Hey there, teacher friends! Are you looking for an easy way to liven up your classroom and get your students excited about learning? You’ve come to the right place. In this article, I’ll give you the inside scoop on Gimkit, an educational game platform that will transform your classroom.
Gimkit is a game show-style review platform where students compete to answer questions correctly. You can create your content or choose from thousands of pre-made games spanning every grade level and subject. The pace is fast, the competition is fierce, and your students will be begging to play.
Using Gimkit is a breeze. You just log in, pick your content, set the gameplay options, and start the game. Your students join on their devices, and the fun begins! Questions are displayed on the projector while students race to answer on their screens. Gimkit instantly scores and ranks students so you can see who needs extra help.
Does it sound like something you and your students will love? Read on to learn all about how to get started with Gimkit and transform your classroom into an exciting game show. The learning will happen before your students even realize it!
What Is Gimkit? An Educational Games Platform
Gimkit is an educational game platform that helps make learning fun and engaging for students. What can you do with Gimkit?
Gimkit offers interactive lessons, games, and challenges in a variety of subjects that students can play collaboratively or competitively. Teachers can use Gimkit to review topics, introduce new concepts, or give students a productive break from regular coursework.
Some of the specific types of content available in Gimkit include:
- Quizzes: Multiple choice or open-ended questions to test students’ knowledge. Quizzes provide instant feedback and points to keep students motivated.
- Live Games: Real-time games where students race to answer questions correctly. Students can play against each other or work together in teams. These fast-paced games are perfect for quick reviews or energizing your class.
- Challenges: Longer games that require students to answer many questions on a topic to complete the challenge. Challenges teach students patience and the value of practice.
- Study Guides: The pre-made sets of flashcards, multiple choice questions, open-ended questions, and more to help students study key terms and concepts. Students earn points for answering questions correctly.
- Custom Content: Teachers can build their quizzes, live games, challenges, and study guides from scratch or by customizing Gimkit’s pre-made content. You have full control over the material, format, and settings.
Gimkit offers an easy-to-use platform, a real-time dashboard for monitoring student progress, and detailed reports to help you make data-driven decisions about your lessons. Give Gimkit a try to make learning more fun and impactful for your students!
Key Features of Gimkit
Gimkit can transform review time into an exciting game and motivate your students to strengthen their knowledge in a fun, engaging way. The platform offers some useful features that make creating fun learning games for your students easy.
1. Customizable Games
You have full control over the content and format of your games. Add your questions, images, and answers covering any topics you want. Set the number of questions, time limit, and point values to match your needs.
2. Free Version
Gimkit has a generous free version that provides access to all the core features. You can create unlimited games, have up to 50 players per game, and store up to 1,000 questions. Payable plans are affordable for larger class sizes or more advanced options.
3. Real-Time Feedback
As students play, you’ll get live updates on their progress, questions answered, points scored, and time remaining. You can see which questions students are struggling with and make modifications to improve understanding. Students also get instant feedback after each question to reinforce learning.
4. Works on Any Device
Gimkit works on laptops, tablets, and smartphones so students can play anywhere. The simple interface is easy to use and optimized for both touchscreens and keyboards.
5. Other Features
Gimkit offers team mode, question pools, game templates, and an image library. You can import/export questions and share games with other teachers. Student accounts allow progress tracking and access to game statistics and leaderboards.
Gimkit Game Modes
Gimkit offers several game modes to keep students engaged. Choose the mode that suits your needs.
1. Quiz
The classic multiple-choice quiz. Students answer questions to earn points and advance through levels. Quizzes can include text, images, and videos. Set a time limit to add a challenge.
2. Flashcards
Flashcards are a simple but effective way for students to practice memorization. They flip through digital flashcards, marking them “known” or “unknown” to track their progress. Flashcards can include text, images, audio, and video.
3. Match
Students match related terms, images, sounds, or videos in the Match game mode. For example, match vocabulary words to definitions or historical figures to their achievements. Students earn points for correct matches.
4. Live
The Live game mode generates questions on the fly based on your content. Students never see the same question twice. Live games work well for math problems, identifying parts of speech, and more. Set a timer to increase difficulty.
5. Teams
Divide students into teams that compete to answer questions correctly. Teams earn points together and advance through levels as a group. Team mode builds community and motivates students to work together. You can randomly generate teams or pre-assign students to teams.
6. Custom
Choose “Custom” to create your own game by selecting settings for time limit, points, levels, leaderboards, and more. Custom mode gives you full control to tailor a game to your specific needs. Get creative!
With so many options to choose from, you can keep your students engaged for the long term by switching between different game modes. Gimkit’s variety of quiz types and flexibility allow you to reinforce skills enjoyably.
Using Gimkit in Your Classroom: Tips for Teachers
Below are some useful tips for teachers to use Gimkit in the classroom.
1. Set Up Your Class
Simply create an account and set up your virtual classroom to get started. Add your students by providing them with a class code or by manually entering their names and email addresses. Gimkit offers teachers accounts for free.
2. Choose Your Content
Select from Gimkit’s library of premade games spanning various subjects and grade levels, or create your own custom game. You can upload your questions, terms, definitions, and math problems – the endless possibilities! Gimkit supports multiple choice, short answer, and true/false questions.
3. Monitor Student Progress
One of the best features of Gimkit is the real-time dashboard that allows you to view each student’s score, time elapsed, correct and incorrect answers, and more as they play. You’ll gain insight into topics or concepts students are struggling with so you can review and re-teach. The dashboard also provides summaries of overall class performance to help you understand how well concepts were grasped.
4. Offer Incentives to Motivate Students
Enable power-ups like double points, immunity, and time freeze to keep things exciting. You can also set up leaderboards to recognize top performers. Consider offering small prizes for students who reach certain point thresholds to keep them motivated.
5. Review and Repeat
The beauty of Gimkit is that games can be replayed over and over. Revisiting content through gameplay is a great way for students to strengthen their learning and mastery. You may tweak the content between rounds to focus on areas needing improvement. Over time, you’ll likely see scores and comprehension improve!
Gimkit is a powerful tool for transforming time-consuming review and practice into an engaging experience for students. Regular use can help boost confidence and long-term retention of key concepts and skills.
Gimkit Free Trial & Paid Plans
Gimkit offers both free and paid subscription plans to suit different needs and budgets. The free plan is great for trying out Gimkit to see if you like it, but the paid plans offer many more features and customization options for your classroom.
● Gimkit Free
The free Gimkit plan includes:
- Access to all game templates
- Ability to create up to 5 custom games
- Save up to 2 classes with up to 30 students each
- View basic stats and leaderboards
This is a great way to test drive Gimkit, but the paid plans offer much more for regular use.
● Gimkit Plus – $59/year
Gimkit Plus unlocks additional features like:
- Create unlimited custom games
- Save unlimited classes with up to 200 students each
- Assign games as homework
- Share classes and collaborate with other teachers
- View advanced stats, reports, and leaderboards to track student progress
- Priority support from the Gimkit team
● Gimkit Pro – $99/year
For larger schools or districts, Gimkit Pro provides:
- All Gimkit Plus features
- Share Gimkits across your entire school or district
- Create a school or district leaderboard to encourage friendly competition
- Assign permissions to control who can create, edit, and assign games
- Billing management tools
- Dedicated account manager for support and training
Gimkit offers very affordable plans for individual teachers, entire schools, and school districts. The free trial allows you to test it out at no cost to you, and the paid plans provide extra features and customization to enhance learning in your classroom. Give Gimkit a try today and see how much fun learning can be!
FAQs
● How do students join Gimkit?
Students join Gimkit by visiting gimkit.com and clicking on “Enter Game Code” at the top right. They then enter the game code provided by their teacher, and they’re in!
● Can you host Gimkit for free?
Yes, you can host Gimkit for free, but with limitations. The free version allows you to create limited ‘kits’ (games). For more advanced features, you’d need a paid subscription.
● Is Gimkit good for kids?
Yes, Gimkit is great for kids. It’s an educational tool that turns learning into a game, making it fun and interactive. It can help improve their knowledge and recall in various subjects. However, as with any online tool, supervision is recommended.
● Why can only 5 people join Gimkit?
The limit of 5 players for Gimkit is a part of their free version restrictions. To host games with more players, one needs to upgrade to a paid Gimkit plan.
● What is the limit on Gimkit free?
The Gimkit Basic (free) plan allows you to create up to 5 ‘kits’ (games), and you can host games with up to 5 players. You’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan for more kits or larger games.
● How long is Gimkit’s free trial?
Gimkit offers a 14-day free trial for its Pro subscription. During this period, you can explore all the premium features without any limitations.
● Why is Gimkit so expensive?
Gimkit’s pricing might seem high because it offers a range of robust features that are designed to enhance the learning experience. These include unlimited games, large game sizes, advanced customization options, and more. The cost also goes towards maintaining the platform, providing customer support, and developing new features. However, whether it’s worth the cost will depend on your specific needs and how much you plan to use it.
Conclusion:
So there you have it, a fun and engaging way to spice up your lessons without a ton of extra work. Gimkit is easy to set up and implement, works great on all devices, and provides real-time feedback to help you adjust on the fly. Your students will love the competitive elements, you’ll love seeing them excited to learn, and everyone will appreciate the break from routine. Education doesn’t have to be boring to be effective. Gimkit proves that learning can be a blast when you inject game-based fun. Why not give it a shot in your classroom? Your students will thank you, and you just might become their favourite teacher.
