Monthly Update - November 2020
Happy November!
Ink. Is. Here.🥳
You read that write. After months of hearing us talk about Ink, we announced it in full and started sending out early access invites on October 21st.
Now that educators and students are using Ink, we'll be rolling out early access codes to everyone on the waitlist through the end of this year, then working on fixing bugs and tightening the screws for a full release in January 2021.
But October wasn't just about Ink, let's dive into everything that happened last month!
Appreciation
This month's appreciation is for the thousands of people who requested early access to Ink before it came out! 🎈
Back in May, we laid out the basics of Ink and Ink and started an early access list for anyone who emailed us about their experiences with writing in the classroom.
We read about students who grew up to be teachers because of how much they loved writing, about teachers who love writing but feel confined by the available tools, and about everything in between.
Some of you who emailed early may have already received your early access invite codes. We're about 25% through the waitlist so far. For the rest of you, they're coming!
On behalf of Josh, Fadi, and Pharlain, I want to say thank you to everyone who waited patiently while we built Ink. Your excitement for Ink helped keep us stay focused and we're so excited for you all to try it out!
Community and Product Update
Although this school year has kicked off with uncertainty and numerous challenges, we've been inspired and encouraged by the attitude and approach we've seen from you all.
On our end, here are a few updates from a product and community perspective:
THE FLOOR IS LAVA!
I'm not an all caps kinda guy, but it felt necessary for this one.
What can I say? Seeing how you and your students responded to the Floor is Lava Mode was one of the highlights of 2020 for us.
Here's a small slice of the excitement we saw for this mode:
Floor is Lava was special because it was our first fully cooperative mode. All students worked together on a common goal for this one, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive! Seeing how this mode ignited educators and students got our gears going for future modes.
It was tough having to say goodbye to Floor is Lava for now, but I imagine it will be back sometime this school year!
Humans Vs. Zombies
The response for Floor is Lava was amazing! But we can't forget the return of Humans vs. Zombies, one of our most popular modes.
When a fun mode like Lava leaves, there's always some disappointment. But one thing that makes it feel better on our end is that we're following up with another fun and engaging mode.
Lava left two weeks after it was released, but we followed it up with Humans vs. Zombies, which captured the imagination and attention of students and teachers in its own way:
One thing both Lava and HvZ have in common is that they are a twist on Gimkit. Students and educators get excited for limited modes because so many classroom activities, even those that start out being engaging, get stale after a while. The most rewarding part of having limited modes like these is seeing the ways they pull students and educators in, re-energizing everyone and making learning exciting.
Welcome, Pharlain! 🥳
Earlier this month we added another loverly human to our small but mighty team.
Ever since Gimkit started, customer support has been primarily handled by me or Josh, so we're super excited to bring on Pharlain level up our customer support.
Please meet Pharlain Ross, our new customer support representative!
Hi, I'm Pharlain, and it's so great to be writing this!
I'm a reformed pastry chef, mother of two, and career customer support hero.
I spent more than a decade, helping to grow a customer support team from 4 to 25 at a survey software company. I learned enough to fill several novels, and I'm so excited to bring that knowledge to Gimkit to serve educators and students.
My husband is a History teacher and holds three(!) graduate degrees in education, including a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction, so helping educators is deeply personal for me.
My family and I are giant nerds who play games of all sorts (look for us at GenCon every year!). My 6-year-old daughter's favorite monster is a Beholder.
Finding a job that combines my love of games, education, and customer support is an absolute dream, made better by the passionate, funny, and kind people I get to work with.
In my free time, I read, garden, build things, and bake. That said, I have a six year-old-daughter who is a mischievous forest sprite and a 4-year-old son who is a tiny wookie with a heart of gold. So free time is a myth.
I look forward to getting to know you, the students and educators, who make Gimkit possible. Please feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or pharlain@gimkit.com if you want to chat about education theory, games, statistics, or anything else. I can't wait!
Ink update
As I noted up top, we started rolling out Ink this month and it was INK-redible!
Ink is our new product, designed to help students fall in love with writing.
Earlier this year, when we started talking about what we wanted to build next, we became fixated on writing and how it feels to be a writer when you're a student. We all felt like we had become better writers AFTER school. For us, our love and appreciation for writing didn't come until we were out of school - done and graduated.
Ink is our attempt to give more students a chance to love and appreciate writing while they're still in school.
When we started giving out early access on October 21, we had around thousands of early access requests and we’ve had thousands more since. We've released Ink to 25% of our waitlist so far.
Our decision to go with a slow roll-out for Ink seems to have been a good one. We've been able to get feedback and suggestions, bug hunt, listen to teacher and student thoughts and concerns, and make changes. All at a reasonable pace, with plenty of time for discussion where needed.
We talked to a lot of educators and students before we started building Ink. And Josh worked non-stop on Ink for about 6 months straight. But nothing beats having educators and students get in and start playing around with it.
It's been incredible to see Ink impacting student writing already: A big thank you to everyone who has tried Ink so far and let us know how it's going!
We're excited to keep rolling Ink out to more and more people and release it to everyone in January. If you want to learn more about Ink and join the waitlist, you can do both here!
Company update
Gimkit Groups is less than a year old and it’s going really well.
In September and October, schools and districts covered thousands of new teachers with hundreds of new group subscriptions.
Here are the three main reasons we love seeing so many departments, schools, and districts using Groups:
We don't want teachers to pay for Gimkit if they don't have to. When schools pay for teachers, they save money and their students get access to Gimkit. That's an ideal outcome for everyone involved!
This time last year, managing group subscriptions was a full-time job. Wrangling POs, keeping track of orders, processing payments, record keeping, troubleshooting because my record-keeping was terrible — it all added up to one big mess. This year, now that Groups is fully automated, more schools are able to more easily cover their teachers who are using Gimkit.
Room to grow. With Groups, we tested a theory that giving schools and departments room to grow was better for them and better for us. Our thinking was that we could save schools time and save us time, using the time and resources saved on our end to provide cheaper group subscriptions. So far, it's worked out. We've helped schools pay for more teachers since Groups launched 9 months ago than the 2+ years that preceded — by thousands and thousands of teachers.
In short, we're really excited about Groups and how many teachers it's provided Gimkit access for. 💜
What's on Deck?
We’ll be sending out more Ink early invites as we get it ready for wide release in January.
Along with Ink, we have some new Powerups we’ll be sprinkling into the Gimkit Live this month.
And Fadi is working on something for game modes that we’re not quite ready to announce yet, but is very cool. 🤫 When we have an ETA, we’ll share more — promise!