when using Classes: You'll be able to see a list of who has and has not completed the assignment.

All in all, Classes is optional, but it makes just everything in Gimkit a little bit better!

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Other fun ideas

With students at home, we've seen a bunch of cool uses of Gimkit. Here's a list of some cool things we've seen/heard:

• Students competing in Gimkit against their guardians or siblings
• A student becomes the game host, commentating the entire game over a video call
• Using KitCollab to have students create their own questions
• Silent Team Mode: students are in teams, but can't talk to one another
• Daily live games at set times with larger groups - share the code and host a melée

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Where you might want to use another quiz game

Gimkit's great, but some of the other games are much better for certain situations. Here's a few places where you might not want to use Gimkit.

Introducing new content

While Gimkit certainly can be used to introduce new content, if you're looking to explain something to your students mid-game, I'd recommend Kahoot.

Kahoot has a slides feature, where mid-game, you can stop and explain an idea or topic. This is typically a premium feature, but Kahoot is offering free premium access for educators impacted by COVID-19.

Traditional tests

If you're looking to conduct a more traditional test, Quizizz is probably your best bet. They have a special Test Mode meant specifically for assessments.

With it, questions are only asked once, and you get a very detailed report at the end of the test.

Just as a note, these are both personal recommendations! Kahoot or Quizizz have no idea I'm including them in this post, which means they're reading this for the first time right alongside you.

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Well folks, that's the Gimkit Guide to Remote Learning. Hope you found something useful! Of course, if you ever have any questions, reach out to us: hello@gimkit.com — we read and respond to every single one of your emails.

And stay tuned on Twitter (@gimkit) for new features we might release to help with remote learning. Plus, we'll be sharing some awesome and creative ways educators and students are using Gimkit while at home.

It's a weird and strange time for all of us, but we'll get through it. Stay safe and healthy!

Extension for Gimkit Pro Members Impacted by School Closures

EDIT: Since the school year has ended, we are not allowing any new extensions as of July 1st.

Less than a week ago we launched support for educators using the free version of Gimkit.

At the time, the move seemed like a good step toward supporting educators impacted by the coronavirus and COVID-19. But then Friday happened and school closures were expanded and extended all across the country.

As of now, 37 states have shut down K-12 schools entirely and over 32 million students have had school canceled. Some schools and districts are able to continue instruction remotely, while others are halted completely.

Things are moving quickly.

Large groups of educators are no longer doing instruction of any kind (remote or otherwise) and will not be using Gimkit for at least the next several months.

So, in addition to the option to increase the Kit limit for free members, we've added some relief for Gimkit Pro members.

We're providing a 4-month extension for all Gimkit Pro members.

Just log into your account and click the "Impacted by COVID-19" button in the left-hand panel from your dashboard to get an extra 4 months on your subscription.

We made accessing this extension as easy as possible. Two clicks, no questions asked.

For technical reasons, we had to build this for Gimkit Pro members on individual subscriptions paying via credit card only.

If you manage a Gimkit Group Subscription or are a Gimkit Pro Pass or Go member and your school has been canceled, please email us at hello@gimkit.com and we'll be happy to help you out.

It's been an unprecedented last few weeks. With everything that's happening and all of the chaos, we're grateful for you and your dedication to education and your students. Fadi, Josh, and I wish you all the best as we all navigate this together.

Support for Educators Impacted by COVID-19

Edit: As the school year has ended, we are not increasing Kit limits as of July 1st.

The ongoing global impact of COVID-19 is on everyone's minds, for good reason.

Here in Washington, there's been a mix of reactions, ranging from confusion to panic to frustration, at the disruption of regular life. And we understand all of it.

It's been interesting to observe things on a local level while also hearing from so many of you about how things are going around you.

Over the past several days we've received emails from all over the world asking about support for educators who have been impacted by COVID 19.

We haven't had a good answer so we patched together free trials of Gimkit Pro and expanded Kit limits here and there. But, as more educators search for remote solutions, we felt like it was important to find a way to provide simpler, more convenient support.

So, for educators on Gimkit Basic impacted by COVID-19, we're doubling our Kit limit so you can create more Kits as you get started with Gimkit or find yourself using it more in a remote environment.

No info needed. No questions asked. Just go to your account dashboard and click the button at bottom left.

As always, we're here for you if you have any questions at hello@gimkit.com.

Some things I'm proud of...

I'm not a naturally secure or confident person, especially when it comes to my work. I've never been good at talking about projects I'm working on or blustering about my job. When aunts and uncles ask about my job over the holidays I generally stammer and deliver boring, largely non-sensical answers.

For some reason, I even struggle to talk about Gimkit with confidence. And that’s something I'm incredibly proud of.

In an attempt to tackle my insecurities and highlight some of Gimkit's coolest developments over the past year, I've put together this post. I'm genuinely proud of how far we've come in the past 12 months and I'm excited to shine a light on some of the things we've accomplished, with the support from our incredible community, in that span.

Flagged Kits & community safety improvements

Less than a month after I started working on Gimkit full-time we received an email from a teacher with a problem. This teacher's problem was more significant and nuanced than the typical technical question I'd received up to that point:

While using Gimkit, this teacher's students had come across a hurtful racial slur that applied to him and then showed him.

The problem, of course, wasn't that this teacher and their students found the hurtful language, it was that it was on Gimkit at all. Understandably, this teacher was shocked, disappointed, and hurt.

After exchanging several emails with this teacher, Josh and I developed a two-tier plan to help make Gimkit a safer, healthier community.

First, we created a list of inappropriate and offensive words that are automatically blocked from showing up in Kits and in live games. That list wasn't perfect and it didn't totally irradiate the problem, but it was a good initial step. Here's what that feature looks like inside of Gimkit:

Even with this update students and teachers can still come across offensive and hurtful content even with starred out words. We knew as we created it that the "bad-word" fix was a band-aid for a much larger problem.

It took some more time and technical work, but when we launched Gimkit 4.0 in late September, it came with a new tool for Flagging Kits. Just as anyone with a Gimkit account can make a Kit inside of Gimkit, anyone with an account could flag any Kit inside of Gimkt.

Flagging a Kit gives the reporter a few options that help categorize the Kits for review, as well as the option to leave a note, which is always helpful.

I now review flagged Kits every week, happy to help the teachers and students who reported them in making Gimkit a safer, more welcoming environment. Since we launched Kit flagging, the Gimkit community has helped identify over 500 Kits as offensive/inappropriate or inaccurate/misleading.

I also use the Kit-flagging system to routinely scrape Gimkit for Kits with particularly offensive and hurtful words and phrases. At least once a month I pick a few words and use the Kit Flagging system to flag and remove Kits that are harmful to our community.

There are a lot of terrible words that would've brought up dozens of Kits if you'd searched Gimkit for a year ago. Now, searching those words brings up nothing. And if something does pop up, you can flag it and we'll review it and take the appropriate steps to remove it from the community.

A simple word filter and a system for Flagging Kits aren't the biggest achievements in EdTech history (all of the other review games and most classroom tools have similar features). But they helped make Gimkit a safer, more inclusive place and I'm proud of them.

Privacy Policy

Another item that popped up on my radar as soon as I started at Gimkit, helping to re-write Gimkit's Privacy Policy is one of the achievements I'm most proud of for my entire career.

The Gimkit Privacy Policy in January 2019 was the same template-policy Josh launched Gimkit with in late October, 2017. Worse than being outdated, the Privacy Policy was a genuine problem. Gimkit had outgrown it and it wasn’t enough to adequately protect the thousands of teachers and educators using Gimkit. As a result, many schools and districts were blocking use of Gimkit.

Updating our Privacy Policy slowly became my main focus, especially after the 2019 school year ended. At the time, I didn’t know anything about writing a Privacy Policy for an EdTech company. The task didn’t only feel daunting, it felt nearly impossible. Luckily, there are many good examples in EdTech of amazing Privacy Policies (especially EdPuzzle and Pear Deck) that I was able to study and learn from. Luckier still, we started making friends with a few of the EdTech vets we respected who were happy to help guide me as I re-worked our Privacy Policy.

Reading other Privacy Policies and asking obnoxious questions of busy CEOs and COOs wouldn’t be enough. We also found an attorney, Madhu Singh, who had experience working with EdTech companies. Without Madhu, I wouldn’t have been able to get through the Privacy Policy work!

Thinking back on where our Privacy Policy was a year ago compared to where it is now makes me proud, not only because of the work I put in but also because of the policy itself. It would’ve been easy to create an updated Privacy Policy that was “good enough.” But that never occurred to Josh and I, even in the third and fourth and fifth months of the process.

I know it’ll need to evolve again soon to fit rapidly changing laws and expectations around student privacy and to accommodate product updates, but, as I re-read it now, I can’t help but feel proud of how we’ve planted our flag in regards to privacy.

Groups

I've already written an entire blog post on this, so I'll keep this section brief.

At the end of January 2020 we released one of the most exciting developments of my time here - a simple, teacher and admin-friendly Group Subscription system.

Josh worked hard to make something that's excessively uncomplicated and easy to use. I'm really proud of what he made, even though I had little to do with the development and physical creation of it. I'm proud of the time, effort, and care he put into it because the result is pretty amazing.

Educators and Admins can now get a quote, use a credit card or Purchase Order to pay for their group, and start distributing upgrades in five minutes or less. Obviously most Groups will need several days to get approval on the quote and have a PO created, but our Groups system puts everything in one place and removes all unnecessary friction for schools and teachers, including sales calls, long forms, and PO verification.

Our old system grew with the demand for Group Subscriptions and was bloated, complicated, and frustrating as a result. Our new system, in contrast, makes purchasing Gimkit for a Group with a PO the easiest product to purchase for a group in all of EdTech.

Feedback center

I had nothing to do with creating our Feedback Center, but I'm proud of it nonetheless.

We use this page to collect and analyze product suggestions from our community. Once we have those suggestions, we use them to develop new features and make updates to Gimkit.

We launched our suggestions page around the middle of November 2019 and we now have over 700 product suggestions. We've added several of these suggestions to Gimkit and have a few currently in progress - all of which you can see here on the page's automatically generated roadmap.

I'm proud of our suggestions page because with it we're not only saying that we're building Gimkit for educators and students, we're backing it up in a public and visible way.

Pear Deck integration

Our integration with Pear Deck's Flashcard Factory is another one I'm proud of even though I didn't have much to do with the actual feature or physical creation. Josh did all of the API work and communication with Pear Deck on the tech side. Before that, the seeds for our partnership with Pear Deck were sown when Anthony Showalter reached out to us in April of last year.

But, over time, Josh and I built a relationship with Anthony that led to a great conversation at ISTE 2019. At that point we all agreed that it would be awesome to work together in some way but it would be best to wait for something natural rather than force something. After all, Pear Deck and Gimkit exist to support teachers and students, not so that we can build cool stuff for the heck of it.

Luckily, we didn't have to wait long for the opportunity to build something cool that also held real purpose and value for classrooms. We started talking seriously with Anthony, Riley, and Kate at Pear Deck about an integration with Flashcard Factory in the fall and that integration launched early December.

I'm proud of the relationship we've forged with Pear Deck (a company we truly admire) and the work we've done with them to make teaching and learning a little more engaging and effective.

Remote working

We've been talking about our company's transition to working remote a lot lately, so I'll keep this brief and just say that Josh has been the catalyst for this shift and I'm proud of all three of us for discussing, deliberating, and (ultimately) taking the leap. A big change like this is scary for a new, tiny company but I think it was the right call for how we work.

I'm proud of us for trying something we think will improve the company and the lives of its employees. But I'm even more proud that we lived up to one of our core values:

Experimentation before perfection

Quick and dirty ideas that are publicly shared and validated before investing time and resources on a perfect version.

In February alone I saved 15 hours of commute time since I didn't' have to ride the bus to our south-downtown office. Not only is my 15-minute walk to work much nicer than the 45-minute early-morning bus ride, but all three of us also did some of our best, most efficient work in February because of the additional rest and personal time we filled in that commuting time with.

We're currently hiring for a fourth person to join our team, which makes the realities of being a newly-remote company even scarier. But fear is just fear. We can always find an office again if this experiment doesn't work. We likely won't regret trying out remote working, but as we talked about the numerous benefits (for the company and its employees) it became clear to us all that we'd likely regret not trying it.

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It's cool to look back at the last 12 months and say "Wow, none of this existed a year ago!"

Seeing everything laid out like this makes me even more proud to be a part of Gimkit. I feel a sense of gratitude to get to wake up every day and work on this project with Fadi and Josh.

If nothing else, maybe writing this piece will help me look my aunts and uncles in the eyes when they ask me about my job at Easter! 😎

Gimkit Gazette - January 2020

We’ve been making monthly update videos (we call them Gazettes) since last May, but it just occurred to us to post them here. 🤦‍♂️

We’ve got a double-dose for you this month!

This Gimkit covers everything from December & January, and a lot happened:

• The Winter Event

• Josh's work on connection issues,

• Our partnership with Pear Deck

• Our move to working remotely

• And so much more!

Here’s what we've been up to:

Introducing The Locker

Since the release of Thanos Mode all the way back in April 2019, students and educators have asked if limited-time game modes could stick around.

That's possible starting today. Say hello to the Locker!

The Locker gives paid members access to limited-time game modes and music packs even after they leave Gimkit. You can now play your students' favorite game mode while listening to their favorite track!

Unlocking Rewards

Game Modes and Music Packs don't show up inside of your Locker by default. They're unlocked by completing challenges. You can see how many available challenges you have right from your dashboard.

Once you complete the challenges, you'll have access to the reward forever! Challenges expire though so make sure you act quickly!

Gimkit Winter Music

To celebrate the release of the Locker, we're releasing our first set of challenges!

• Have students create 50 questions with KitCollab
• Use 10 Quick Actions on students

Complete these two challenges, and earn permanent access to our 2019 Winter Music, a huge hit from last year! In future challenges, you'll have the opportunity to unlock permanent access to more music packs and game modes!

The Winter Music challenges expire February 17th.

Enjoy!

We're so excited to share the Locker with you all! We'll have many more challenges coming up where you can unlock game modes and more music packs. For now, go unlock the 2019 Winter Music and we'll see you in-game!

Gimkit for Groups

Josh started accepting group subscriptions back in the summer of 2018, keeping track of everything in a spreadsheet.

Since those early days, hundreds of groups have purchased Gimkit subscriptions covering thousands of educators. We love this because more groups means fewer educators are paying for Gimkit out of pocket.

We've tried to keep up with the growing demand using a slightly evolved version of Josh's initial system. We've done an OK job, but not a great one. It's still way too complicated and time-consuming to get a Gimkit group subscription up and running.

That's why we're excited to introduce a brand new and incredibly easy way to purchase group subscriptions. We're calling it Groups (because we're great at naming things!) and it's launching today.

Everything that's annoying about purchasing school EdTech licenses is gone:

Long quote forms asking a million pieces of personal information.

We just need the name of your group so we know who to make the quote out to and your email so we can send over a copy.

Waiting for a quote to arrive in your inbox.

Click "Submit" and get a quote...instantly.

Sales calls.

We're here to help you learn more if you need it, not to try to up-sell you on anything.

Hidden pricing.

We have two prices. That's it. Both are listed on our site. You don't have be a good negotiator to get our best price.

Price increases with more teachers.

Subscribe to our School plan and the price doesn't change - it doesn't matter if 30 teachers are using it or 120.

Everything you need to do with Groups happens online, right away. You can get your quote, access help desk articles and our W-9, upload your PO or pay with a credit card, and begin managing your subscription all in one place.

Groups is the first system we know of where you can purchase for your group with a purchase order without needing to contact us, talk to a person, or have some kind of communication exchange.

Groups has just two levels: Department and School. That's it.

• Department - Gimkit Pro for 20 teachers for a year - $650

• School - Gimkit Pro for your entire school - $1,000

Both plans offer huge savings over purchasing individual subscriptions of Gimkit Pro. Again, without any negotiating, hassle, or unnecessary back-and-forth.

A lot of the extra stuff you spend time on when purchasing a site or software license is designed for the benefit of the company you're buying from rather than with the goal of saving you time. In short, we took away all of the stuff that was bogging the process down, leaving only the things we thought would make your life easier.

We mean it when we say we want Gimkit to be paid by schools, not educators. Typically, paying for a school subscription has many barriers. Today, we're getting rid of them.

Hidden Balance Trial

Hey everyone!

Starting today, we're running a hidden balance trial within Gimkit. What that means is student balances will be hidden on the leaderboard until the end of the game.

Alrighty, so why are we doing this?

Something we're always thinking about is how we can make sure every student enjoys playing Gimkit. Not every student is going to win, that's fine. But we want to make sure the game is enjoyable for all players.

Educators have told us that those on the bottom of the leaderboard don't feel as motivated to play when they see first place is ahead by millions and millions of dollars. When we released Hidden Mode, balances were hidden and the feedback we got was those students on the bottom of the leaderboard became much more engaged and motivated. Because of this, we're rolling out that mechanic to all games as a trial.

With this trial, we're not providing a switch to turn this on or off. There's going to be some quick initial reactions (I love this! This is horrible!), and we want to get past that stage to where students get used to it a bit. At that point, we really want to hear if students and educators find it helpful after the adjustment period is over.

We don't run analytics or anything like that, so the results of this trial will come entirely from your feedback. Let us know what you and your students think as time progresses!

Thanks so much!

Why we don't run advertisements on Gimkit

I'll admit, the idea for a version of Gimkit made possible by advertisements sounds not just good, but great. It's Gimkit, but 100% free for all schools & educators.

And it even goes beyond that. Gimkit's growth has been great, but it's also been limited by our paid plan. Sure, we have a free plan, but that can only get you so far. Now how about a completely free version of Gimkit, but with advertisements? With that, imagine how many more students and educators could use Gimkit?

Sounds great, no?

Of course, it does. But free isn't really free.

The version of Gimkit that's supported by ads might not cost educators money to use, but educators would pay in other ways. Here are the three main things educators would be sacrificing if we decided to swap our current subscription model out for an ad-supported model.

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Attention

Educators and schools pay for Gimkit. They pay for it because of its effectiveness.

When we work on Gimkit, we have a clear question to answer: What will make Gimkit most effective for educators and students?

Effective makes sense to us. Effective means Gimkit works well in the classroom. Effective means students enjoy the learning experience Gimkit provides. Effective means Gimkit saves teachers time.

Effective ties in directly to improving education.

Advertisements in Gimkit would shift our focus from effectiveness to attention. Without attention, there'd be no money to keep Gimkit running. So, when working on Gimkit, we'd be asking ourselves new kinds of questions. We'd have to start asking questions like: What will attract the most eyeballs to Gimkit?

Attracting eyeballs doesn't make sense to us. Attracting eyeballs means making something flashy, rather than something that works well. Attracting eyeballs means focusing on the number of times someone visits Gimkit rather than the quality of the visit. Attracting eyeballs means adding distractions from the educational content.

Attracting eyeballs doesn't tie in directly to improving education.

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Privacy

Sites that run ads make money when somebody clicks on an advertisement. So naturally, you want more click-enticing ads to show up on your site. Well, how do you get more click-enticing ads? You collect personal information on them, and then you tailor more specific ads to them.

Because of this, you're incentivized to collect or utilize as much personal information on someone as you can, because more personal information leads to more personalized ads which leads to more clicks.

This normally means using third parties to help track users across the web. All of a sudden, the focus is on learning what sites users visit, what user interests are, user marital status, user income, user political affiliation, what TV show users are into, what users last purchased online.

Hold on a second, how did we end up in a place where a classroom game show is incentivized to learn about what you last purchased online?

To me, this seems like an invasion of your privacy. We want to worry about making memorable learning experiences, not what you searched for last time you were shopping online.

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Who's important?

A free, ad-supported version of Gimkit changes who our customer is, which alters our hierarchy of importance.

Right now the most important group of stakeholders to us are our customers. Our customers are the reason we get to work on Gimkit and so nothing is more important to us than them.

But if educators and schools no longer pay for Gimkit, they'd no longer be our customers. We'd have a new customer, and a new most-important group in our hierarchy: advertisers.

The problem with this is how different the advertiser's needs are than an educator or student's.

An advertiser wants an ad to show at the end of a Gimkit game, perhaps on the results screen. An educator does not want that.

An advertiser wants you to click and leave Gimkit to purchase something. An educator does not want that.

An advertiser wants to be distracting to garner attention. An educator does not want that.

Because advertiser interests and educator interests are so different, we'd be constantly making decisions that helped one side at the expense of the other. And since advertising dollars would be the thing keeping the lights on, guess who we'd have to help more often?

We don't have the problem of choosing sides right now because our customers and our users are one and the same.

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Even if it's free, we don't want to run a version of Gimkit where we work to attract your attention, track you across the internet, and have to put you as less important than advertisers.

Right now, you're the reason we can work on Gimkit. You're the reason we can focus on building the most effective version of Gimkit. You're the reason we don't have to care if you use Gimkit every week or month. You're the reason we don't care about your personal information. And you're the reason we can put your wants and needs at the top of our priority list.

So, as cool as it sounds to offer Gimkit for free, we'd rather build Gimkit for you, not for advertisers.

ACTFL 2019 Reflections

The 2019 conference for the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) ended with Dr. Christopher Emdin challenging participants to act full. He asked his audience to act full of purpose, conviction, and love. He challenged the room to act full in all they do as language teachers and as the adults responsible for educating our nation’s young people.

Act full of love of life of conviction - act full @chrisemdin #ACTFL19

— Paul Sandrock (@psandrock) November 24, 2019

Dr. Emdin provided an unbelievable ending to a conference that did indeed feel full.

As a first time attendee, I left with a head and heart full of inspiration. When I arrived in Washington DC for ACTFL, I didn’t know what to expect. Armed with a dim concept of what language teachers do, I wasn’t prepared for the passion, dedication, purpose, emotion and deep learning I encountered at ACTFL.

Here are a few reflections on my time at ACTFL 2019…

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ACTFL is a highly intentional conference.

Things I’m beginning to understand: 1) we are teaching people, not languages, 2) no one listens to you unless they know you care about them, 3) language is meaning before structure #ACTFL19

— Philip Montgomery (@kzmontgomery) November 23, 2019

The whole conference was a clinic in intentionality.

The opening session followed a clear thread of inclusion and teaching cultural perspectives over words and grammar, which I saw everywhere I looked for the rest of the conference.

Moving away from the binary of authentic vs non authentic texts. Ask more questions. Is the cultural perspective in the work actually authentic? Who created it? Why? For whom? What does the community it was intended to represent think of it? @doriecp #actfl19

— Adrienne Brandenburg (@AdrienneBranden) November 23, 2019

When I walked into the opening session, a 9-piece band was playing funk music. An educator on Twitter informed me that they were playing Go-Go - a type of funk unique to Washington DC. Intentionality.

That band played a song in-between the Teacher of the Year Award announcement and the Keynote. Even that song tied into the themes of the opening session. Intentionality.

As the conference went on, I found myself at sessions that touched on topics I heard raised at the opening session. The power to listen and tell stories, for example, was touched on at that first session as we learned about the journey of a young couple they dubbed “The Great Untold.”

Going to be exploring "Building Better Courses" at 10am in room 159b for #ACTFL19. In honor of Futurist @mikewalsh, who spoke a few years ago at the opening keynote, here's my bold (and controversial) "thought grenade" pic.twitter.com/2VDffpdws1

— Kevin Ballestrini (@kballestrini) November 23, 2019

I heard those topics and conversations come up over and over again in my sessions. Even sessions with deeply academic content started by tugging on that main thread of empowerment and the importance of sharing and listening to stories. Intentionality.

“We’ve kept a thriving language program by keeping it relevant. We focus on communicating and making meaning, not on explaining grammatical points. That’s what a proficiency-oriented approach is.” @ProfHojnacki #actfl19

— Dr. Stacey M. Johnson (@staceymargarita) November 22, 2019

And the closing session wrapped everything up with one of the best, most engaging speakers I’ve seen in any field or industry. Dr. Emdin made the room laugh, cry, sing, dance, and collectively gasp in a hushed silence. He did it all effortlessly and used his own stories to highlight the importance of listening as educators.

From start to finish, the level of planning and attention to detail at ACTFL were sensational.

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Teaching is complicated and teaching a language has further complexities still.

World Language educators think about WAY more than the language they’re teaching. Educators of any subject have other things to consider besides their primary subject, of course. But there are some issues that come up more often or only for language teachers.

Powerful message about providing counter-narratives to our students in order to challenge racist assumptions with Rhashida Hilliard and April Broussard in Erasing Margins and De-centering Whiteness in World Language Classrooms at #ACTFL19.

— Rebecca Blouwolff (say 'blue wolf') (@MmeBlouwolff) November 24, 2019

Learning a language provides students the opportunity to understand the world and find their place in it.

On Saturday I attended a session titled “Obstacles Facing Women Refugees in Language Acquisition.” The presenter, Warifa Sobh, shared examples from her childhood as well as a few stories from other refugees. One story was of a Syrian refugee student who passed out during a fire drill. She had watched her family killed by a bomb blast and the fire drill was too much for her system. She just shut down. While every teacher at that school was impacted by that incident, the only way that student could share her experiences (and for her teachers to create a support system) is through language learning.

Warifa went on to detail the obstacles female refugees face and how to think about and support them, specifically as they learn a new language. As she dove into the details, I felt like I’d never been further from understanding the challenges language teachers face.

In another session, a presenter shared a story about a student who was embarrassed that he didn’t speak his heritage language and the pride he felt and the impact that learning that language had on his life.

Stories like these helped me start thinking about language education in a whole new light. Language learners are empowered by the languages they learn in a variety of ways. For many, learning a new language is far more than a path toward being able to order dinner while on vacation. Learning a language can help give student’s a voice to tell their stories as well as the ability to understand the stories of others.

By the end of ACTFL, I had a new appreciation for the specific complexities of teaching languages and a new sense of purpose regarding our role in understanding and supporting them.

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Language teachers are ahead of the curve.

I was impressed time and time again in how sessions I attended, the teachers I spoke to, and how ACTFL as an organization approached a wide range of topics. Two areas that stood out were inclusion and technology.

When I say I SCREAMED when I saw pronoun ribbons at #ACTFL19 @actfl pic.twitter.com/YRszPAC4yO

— Señor Parodi-Brown, Ed. D. (@SenorParodi) November 21, 2019

Inclusion
Every conference I’ve ever been to in any industry has ribbons attendees can add to their badges. This is the first conference I’ve been to where I’ve seen pronoun ribbons. The conference apparently has had them at least since last year, and the addition of them seemed to be in line with what teachers I spoke to expected from ACTFL.

And the ribbons were just one example. Almost every session I attended mentioned inclusion in one way or another. It's clear that many language teachers at ACTFL are constantly thinking about inclusivity and how the ways they teach language can play a role in the broader discussion.

Technology
I heard time and time again that language teachers are on the cutting edge of educational tech tools. And I saw it, too. There were way fewer sessions about introducing tech tools than I expected. And there were way more sessions than I expected that dove deep on when and how to implement specific tech tools than I could’ve ever fathomed.

There was an incredible mother and son duo (Michael and Lisa Camp) who presented not on a tech tool or “the newest tech tools for your language classroom,” but on how to identify and implement technology. They taught their room how to think critically tech as a solution to a problem and how to implement that solution. They introduced and taught the room how to use a framework for identifying the need for a technical solution, and how to figure out which piece of tech would work best.

Many language teachers at ACTFL are beyond learning about tech tools because they know most of them already. They’ve advanced beyond discovery (they have the methods for that down) and moved on to thinking more deeply about incorporating and integrating tech into their classrooms.

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We don’t know enough (and that’s good).

On Friday I met Belal, a super nice guy and an Arabic teacher.

Belal and I had a great conversation and he had a few product suggestions. One of which was the ability to duplicate questions while creating Kits. We've heard this suggestion before. It's never made it very far up on our priority list because we didn't think it would save THAT much time. Belal straightened me out. He gave a clear example of a question he might want to duplicate and talked about how much time it takes to re-write everything in Arabic. It might not take long to rewrite in English, he noted, but Arabic or Chinese or Japanese were a different story.

OHMYGOSHOFCOURSE!! What a no brainer. Why didn't we think of that!? Because we’re not language teachers, that's why.

OK, so we don’t know enough about how language teachers work. That sucks. But on top of that, what else don’t we know enough about? Education in general, to be sure. But also, I suspect, all of the tiny details involved with each and every teaching discipline.

We know we have a lot of work to do before Gimkit can reach its full potential. But this small moment with Belal started my brain snowball going downhill. There’s so much amazing, challenging, empowering, mysterious work ahead of us. And we can’t wait!

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A few appreciations before I finally shut up.

Traci! We finally met Traci!!!

Traci Dougherty has been an unbelievable friend to Gimkit, and to Josh and I. I was traveling in DC alone and Traci welcomed me into her group of (clearly insane) Latin teacher friends. Traci made sure I didn’t feel too lonely and I can’t say enough how much I appreciate her warmth. Beyond ACTFL, Traci constantly shares ideas with us and is never afraid to tell us if we’re making or made a mistake. Traci, you’re a true friend and I can’t thank you enough for your kindness while at ACTFL. It was SO COOL to meet you in person and your friendship means a ton to me, and to us!

Fluentkey and Me! From Left, TJ, Mandy, Me, Hollin, and Hugo

Fluentkey is a company I just started learning about right before ACTFL. Teachers we know and trust spoke highly of them. As we looked at that they were doing, we were impressed. I had the pleasure of meeting the whole Fuentkey team and my goodness are they amazing! If there’s such a thing as company soul mates, we might have found it in them. Mandy, Hollin, Hugo, and TJ share our dedication to teachers and their vision for Fluentkey knocked my socks off. I’m so excited to know them and I can’t wait for our teams to get to know each other and to bring our companies closer together!

Carmen Scoggins did an unbelievable job at the Social Media Lounge!

I also want to thank the dozens of educators who talked to me about themselves, their classes, their experiences, and Gimkit. I heard so many amazing suggestions and ideas that I would only have heard from language teachers.

Meredith White & Joseph Parodi-Brown

We love our entire educator community - you all have been amazingly kind and welcoming to us as a new tech company. I felt the love we feel on Twitter every day in person at ACTFL - and it blew me away.

Heidi Trude was an early, early Gimkit user and evangelist! So happy to have met her!

A humongous THANK YOU to Cat, Letty, Sarah, Meredith & Joseph, Stephanie & Co., Heidi, Miriam & Rachel, Anne, Belal, Maris, and all of the other marvelous teachers who took time out of their busy conference to hang out with and talk to me. 💜

KitCodes

KitCodes

Welcome to KitCodes! KitCodes is a mode designed to get your students up and moving around the class! With that, there's a little bit of preparation required.

Printable KitCodes

Click here to print KitCodes. You'll want to hang these around your classroom! Students will scan these codes in order to shop.

• Large KitCodes (default)
• Small KitCodes

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Requirements to play KitCodes:

• KitCodes printed and hung around your classroom
• Student devices can move around the classroom (laptops, tablets, phones)
• Student devices have a camera

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How KitCodes Works

KitCodes acts the same as normal Gimkit, but with one big twist: students have to move around the classroom to shop! When students enter the shop, they won't be able to select which upgrade they want to purchase, or go into the powerup section. Instead they will be prompted to scan a KitCode!

Students will travel across the classroom to find the KitCode for what they are shopping for. Once they do, they scan that code!

And then...boom! Student are taken to that part of the shop!

And that's it! With KitCodes being hung up around the class, the students have to get moving in order to shop. It's also really awesome to see which students are shopping for what in the middle of a game!

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Ideas for KitCodes

We're so excited to see all the different ways you all will use KitCodes in your class. As a start, here are a few ideas you can implement to shake up the gameplay even further!

Evolving Shop

Take control over the shop! Don't have all KitCodes available during the beginning of the game. Perhaps introduce some halfway through the game, or remove some! See a bunch of student crowding around one KitCode? Remove it and see how it changes the game!

Project the Codes

Don't print the KitCodes at all! Just project one on your screen and cycle through them every 30 seconds or so. Students will have to keep looking up to make sure they don't miss the opportunity to shop for what they've been looking for!

Hand out KitCodes

Give each student a printed KitCode. They'll have to go around and find another student to trade with in order to shop for what they're looking for!

Patch Notes: 4.1.4

NEW Powerup: The Deflector

• Deflects all harmful powerups for 2 minutes!

  • When someone uses a harmful powerup such as the Icer or Subtractor against you, it goes back and impacts them!

  • If both sides have the Deflector on, the powerup will be canceled

  • Shields will still protect from deflections

• Lasts 2 minutes in Classic + Team Mode

• Costs $55 and 21% of balance

• The Reducer Powerup is back!

  • Reduces a player/team's earnings by 50% for 60 seconds

  • Costs $130 + 17% of balance

• Powerups Removed

  • Spider Web

  • Trick or Treat

  • The Link

• Halloween Theme removed

• Humans vs Zombies mode removed

Patch Notes: 4.1.2

New Powerup: Spider Web!

• Available for Halloween!

• Causes a player's balance to get stuck for 20 seconds, allowing them to purchase anything without counting towards their balance

• Costs $600 + 30% of balance

• News Section for students!

  • News items sit below the waiting instructions

  • Provides important updates to students such as new powerups

  • Can also be used to give mode specific instructions

• Drawing can no longer be done in the background, you must tap to dismiss the waiting screen to draw

• Fixed a bug when erasing while waiting for the game to start

• Fixed a stability issue with saving assignment progress

• Live Support chat is now only available to paying subscribers

  • With a small team, keeping up with support chat has been difficult. We'll still be keeping our support email open, but chat will be available for paying subscribers only

Humans Vs Zombies!

Happy Halloween everyone! 🎃

Here’s what you need to know about our special Halloween mode: Humans vs Zombies!

Students are randomly split into two teams, Humans & Zombies! You can reshuffle the teams as many times as you'd like.

Each team starts off with 700 out of 700 health! 1.5 health is automatically decreased every second. The team that survives the longest wins!

On your screen, you'll see each team with their health-bar. Students can look up during the game to see where they're at!

On the student's end, they'll be working their hardest to answer questions correctly and earn cash, but there's some special new upgrades available for purchase in the new Home section of the shop!

✊ Sabotage

Removes 40 health from the other team

💪 Strengthen

Increases max health by 15

🏥 Repair

Increases health by 30

Humans and Zombies will have to strategize on the fly! They'll have to figure out the best upgrades to buy to stay alive the longest!

It's going to be an incredible Halloween! Thanks everyone and see you in game!

Patch Notes: 4.0.5

New Team Balance System: Individual

• This new team balance system is here to help situations where students are in teams, but balance sharing doesn't work well.

• With this new system, each team member has their own balance, and the team balance is all the individual balances added together.

• This means that each student has to earn cash in order to purchase their own upgrades, powerups, etc.

• More details

  • Starting cash is distributed evenly between all team members

  • Link earnings are distributed evenly between all team members

  • Handicap is applied at a per member basis

  • Powerups such as the Subtractor will deduct 20% from each individual member balance

• Boss Battle Mode has been switched to the new Individual Team Balance System. Team Mode remains on the old balance system (shared)

• Changed the Boss's reduction in earnings to 16% instead of the previous 75%

  • We made this large change because we think the new balance system will help make Boss Battle games more fair

• Earnings from The Link will no longer be applied to percentage based balance increases

  • This change was made to get rid of some of the double-benefit of using the Link with powerups like the Gift

Changes to Boss Battle Mode

Hey everyone! It’s Josh here from Gimkit with an update on Boss Battle. We’ve loved seeing you all challenge your students; there have been some incredible games!

We are ❤️ Boss Mode on @gimkit. I challenged each class to a battle. 1 class was victorious & beat me! I’m so proud of their hard work, dedication, & competitiveness. (They beg me daily to play GimKit & they were happy to hear they can create gimkit games now too) @NolaKWilson pic.twitter.com/ufUdlsNNV9

— ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣 𝕄𝕔ℂ𝕝𝕦𝕟𝕘 (@HMcClung6) October 3, 2019

Shortly after the release of Boss Battle, we saw some issues. The Boss was winning too much. We made a change to decrease the Boss’s earnings by 20%. After pushing out this change, we monitored the results and saw that the Boss was still winning too much.

Since that first update, we’ve made two additional changes, to decrease The Boss’s earnings by 50% and then 75%. In short, The Boss was earning 1/4 the cash from when we first launched the mode. Even with all of this, The Boss was still winning most of the time. From your feedback, we learned we messed up with the design behind the mode.

We learned it was a mistake to include the same balance sharing logic with Team Mode in Boss Battle. Basically, it doesn’t make sense for all The Challengers to share a balance. In Team Mode, this works because it’s a smaller group, and teammates can communicate mid-game and figure out the strategy. With Boss Battle, there’s too many people to effectively communicate. What ends up happening is everybody shops on their own, which means a consistent low balance for The Challengers. What we need to do is make a change so that balance isn’t shared between all The Challengers. And that’s exactly what we’ve done!

Starting on October 8th, we’re introducing a new balance system for Boss Battle. With this system, each student will have their own balance. This means they won’t be able to purchase powerups & upgrades without earning the cash on their own first. The team balance (the one on the leaderboard) will be all the individual balances together. Since each student will have their own balance, we hope this will help make the game more fair.

Here’s some more information on how the balance system will work:

• Starting Cash: The starting cash amount will be distributed evenly between all members. So, if there are 5 challengers and you set $100 for starting cash, each challenger will have $20 so start.

• Subtractor: 20% will subtracted from each individual member

• Gift: 25% will be increased from each individual member.

• Link: The Link is disabled in Boss Battle, but for future modes that use this system, Link earnings will be distributed evenly between all members. Same as starting cash. With this update, we’ve also making a change so Link earnings only apply to answered questions.

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We hope this new system will help make Boss Battle more fun and fair! With this update, we’ll also be changing the reduction in The Boss’s earnings to 16% from 75%.

As always, send us your feedback! We love to hear it!

Also, one last piece of good news! Since we’re making this significant change to Boss Battle, we’re extending the leave date from October 11th to October 16th! Get some extra days of Boss Battle fun! Thanks so much everyone!