Gimkit Has Money and Wants You to Take It!
Gimkit is an online resource that allows students to play a quiz
game, or a "Kit" to learn class material. The "Kit" consists of questions, written as multiple choice or short answer, and different ways to increase one's score, displayed as a dollar amount. It is incredibly user friendly and has been proven to help promote students' learning and retention of class content. Gimkit was created by a high school student who built Gimkit "to be the game [he] wanted to play in class!"
For each question answered correctly, the student earns money. Likewise, if a student answers a question incorrectly, they lose money, but less so than the money they earn. The amount of money the student can earn per correct question has the ability to increase, but only if that student plays their cards right! Students can "shop" to purchase different additives to increase the dollar amount they earn on correctly answered questions, but they must first earn enough money answering questions to purchase these additives! The additives each have different levels that students can buy into, with each level increasing the amount of money a student can earn during gameplay. But, of course, the higher the level of an additive, the more it costs! Students can compete with their classmates to earn the most money and improve their spot on the classroom leaderboard. Gimkit also keeps both correctly and incorrectly answered questions in a student's gameplay rotation, even if there are multiple questions a student missed. And, if they miss any of them again, they'll still receive that question later in the game.
I think the repeat question feature is really important, as it allows students to master the content at hand. The money concept of the game provides incentive for students to actually put forth effort, which in turn can have a greater positive effect on their learning; they're playing for a greater reward. Of course, they don't actually get to keep the money (a classmate of mine in high school got into the millions once) so there really isn't a chance students can opt into their money in real life.
I also really like the gameplay itself; my classmates and I played this game endlessly in our Spanish V class my senior year of high school. My teacher used my classmates and I as guinea pigs to see if the game would be a good fit for her beginner and intermediate Spanish students in the other classes. She ended up using it the most with my class--we played at least once or twice a week! I can also attest to the fact that Gimkit helps students with learning; playing Gimkit helped some of my classmates and I prepare ourselves for the Michigan Biliteracy Test, with some of the content of our Gimkit games actually being on the Bi-Lit test!
Gimkit was one of very few class-oriented quiz games I enjoyed playing, not to mention it was the only online game I looked forward to playing in class! But don't just take my word for it, try it out! Using this link, you can participate in a mock Gimkit game to get a feel for how it works. If anyone is to teach secondary education, I suggest using Gimkit with your students! It can be used for any subject, and sometimes questions even display memes when answered correctly (they're usually only top-text bottom-text formatted, but still, some are a little funny!)
Victoria Fellows
EDT 211
Extra Gimkit link: https://www.gimkit.com/
