The EdTech News Brief – Page 6

New changes to the Gimkit Pro Plan

Gimkit is letting us play games with more students for free . . .

In a recent post on the Gimkit blog, Josh Feinsilber, creator of Gimkit, announced changes to the Gimkit Pro plan.

I’m really excited about this, because the previous iteration of their Pro plan limited free users to only 5 players per game. It let you play any game, but only with 5 students.

Now they’ve announced in the “new free plan you’ll get unlimited access to our currently featured modes.” Those featured modes will change throughout the year, but other “modes are available to you, but with a 5 player limit.”

Gimkit Pro users then have unlimited access to every mode. There are a lot of fan favorites out there – like Trust No One, Floor is Lava, and Draw That – that you’ll be guaranteed access to.

According to the blog post, Gimkit Pro users will also be able to upload images, record audio, & create assignments.

(Gimkit Pro costs $9.99 a month or $59.99 a year)

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A new Social-Emotional Learning Tool: Microsoft Reflect

Microsoft is giving us an amazing new learning tool . . .

with their recent launch of Reflect in Microsoft Teams for Education.

Reflect prompts students to check in about how they’re feeling, and even uses emojis and little monsters to connect facial expressions and body language to emotional vocab. This might help students with limited reading respond, but may also help students who are working on understanding social cues like facial expressions and body language.

Reflect is a FREE tool!

The tool also lets students see their responses over time to look for patterns. Of course, another key step is teachers following up on concerning responses.

In March, they added the ability to build these self-assessments into OneNote. Reflect has increased functionality in One Note. As the blog post says, it lets students self-assess their “Progress and satisfaction in learning, motivation to learn, confidence, and effort.”

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Scheduling for Multiple Classes in Google Classroom

Google has rolled out a long-awaited Google Classroom feature . . .

On St. Patrick’s Day (better known as my birthday), Google for Education announced on the Google Workspace Updates page that, after a long wait, the ability to schedule stream posts, assignments, and materials for multiple classes in Google Classroom was available!

It’s even better than I could have imagined because it also lets you select different due dates and different topics for your assignments!

I also really like the “Copy settings to all” option which lets you set it up for the first class, then copy those settings to all of the classes, then make changes.

Let’s go over an example:

Say I want the assignment to launch simultaneously for all classes, but have different due times based on when I have that class period. Or maybe I just want to put them all in the same topic within the classes first, copy that, then modify the post times. I also like that I can select “post now” for some classes, but schedule for others.

I’m really happy with how this came out! Assignment and post scheduling is available in Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Education Plus customers (it can also be seen in my gmail account.)

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