Knoword on the Road

October was a whirlwind for Knoword! This month, we attended three different education conferences. While each one was awesome in its own way, they all gave us a chance to connect with teachers and gather feedback. Here’s a recap of our October conference marathon.

Schools of the Future

Our conference tour kicked off with a huge event in Honolulu, Hawaii: the Schools of the Future conference. This was the biggest conference I’ve ever attended!

It was a joy to talk to teachers from all over the Hawaiian islands at our booth. I even ran into some teachers attending from my neck of the woods in Canada! We gave away Knoword swag, including a brand new sticker design made specially for this conference featuring Cosmo the Fox wearing a lei:

One of the highlights was connecting with my friend, Ms. Espie, an incredible grade 7/8 teacher who has been using Knoword in her class for years. She’s contributed feedback and suggestions over those years and genuinely helped make Knoword what it is today.

I also presented a workshop to an audience of about 50 teachers. Together, we created packs, learned about the different ways to add words, and tested out progress tracking features by playing each others’ assignments.

Check out our latest Instagram reel recapping the event:

Play

Catalyst

After Hawaii, it was time to hit the road in British Columbia. First up was Catalyst, a conference for science teachers hosted at in Mission, BC. I presented the same workshop I gave at SOTF in the morning to kick off the conference. The feedback was super encouraging! One attendee told me:

Really appreciate what you brought to the conference. You started my morning perfectly and I’m so glad to have signed up for your session!

I couldn’t stick around for long, though, because I had to drive to the next town over, Chilliwack, for the second conference of the day.

myPITA

The myPITA Fall Conference is a biannual event for intermediate and middle-years teachers. Knoword had a booth in their exhibitor area where we talked to teachers, played some games, demoed features like pack generation and progress tracking, and gave away fun stickers and postcards. People loved it! The reception was great, and we’d love to be back for the spring conference in Whistler.

Clara and Lauren giving a demo at myPITA Fall Conference

Key takeaways

Attending these conferences wasn’t just about showing off Knoword; it was about listening. We identified three key takeaways that will shape our work going forward:

• Language representation is important

  Teachers need tools that easily support languages other than English, like French in BC or Japanese in Hawaii. Since teachers control the content, Knoword’s flexibility allows for packs with words and clues in any language configuration they choose. We demonstrated how to find packs authored in a specific language by using the language filter in search results, and how our AI can generate multilingual packs on demand.

• Student accounts are a pain

  Requiring student accounts is a massive barrier for teachers due to the work of managing logins, troubleshooting passwords, and concerns over student data privacy and compliance (especially regional data storage rules, like in BC). Knoword’s core value is not requiring students to sign in, immediately addressing these privacy and compliance concerns, and simplifying classroom management.

• Variety is the spice of life

  To keep students engaged, teachers constantly need variety in both the content (text, image, and audio clues) and the gameplay mode (classic, multiple choice, pairs). We plan to continue providing fresh game modes and printable exercises to ensure teachers have many ways to present information.

What’s next

October was a great month of conferences! Now, with all of the amazing feedback and ideas we’ve gathered, it’s time to go back to the lab and improve the website. Look out for us at more conferences in the new year. 👋

—Trevor from Knoword