Quizizz

Free gamified quizzes for every subject to play in class and at home. Pick an existing quiz or create your own for review, formative assessment, and more.

Kahoot

#Gimkit

Gimkit

Introducing Gimkit, a new tool for students and teachers. It’s seriously like Kahoot on steroids. My students love it. Gimkit, created by Josh Feinsilber, plays like a Kahoot game, but students earn money for answering questions correctly, lots of it if they are good at it.

Josh is a junior at a Seattle high school that encourages projects and internship as school work. He began thinking about this game in April 2017 and launched at the end of October 2017 after doing research on what teachers did not like about Kahoot. Don’t get me wrong, my students and I love Kahoot and will keep playing it, but Gimkit adds a lot of extra spice to playing games in the classroom.

What I loved at first sight about Gimkit was the ease of setting it up. I discovered the site last Thursday morning at 6:00 am and was able to play the first round with my students when they came to class at 8:00 am. The teacher simply creates an account, sets up groups, then creates a “kit.” One can create the questions and answers from scratch, use a Quizlet set or import a CVS file. The entire process takes mere seconds. As a teacher who has presented 34 teacher PDs in the last few years, I will say that the creator of this game has done his research on how to guide teachers step by step through the process of setting up a game. Gimkit uses a very large font size which helps teachers avoid misspellings, for example. The groups can be edited very easily from the dashboard. The basic version allows for three kits, plenty to get a good idea of how Gimkit works.

In order to play Gimkit, teachers select their kit on the dashboard, choose play, make sure they open the correct group, then post the game code on the board. Students join the game and begin playing independently of each other when the teacher starts the game. One can set a time limit or set a fixed amount of money that students are to earn. When I played our Chapter 7 Review Vocabulary with my students, we set the limit to ten minutes and students earned money as their names were displayed on the leaderboard. One of my students earned an amazing $38,000,000 in ten minutes.

In my continuing quest to find awesome classroom tools to engage and inspire my students, Gimkit is not only an example of an outstanding formative assessment tool, but also serves as a wonderful example of what our high school students are capable of creating. My students are now fully inspired to create their own games next school year.

WHO: Teachers looking for an engaging review activity or formative assessment opportunity.

HOW: Sign up for an account at https://www.gimkit.com/. Users can create their own “kits” or question sets, choose from sets that others have created. Question sets can also be exported from Quizlet to create sets. When you are ready to play as a class, there are a wide variety of gameplay options to choose from. While answering questions, students are awarded “cash” or lose it depending on correct/incorrect responses. As they build up a cash value, students can utilize power-ups to earn/lose more cash on each question or other bonus items.

When setting up a game, there are quite a few options to choose from. Under the Game Goal category, users can select Time (time limit), Target (each player hits a target score), Race (first one to the target amount wins), or All-In (all students combine to a total score goal). Teachers can also give a starting cash amount, which can help them unlock bonuses faster. Other gameplay options include allowing students to see correct answers following incorrect responses, settings a handicap limit, background music, clapping, and displaying a Leaderboard during the game.

After completing a game, teachers have the option to look at statistics for individual and the class as a whole.

WHEN: Gimkit is a great option for formative assessment and classroom review. Question sets can also be assigned for homework. As we finish up the school year, this is an option to do something different in your review sessions with students.

At first, I thought Gimkit would just be another Kahoot! or Quizizz. After trying one out, I found myself fully engaged on a set of questions regarding surface area and volume (mind you my background is social studies). Depending on what your students prefer, any of these three options are great. As Gimkit is using question sets, allowing a timed game will allow students to benefit from question repetition that they would typically get from flash cards.

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