According to the Education Endowment Foundation, teacher feedback has the highest impact on student learning, more than any other classroom staple, activity, or discipline.
Unfortunately, with growing classroom sizes, paper assignments, and inefficient monitoring methods, feedback is an easy element to overlook. In fact, studies show that 62% of all students receive inadequate feedback.
Andrew Rowland, a former teacher frustrated with this problem, founded Classkick, a free app that provides teachers with a platform and tools to easily and efficiently offer feedback. Teachers can prep assignments online using pre-loaded worksheets and web content and then track and grade this work digitally, as well as send notes, critiques, and accolades directly to their students. Classkick also allows students to reach out for feedback privately through the app so the shy individuals who are hesitant to raise his or hand in class can still receive that valuable one-on-one attention.
Said Greg Port, a teacher from Seton College in Australia, “Students love it… I could help students who were stuck silently, it was magic.”
Like a number of the innovators in the space who we met at our EdTech meetup, Rowland started as an educator. After beginning his career as a Chicago high school teacher, he became a Partner Technology Manager at Google & YouTube. Classkick now allows Rowland to bring his tech expertise and experience back to the classroom, which he missed.
Once the problem was identified and an idea hatched, Rowland built and refined Classkick at ImagineK12, a famed Valley incubator focused squarely on education technology. (Some startups to come out of the "Y-Combinator for EdTech" include Panorama, Front Row, Classdojo, Remind, Educreations and EdPuzzle). The space has built a network of over one hundred founders and hackers intent on creating technology to better educate the next generation. Rowland has transitioned from one collaborative environment to another; Classkick works out of 1871.
Currently, the team is focused on fleshing out the product and expanding into more and more classrooms. This week, the app officially launched with beta users already in 15 different countries and continues to spread rapidly via word-of-mouth.
For example, said Steve Bergen, founder of Summercore, an organization dedicated to helping teachers and schools integrate technology, "Classkick is the "the classroom game changer" we have been waiting for since the iPad was introduced in 2010."
