Gadget Daddy: Online learning app offers price break for schools

Classkick is an app for the iPad that connects students with their classrooms. It can replace pencils and paper with the tablet's screen, and let teachers see, in real time, what their students are doing. It also works on Chromebooks, as well as Macs and Windows computers.

It not only lets students connect with their classrooms, it lets them connect remotely. And that has become a very important thing in the past month.

Polk County Public Schools are using different systems when distance learning begins next week, but ClassKick might be an alternative for private schools that heretofore found it too costly.

A Classkick Pro school membership costs $1,500. That covers unlimited teachers and up to 2,000 students.

"Because of widespread U.S. school closures," said a company spokeswoman, "in one weekend alone in March, over 3,000 new schools signed up for Classkick’s remote learning app." But, she added, more than 1,000 schools were unable to make an immediate payment.

Last week, Classkick officials started offering Classkick Pro for free to schools that closed because of the coronavirus and cannot afford to pay for the program. School officials can sign up for the program at: www.classkick.com/coronavirus.

A notice on the website asks educators to limit applications to schools in need: "If your school is eligible, we’ll send you a free Classkick Pro School Membership ASAP. If your school can afford the low cost of Pro, please order it at classkick.com/pro instead, so as to not take a free membership from another school in need."

The company was founded in 2008 when two teachers in the Teach for America program met when they were teaching at the same school. It has become, according to various educational surveys, the leading virtual-learning app in the country.

Teachers can use Classkick to give assignments to students, monitor their work, and offer feedback. Students can use their tablets or computers to create content like drawings, texts, images, websites and audio.

"Classkick connects students and their school work to their educational advocates, merging students, teachers, and parents together for a true virtual learning experience," the spokeswoman said. She added that teachers can see and instantly respond to exactly what their students are working on in real-time. Meanwhile, students can ask for help privately and teachers can remotely show students corrections on their screens and add support and encouragement.

Grade levels don't matter. Classkick works as well for a second-grade math teacher as it does in a class full of seniors taking calculus.

Andrew Rowland, co-founder of Classkick, is a former Chicago high school math and robotics teacher. "We envisioned a world with increased learning outcomes and equitable education for all students,” he said.

"Research shows that the Number 1 driver of student learning and development is great feedback. As former teachers ourselves, we have experienced how challenging it can be to reach every student at the right learning moment. We built Classkick to eliminate barriers, show teachers real-time student work, and pinpoint the most urgent needs so students can quickly learn and develop.”

Classkick can be used in the classroom or remotely by students at home. Not only does it allow students to keep learning when schools are closed, Rowland said, but "by using Classkick [students] get three times more feedback than before, and teachers cut their grading time in half."

For more information, visit the company's website: www.classkick.com.

Lonnie Brown can be reached atLedgerDatabase@aol.com.