Guide to Classkick
Introduction
In this time of remote teaching, one of the biggest challenges I have found has been the Checking for Understanding at the time of teaching (one of the Core Principles of Great Teaching). It is fairly easy to collect work electronically and give feedback on submitted work, but as we all know, this is often too late in the learning process. It is the looking over the shoulder, asking questions to probe understanding, and giving immediate feedback that helps us identify misconceptions and stop students from turning them into something they remember after the lesson. Once these misconceptions are embedded, they are significantly more difficult to remove, so we want to do this as close to real time as possible.
But with submitted work this is just not possible. And this is where options such as Classkick come into their own.
Classkick allows you to upload any PDF or image file and turn it into an online assignment. Students write on the assignment (using an array of tools) and the teacher can see student input immediately from their screen. You can see an overview of the whole assignment, or focus on a particular page. The teacher can then give feedback which the student can see immediately.
In this post I will go through the student view and then the teacher view, before showing you how to set up your own assignment and classes.
Student View
It is really easy for students to sign in to a classkick assignment. You can send them a link (or post it in Google Classroom etc) and they will get to this screen.
When the student has signed in they will be directed to the first page of the assignment. On every slide they will have access to the toolbar at the top which has some notifications and also the tools they will use to input their work. There are several tools they can use.
One useful feature is the Raise Hand option in the top right corner. When students press this button they get two options:
Please Help asks for help on a particular slide
Please Check asks for an answer to be checked
To the right is an image of the menu students see when they Raise Hand.
This gives students an easy way to ask you to look at a particular slide. There is also a chat box at the bottom where details can be shared. Both teacher and student can type here. If a student types in the chat only, the teacher is still notified of this.
If "Helpers" is turned on (discussed below in the Teacher View), then students can also help each other. When a student presses the Raise Hand button all students receive the notification as well as the teacher, and students can click on the link that appears and it will take them to the slide of the other student so they can help. They can also use the chat feature (which you can monitor). This is all anonymised, so randomly generated names are used both for the student asking for help and the helper. To the left is an example of the menu students see when they click on the notification telling them classmates have their hand raised.
As we will see in the Teacher View, you can leave feedback in a variety of ways for students. When you do this they are notified immediately, and when they click on the notification they are given a menu that tells them where the feedback is. By clicking on the menu they will be taken directly to that slide to check the feedback.
Student work all saves automatically, so they do not need to do anything extra to submit it or save it. When they are done they just close the tab on their browser.
Teacher View
When you log in as a teacher the homepage view is below. You have some menus down the side, and then a list of your folders (only available with Pro) and assignments. For each assignment you get a notification of any hands that have been raised. From this page you can access assignments and create new ones (we will see that further down).
Edit View
When you click on an assignment you will be taken to the edit menu first. This is where you can edit the assignment. We will look at this in more detail below, but it is worth pointing out now that you can edit whilst students are working and it will appear live on their screens. You could add an extra slide, or even work an example on a slide for students to see.
Assign View
Let's take a look at the next menu: Assign.
Classkick works around two parallel systems: Assignments and Rosters (classes). Each assignment you make can be assigned to as many Rosters as you like. Each class will get a unique link to access the assignment and you can see work by class on the assignment.
All the options available work in live time, so if you switch them on/off whilst students are working, they will affect what students can do immediately.
Grades - there are some elements you can set up in assignments that will self mark. This is extremely useful as a teacher as you can see very quickly if students got the question correct or not. If you assign points to a question, it will also automatically give these points. If you turn on Grades then students will also see if they are right or wrong and any points/grades that have been awarded.
A student slide that has a space to enter an answer:
And the different views the student will get with the different options:
Note that you can have this off and turn it on at the end. I use this by locking the assignment at the end of the time and then turning this on so students can then see what they got right and wrong, but I also see without them getting the chance to correct everything. Then I will unlock again so students can go back and fix it.
Helpers- we saw in the student view section what they students will see, and this is how we can turn this on or off.
Hide/Lock - Hide means that students cannot access the assignment. Lock means they can access it but not edit it. Lock is great to turn on during class if you want their attention for a moment as they will be unable to do anything.
Class Code - The class code is the unique identifier that allows students in you class to access the assignment. When you click on it you get this menu (I have blurred the class codes here).
Students can go to classkick website and type in the classcode, but the easiest thing to do is to press COPY LINK and send it to them which will open up the page shown at the start of student view. Alternatively press the Google Classroom button and you will be able to post it directly to your Google Classroom for the class.
View Work View
Now let's look at the View Work tab, which is the one you will have open when students are working.
In the main view of all slides you can quickly see where each student is up to (the slides they haven't reached yet are greyed out), where they currently are (the slide with a black box around it) and if they do not have the assignment open (there is no black box and their name is greyed like _test3).
You can also see the points awarded for slides that have points assigned (like slides 7 and 8 above). You can see the points even if grades is turned off. That only affects if the students can see them. So with grades turned off this gives you a quick way to check who you need to check in on. It also shows you the last answer they typed in, which is useful for slides with only 1 question on.
You can see the total number of hands up in the top right corner and the hands up on individual slides for students.
This view is great for a quick overview of the whole assignment if it is spread over multiple pages. However, you can also look at an individual slide and get a quick snapshot of all student answers for that page. This is particularly useful if you have a single page assignment. You can change this near the top of the screen where it says "View All Slides" and then choosing the slide you want to view.
This is an example of a task I did with P6, and here are 3 responses. In a full screen I can see 6 at a time, and easily scroll down to see them all quickly. These preview screens are big enough to be able to see what students have written/drawn (unlike the View All Slides view). For this example I could quickly see that the whole class struggled with question 15 which led to me going through it with the whole group. It also showed that the middle student had read the 10. as the start of the number rather than the question number and allowed me to pick up on this.
In this example from the PD session you can clearly see the drawings that have been done by all students. You can also see in this example that two students have helped or been helped by their classmates. This is because Helpers was turned on so they could aid each other when they put their hands up.
It also demonstrates the super quick stickers as a method of feedback. These are one of my favourite features of Classkick. You can set your own custom stickers to use. You can have some which are generic and always available and some which are specific to a particular assignment. They take seconds to create and come with an image (choose from a stock one or upload your own) and a brief comment. Below are the stickers I currently have. The third one was specific to an assignment and was given to many in the class as I spotted a common error they were all making. The rest are generic ones that I use a lot in usual marking. You access the sticker menu by clicking on the Star shape in the top right corner of the screen.
Once you have chosen a sticker you just click on all the slides that you want to apply the sticker too. You can apply a sticker to the whole class in less than 30 seconds. Or you can switch between stickers for each student and do the whole class in about 3 minutes. Stickers are great for giving quick common feedback to students, and you can even assign points to a particular feedback sticker. For a 4 point question you could set up stickers giving a mark for each of the Markscheme points available or giving no marks and saying what is missing. In a couple of minutes you can then give fairly thorough feedback to each student.
If you want you can also click on the slide of a particular student to give more detailed feedback, and then you have all the tools the student has. You can use a textbox, highlight an answer, use the pen tool, or even leave some voice feedback. This last option is a particularly good way to personalise the feedback we give and gives us an opportunity to continue to build relationships with the students.
In either case, when you leave feedback, the student will be notified. If it is live in the lesson they can immediately go and see it. If you do the feedback after class, then the next time students sign in to the assignment (perhaps with it locked) they get a notification that you have left them feedback and where it is.
Setting Up Classes (Rosters)
It is surprisingly easy to set up a class (what they call a Roster). You can go to the Roster menu from the home page, and press the Green + in the top right corner.
You get two options (if you have Pro). I didn't manage to get the Import from Google to work but I know others did and this automatically set up the class list. I used the New Roster and you just give it a title.
Then the easiest way to ad students is to give them a link to an assignment. As the class codes are unique to the Roster, when they use the link they are automatically added to the Roster.
There are two ways they can sign up if you have Pro. The easiest (which is available to all) is to just type their Name and press Go. This will allow them to access the assignment. The name they type will be added to the Roster, and they can reuse the same name to access all assignments you make. The next time they use the same name it will say Continue instead of Go as they are already registered.
But as this has no password, it could easily be accessed by somebody else. So for this reason, I suggest using the Portfolio option (only with Pro) where students Sign Up with their Google Account (or email and password). Once they have done this, in future they press Log In and use the same Google Account (or email). This also gives them a proper student account where they can access all previous assignments set, and if they are in multiple rosters with different teachers, it is all collected in this account. They will see notifications from all their classes using Classkick here.
Either way, once they have signed in once, they are linked to the Roster automatically.
Once the roster is set up, you might want to lock it so others cannot join (or more likely, a student tries to use a different name in the next assignment and so ends up on the roster twice!). When you click on a roster you will see a list of all the students signed up to the Roster. Here you can edit the name, see if they are currently active on an assignment, and remove them from the roster (the cross at the right).
Clicking on the three dots in the top right gives you some more options, including the Lock Options.
The two options you get are to Lock this Roster so no more students can add themselves to the Roster, and Single Device Login so they can only login from one device at a time.
Setting Up Assignments
With a roster set up, you also need your assignments. There are two ways to approach this:
Upload an existing assignment in either PDF or image format;
Create a new assignment from scratch
Or you can use a mixture by uploading existing assignments and overlaying useful features or adding new slides.
Start by going to the Assignments menu and clicking on the Green plus in the top right corner.
Let's start with the simple Create From File which uses an existing assignment you have. It must be in PDF form (you can save as PDF from Word, PowerPoint and Excel, and Download as PDF from Google Docs and Slides). Once you choose that option, and the file you want to upload it will open a pop up with a preview of the document.
If you choose to Import All Pages you will then get a chance to delete any pages you don't want or add a further file before the Assignment is created. Here I am going to look at the options if you choose Next.
The next page asks where you would like to add this image. By default it is added to a new page, but you can choose to add it to an existing page (or multiple pages) by clicking on the drop down box.
You then get the option to keep adding more pages until you are finished, or even delete those you don't want anymore.
Once you have finished this process you are taken to the Edit menu for an assignment, where you can give it a title, a description, set the subject and grade level and choose whether it is Private or Shared.
If you want you can finish there, and go straight to Assign and set it as a piece of work for a class. If you have an existing assignment you want upload like this you can do this whole process in about 2 minutes and then students can write on the worksheet online and you can see all their answers immediately. Perhaps you have a single image that you want to see their answers for. You can quickly add this image in this way and send the link to the class in about a minute. You could do this live in a lesson if you suddenly remember something you want them to do. And because you can see all their answers immediately it can act like a mini-whiteboard where you can see student work.
This is a great use for Classkick when we are teaching remotely. I like to use Venn Diagram tasks in my teaching, and often have students work on this on the big whiteboards around my room. With classkick, I can upload the Venn Diagram in about 30 seconds to create an assignment, and then share the link with the class so they can write on it like a whiteboard.
But there is more power to classkick, as we saw in the Teacher View section.
So let's add some functionality to this worksheet. Start by selecting the slide you want to edit.
Extra Tools
You have all the tools the students have to work with plus a few extra. Let's go through these now.
First let's look at the Fill In The Blank Tool.
You simply draw a box of the size you want to provide for students to type into. In this example it is a single numerical answer, so a small box is fine. Otherwise you can create a bigger box for students to type a short paragraph (think an answer box in an exam). If it is a short answer (numerical, spelling, key word etc) you can add acceptable answers that are automatically marked. This is excellent for maths as we can see immediately if they get it right, and then check any working. You can also set points available for accepted answers.
Now let's look at the Manipulative Tool.
The manipulative tool allows you to add images or snips from a PDF to a page. Here I have taken an activity that is usually a card sort and made it virtual. The graphs are fixed, but the equations are manipulatives. These were individually snipped from a PDF in the same way we can snip images from a PDF. Students can move the equations, and they have to place them in the correct places.
Finally, the Multiple Choice Tool.
You have to type the possible answers and the multiple choice tool is placed next to it. You can set the correct answer (or no correct answer if it is an opinion based question), and set it to mark automatically. This is very basic and only useful for quick questions. You have to have 5 options. If you want to make use of multiple choice questions in more depth you are better off using another app like Kahoot or Quizizz, and linking to it in the Classkick assignment.
Missing Features
There are a couple of features currently missing that would be very useful:
You cannot copy individual slides from one assignment to another, or even merge two assignments. If you want to do this your only option is to duplicate a current assignment and then recreate the pages from a second assignment you want to add. This is a big missing feature in my opinion, but as it is super quick to create assignments, it is not a dealbreaker.
You cannot control the pace that students work through an assignment. I would like the ability to hold students at certain slides at a point in time so I could have them all looking at a slide as I talk through something, or even better to have the ability to allow them to work through say 5 slides, but then it stops them at that point. Again, not a dealbreaker, but definitely something I would like to see soon.
You can only add images as manipulatives. It would be amazing to be able to add text as a manipulative, but the workaround is to take a screenshot of some text using the snipping tool or similar and then upload this. Or create PDF with all the words you want to use and then use the inbuilt snip tool in Classkick.
Some Ideas for How To Use Classkick
The simplest way to use Classkick is to upload a worksheet and have students fill it in so you can see their work live. Just doing this is a great improvement to uploading to Google Classroom as you can see work, check it and give feedback immediately so misconceptions do not get a chance to embed themselves.
But here are some other ways you could use Classkick.
As a mini-whiteboard - mini-whiteboards are one of my favourite tools in the classroom. They are versatile (you can ask a question off the cuff, or have something planned) and you get to see all responses. With a good routine in place, they are incredibly powerful. To use classkick as a replacement to this, simply have a blank slide in an assignment. Then you can ask questions through Zoom, and students can put their reponses on the blank page. You get a quick snapshot of all their responses which you can respond to live through the Zoom.
Card Sort Activities - by using the manipulative tool you can create card sort activities. These could be true/false or matching activities. You can create columns for students to move the manipulatives into, or they can just group them together.
Slide Presentations - you can use Classkick as the way of delivering material. Ask students to go to the slide that you are using, and then you can edit the slide live so that all students will see what you add. This is an alternative to using another slide presentation and screen sharing.
For Group Work - If you get students to log in with just a Name rather than their Google Account, you can have several students use the same Name and then they can all edit the same slide. The easiest way is to create a new Roster and create the Names Team 1, Team 2, etc. Then put students into a Breakout Room (so they can talk to each other) and get them all to sign in using the team name.
Conclusion
Classkick is an awesome site for 'looking over the shoulder' of students whilst they work remotely. As a teacher you can see who is logged in, where they are up to and by looking at a particular slide can see all the answers the class give in a glance. You can give generic feedback quickly and easily by setting up your own stickers, or you can give detailed individual feedback, including recording a spoken comment. You can upload existing worksheets straight the platform for students to work on or you can create new assignments making use of the tools available, depending on how much time you have and what you want to achieve.
My favourite features are the Fill In the Blank tool which automatically marks answers (great for Maths!) and the fact that I can give quick feedback to the whole class using stickers, whilst getting an overview of the whole class progress easily.
It is an easy to use platform that is the best I have seen for giving teachers the ability to check student understanding whilst in class when we are teaching remotely, but also has potential for use when back in school. It is not going to replace teaching via Zoom, but it certainly fills in a gap that appeared pretty quickly and prominently in using just Zoom and Google Classroom. Moving forward, I will be using this as my main approach, just giving the link to Zoom and the Classkick assignment for the day in Google Classroom.