33 GimKits in less than 30 days - quick thoughts.

I have made 33 brand new chess GimKits! I made a little goal to make at least one per day, but I've actually done more than that. 

I wanted to make the virtual classes more exciting. I first made hundreds of Quizlet questions, then I made a bunch of Kahoot questions, and due to popular request, I'm using GimKit. 

I put a lot of work into doing this.

I will describe what I do, only so others can learn how to do the same. 

1) I have to find or make the puzzle in ChessBase, then create the diagram. I do this about 30 times to make a 30 question GimKit. I would say it takes me about 1 minute per question, and I'm pretty fast at doing this. 

2) I upload the puzzles to GimKit while creating 4 multiple choice answers. It would be easier if I can just upload all of the diagrams first, and then type the answers in later. Quizlet is the best at allowing batch uploads. Kahoot is nice in that it lets me upload questions individually, without having to immediately type the questions. GimKit is the slowest, because I have to upload the diagrams and type the questions and answers before moving on. 

The creation of multiple choice answers isn't easy, if you want to make the questions good. I want to write good "wrong answers" in my multiple choice questions. Uploading the diagrams and writing questions takes about 15 minutes, for a 30 question GimKit. Knowing how to notate well, and typing quickly is helpful. 

3) I put all of the diagrams I created into a OneDrive folder, and share it with students. So they can simply look at the diagrams. This step takes a few extra minutes. One student told me they like looking at the diagrams. 

I know that kids love doing GimKit during the class, but I don't know if they spend enough time studying up on the questions. Studying up on the questions is educational and helps them do well in GimKits, but maybe only a quarter of the kids actually work through the GimKits individually. It's very fun to do this!

Also, GimKit makes it incredibly easy for someone to just copy my Kits and make it their own. If you create kits, and are worried about plagiarism, you can watermark your diagrams. Adding watermarks to the diagram makes it kind of hideous, in my opinion. But I go into this understanding that people will copy my questions, combine them, etc. 

Overall, I don't know about GimKit. I know it makes the classes fun. If you are dealing with kids who aren't really into learning during class, it can help. And kids who enjoy learning enjoy GimKit too. I think maybe the pacing of questions in Kahoot and Quizlet are better for learning, but it's not as exciting. 

Overall, these are just some quick thoughts, and I'm still forming my opinion about this type of learning.