Best interactive classroom game out there . . . currently
Community Review for Gimkit
My Take
I have yet to find any serious flaws with Gimkit. It would be nice if, like Kahoot, you could use the free version, but that's completely not workable (you only get to make 4 question sets and can only edit each one three times), but hey, that's capitalism.
It's pretty amazing that one day some high school kid was sitting through a Kahoot-type game and thought "I could make a better game" and then went and did it! I've developed digital games for my students in the past, and I'm kicking myself hard for not coming up with this first. >:-(
How I Use It
This is the best online gaming platform out there at this point. Quizziz, Kahoot and Quizlet Live really need to step up their game to match student excitement with Gimkit. Probably the best feature is the ease by which students can create the questions through Gimkit Collab. They simply put the code in for a game and add their questions. The teacher can accept/deny/edit the questions. Then, they play the game.
For me, this works with AP Language. It's tough finding uses for a multiple-choice format to teach higher-level learning for reading/writing classes. This is one way I do it: I simply give them a reading with question stems and they create the questions after we discuss all aspects of the reading--tone, devices, theme, symbolism, imagery, etc. So if Class A makes a set of questions for a reading--hopefully AP-type questions--Class B uses Class C's questions, Class C uses Class D's questions, etc. Then I can rotate all the questions amongst all my sections. Kids make 1 set of questions and play five different games based on 5 short readings. They do all the work and they have the fun answering each other's questions.