Classkick: Enabling real-time learning from anywhere

As COVID-19 impacts schools around the world, more educators and administrators rely on technologies that bring classrooms into students’ homes. Many of these education technology (EdTech) tools have seen recent exponential growth due to the demand for digital classrooms. Classkick, a digital activities and formative assessment tool, allows educators to create assignments, monitor students’ progress, and provide real-time feedback entirely online.

“We built this tool in a pre-pandemic world, and it’s incredibly well-suited to how people need to teach and learn today,” says Andrew Rowland, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Classkick. “Educators already using Classkick transitioned quite seamlessly to a remote model, thanks to Classkick. They say Classkick is the only thing they’ve found that’s the same both in-class and remote.”

Andrew is an alumnus of Teach for America and saw just how much some school districts and students struggle to access educational resources. He baked this pursuit of improving equity into Classkick’s DNA, as the company strives to provide strong educational experiences for all students.

Classkick uses Google Cloud’s solutions like Firebase and operations tools to enable more asynchronous, or on-demand and self-paced, digital learning experiences outside of the classroom—giving students more flexibility with their distance learning.

Classkick helps educators create on-demand and open-ended learning experiences for students and provide real-time feedback from anywhere. First graders describe their thinking, fourth graders practice sheet music while listening to audio, middle schoolers edit each others' essays, tenth graders write and speak Mandarin, and twelfth graders do physics and calculus.

The company also partners with Google for Education to reach 170 million students and educators across the country through Google Workspace for Education. Since the pandemic began, most user-related KPIs have grown 10x+ for the company, including traffic and use.

Even before COVID-19, education was moving toward more digitally driven classroom experiences. With increased uncertainty about when students will return to schools full-time across the U.S., the pressure to establish richer digital teaching opportunities has increased dramatically.

“There’s so many existing great learning management systems and collaboration tools for students and educators, but we are working to fill a gap in the ‘last mile’ and enable educators to see all of their students’ work at scale,” says Andrew.

Classkick enables real-time and on-demand teaching while giving educators the power to help one student at a time without losing sight of other students. This fosters an environment for consistent, real-time interactions between educators, students, and even school districts.

Fostering real-time educational experiences

Classkick has long relied on Firebase Realtime Database to enable real-time interactions between educators and students regardless of location. Firebase provides zero latency in the product and allows for a distance learning experience similar to in-person classrooms. Google for Education integrations including Google Sign-In, Google Classroom API for rostering, and Share to Google Classroom provides a frictionless experience to users.

“A lot of educators who start using Classkick think it’s magic. The student writes on a screen, and the teacher sees all students’ work on her own screen as if everyone is in the same room together,” says Andrew. “The educators then talk directly to the student or write them a note, as if they’re writing on the same board in a classroom.”

A former teacher, Andrew is familiar with the challenges educators face when trying to build relationships with their students and learning how to encourage them. Classkick offers consistency for educators to help ensure students continually get the support they need, whether they are instructing in classrooms or remotely.

In addition, Classkick relies on Google Workspace solutions like Google Meet for seamless communication between the company and educators, allowing outstanding customer experience issues to be addressed immediately.

“Google Cloud enables our core value to address real problems in education,” says Andrew. “More than half of our employees are former educators, so we have a deep understanding of the challenges facing educators, students, parents, and administrators. Google Workspace helps us maintain real-time relationships with our customers.”

Providing equitable access to educational advocates

Like many other education technology companies, Classkick works to make its technologies as accessible as possible to improve access to everyone and provide robust learning experiences to every student.

“We believe it’s important that education technology decreases—not increases—the equity gap,” says Andrew. “Since Chromebooks are the most prevalent devices in classrooms today, we moved toward the web and made our solutions accessible on Chromebooks.”

Chromebooks and Chrome browsers provide the necessary tools to put Classkick and other technologies into the hands of students and educators across the U.S.

“Our strategy is to connect every student with their educational advocates. We accomplish this by providing frictionless experiences that keep students and educators in sync throughout the learning process,” says Andrew. “Our platform also helps to keep other stakeholders like parents and administrators, as well as peers, connected every step of the way.”

Moving to a digital classroom

Classkick uses Google Cloud’s operations suite that enables cloud infrastructure monitoring to analyze its use of technologies and reduce spending. This usage-monitoring approach enabled Classkick to make its services available to a larger audience when the pandemic closed schools.

Even when the pandemic ends, Classkick plans to continue growing its user base and build solutions that support students both inside the classroom and on-demand. Classkick’s existing customer relationships will be the key to informing these future developments and product directions.

“Educators across the U.S. have done a remarkable job of minimizing disruption to learning in these unprecedented times,” says Andrew. “We want to help them fulfill their teaching goals both during and after the pandemic. Teachers tell us Classkick is indispensable to their in-class and remote workflows in reaching students. We believe if we continue listening to their needs and improving the platform, we will achieve our vision that every student is happy and successful in their learning."