Whiteboard is another new feature that helps make Grockit a great learning environment. Imagine a chalkboard in your web browser! Students can draw images and write out equations together in the same space. For math questions, there are pre-set geometric shapes, coordinate grids and coloring tools to easily map out graphical solutions. For English questions, students may edit sentences by copy-pasting text from the question into the whiteboard and applying any mark-up they like.

Grockit Instuctors will enjoy all the same tools for their lessons. Using Whiteboard in combination with our new Audio feature will allow students to visualize what the teacher is actually talking about. Additionally, instructors will have the ability to dictate which students can “come to the board” to work on a particular problem. Very cool!

Here is a screenshot using Whiteboard to draw a diagram to help solve an angles problem:

I’m happy to announce a recent improvement to a popular Grockit feature: In solo practice games, the questions that you see are selected based on your recent past performance. Grockit’s tailored Challenges — short assessment-oriented games that are unlocked over time — have a been popular way for students to benchmark their performance and get feedback on where they stand. We’ve now incorporated the core algorithm used to create Challenges into all solo practice games. Questions posed during these games are now selected in a way that takes into account both what you have seen in the past and how you’ve been doing on recent questions. We know that different students are stronger in different parts of a test, so you may notice that you’re seeing harder questions in one section than in another. You’ll find that the personalized question loader takes these variations into account.

As always, we’d love to hear your feedback. Please feel free to leave a send us a email or leave a comment below.

We’re really excited to introduce the first batch of Google related code and features we are rolling into Grockit’s collaborative learning communities. To start, we’ve incorporated Google’s collaborative document writing platform Etherpad into our lessons and courses. This adds a really useful component to Grockit’s collaborative study platform and let’s teachers dig into essays, writing assignments, personal essays for applications, and class notes. It’s awesome and we think you’re going to love it! We call it Noteshare in Grockit. Here is what our Academic Director Jake Becker has to say about it.

“Imagine the possibilities with Grockit’s new Noteshare feature…students can collaborate on writing samples, revise business school applications, practice timed essay prompts, and much more. The applications for students to perfect their writing with expert instructors are endless. Connecting instructors and students around the globe, our Noteshare feature enables people to work together in realtime to review and edit any writing sample. Combined with Grockit’s existing realtime audio capabilities, Noteshare’s integration into Grockit’s lessons has created one of the web’s most versatile tools in online writing instruction.

With Noteshare, students and instructors can type synchronously in the writing sample as they edit the document together. Each user’s text is highlighted in a different color. These color assignments are referenced next to the user’s avatar in the top right of the screen.

Noteshare is another feature that wonderfully leverages Grockit’s wide network of students and experts to collaborate in a creative and unique learning environment. Not only will students be able to refine their language skills in realtime, but they will be able to upload virtually any sample to work on live with a great instructor or their peers. Imagine the possibilities!”

Etherpad live in Grockit

We’re excited to show off our new profile pages. Check out the screenshot below. You’ll notice styling changes were made to bring the look and feel of profiles in line with other recent updates to Grockit. We love the new look. In addition, the performance analytics stand out more. Said Grockit CEO Farbood Nivi, “…these new profile pages really blow up your analytics and make them more prominent.” We hope your test scores blow up equally!

We’ve made it a little easier to learn about and invite friends to upcoming practice sessions and lessons by creating info pages for both. The pages are designed to provide the information users care most about. Students are also able to rsvp for a game directly from these pages or join one already in progress. For a closer look checkout the screenshots below.

Practice Session Info Page:

All the relevant information that helps a student decide which sessions to join including subject, difficultly level, skills covered, and people attending is provided on the practice session info page. You will also notice new share links to Facebook and Twitter which makes it very easy for you to invite friends to practice with you in Grockit. We think this is pretty cool because Grockit is a collaborative learning environment, and one of the best ways to learn is with your friends.

Lesson Info Page:

The lesson info page displays all the information the practice session info page does. In addition, it provides details on the instructor who is teaching the lesson. This helps students decide if the particular lesson is the best for him or her.

This week we made a couple changes to the user interface that improve the experience for users in Grockit. We updated how game messages are displayed and created a new interface for question reviews. Below is a quick look at both. As always, we look forward to your feedback.

Game Messages

We’ve changed how you receive messages from inside the Grockit game. Messages are now separated between those coming from Grockit and those from game discussion. This makes it easier to follow the discussion and chat with other students and instructors about how to solve the question. It’s also a cleaner way for students to keep track of the points and badges earned for their achievements.

Question Reviews

For each question the difficultly level and skill tags associated with it are now displayed. This is useful info for students as they track their progress in Grockit. Additionally, the questions in the review session are listed vertically on the page. This is a more user-friendly way to flip through them and jump to specific questions of interest.