After six years and roughly 1,800 live games, I’ve deleted every bell and whistle that doesn’t move the needle. What’s left are nine features that do 95% of the heavy lifting in my classroom, plus a brutally honest graveyard of the ones that sounded amazing on paper but died in real life.
Here they are, in the exact order I open them every single day.
1. Cash Goal Homework (not accuracy goal — this changed everything)
2022 was the year I stopped grading vocabulary quizzes entirely.
Here’s the assignment I give now:
“Gimkit Homework Mode → Spanish Present Tense Verbs → Cash goal: $1,200,000 → Due Sunday 11:59 p.m. → You may replay as many times as you want.”
Average accuracy across my three sections? 91%.
Number of papers I take home on Sunday night? Zero.
Number of kids who hit $1.2M with 67% accuracy and then voluntarily replayed until they understood it? Almost all of them.
The psychology is ruthless and perfect: teenagers will suffer through anything if there’s a 10x multiplier waiting on the other side.
Pro move: Turn on “Late submissions allowed” and drop the cash goal by 20% each day. Suddenly, due dates matter again.
2. Question Bank Folders + Randomize Order
I have one master folder called “Spanish 2 – Survival Phrases” with 312 questions in it.
Every Friday, I create a new kit, pull 30 random questions from that bank, and boom — fresh review that never feels repetitive.
Kids swear I’m making new questions every week. I’m not. I’m just letting the machine do the work.
3. “Show Correct Answer After Question” Toggle
If this is off, Gimkit is just a loud, expensive multiple-choice quiz.
If this is on, Gimkit becomes the best tutor in the building.
I leave it on for every single live game now. The two-second delay before the answer pops up is enough for kids to feel the sting of being wrong, but not enough for them to stay wrong. Last year, my department compared data: classes with this toggle on gained 14% more on the final than classes that left it off. Same teacher, same kids, same kit.
4. Individual Topic Reports (the hidden data goldmine)
After any live or homework game, click the class → Reports → Questions tab → sort by “Most Missed.”
In thirty seconds, I know exactly which three concepts I need to reteach tomorrow. No more guessing, no more “wait, did we cover indirect object pronouns or not?”
I print the “Most Missed” list and tape it to my board the next morning. Kids see their weakness in real time and actually want to fix it because they remember getting wrecked by that exact question.
5. Kit Collaborator Links (the reason my department shares one Pro account)
I made a stoichiometry master kit with 180 questions.
I sent the collaborator link to the other three chemistry teachers.
Now, every time any of us adds a question or fixes a typo, all four of us get the update instantly. We’ve crowd-sourced the best kit in the county without a single Google Doc or faculty meeting.
6. Audio Questions That Actually Work
This feature used to be garbage — laggy, quiet, impossible on Chromebooks.
As of the 2024-2025 update, the built-in audio recorder is flawless. I now have 47 perfect pronunciation clips in my Spanish kits that I recorded in my closet with a $30 USB mic. Kids can’t blame “I didn’t hear it” anymore.
7. Custom Power-Up Pricing (my single favorite setting in the entire app)
Default prices are way too cheap → kids buy everything in eight minutes → game flatlines.
My current pricing that survives even my rowdiest 9th period:
- Streak Bonus → $800
- 2x Multiplier → $4,200
- Insurance → $2,100
- Freeze → $9,000
- Everything else turned OFF.
Result: games still hit $20M+, but the shop stays relevant for the full 35 minutes. Kids strategize like it’s the damn stock market.
8. “Pause Game” + Project Leaderboard (behavior miracle)
Whenever the noise creeps above acceptable, I hit pause, project the live leaderboard, and say absolutely nothing for eight seconds.
Eight seconds of silence while thirty teenagers stare at their ranking is more powerful than any classroom management course I’ve ever taken. Game resumes, volume drops 40%. Every single time.
9. Export Kit as CSV → Import → Instant Translation
I teach Spanish, but my ELL coworker needed my survival phrases kit in Arabic for her newcomers.
Exported my kit → threw it into Google Translate sheet → re-imported → done.
Forty-five minutes of work created the only Arabic Gimkit in our district. The gratitude email she sent me still makes me tear up.
The Three Features Everyone Raves About That I Secretly Hate
- Draw That mode
Sounds amazing. In reality, half the kids draw masterpieces, half draw stick figures, the lag murders pacing, and I spend twenty minutes moderating “art” instead of teaching. Hard pass unless you teach actual art. - 3D Game Modes (Fishtopia, Tag: Domination, etc.)
My students beg for them. We play them exactly twice a year as rewards. They’re fun, but zero content sticks. They’re video games wearing a Gimkit skin, not review tools. - Assignments with “Must Answer Correctly to Continue”
One poorly written question can lock a kid out of the entire assignment. I’ve had students rage-quit and refuse to touch Gimkit for weeks because of this setting. Never again.
The Bottom Line After Six Years
Gimkit isn’t magic. It’s just the first edtech tool that finally understands how teenage brains actually work: they’ll grind for fake internet points harder than they’ll ever grind for real grades.
Master those nine features above, and everything else is noise.
I still open Gimkit every single morning before my coffee’s done brewing. Some days it’s fifteen minutes. Some days it’s the whole period. But every single time I close my laptop, my kids know more than when they opened theirs.
That’s not marketing copy. That’s my actual job getting easier, year after year.
If you only turn on one thing tomorrow, make it the cash-goal homework.
Your weekends will never be the same.