Earlier this year in February we were informed by HMH that as part of their purchase of the gamification learning management system (LMS), Classcraft, they were taking it down completely by June 30. To those of us who have been using Classcraft that announcement was a crushing blow. I wrote about it here. For the first time in the past seven years I am going to have to gamify my classroom without the tool that seven years worth of students loved. All of my students for the past seven years used Classcraft in one way or another every single day of school, some for two years, and they never tired of it. Nothing out there even comes close to what Classcraft did.
My school was in session until June 28 so I worked at copying and pasting as many of my assignments as I could from Classcraft to Google Docs. On Google Docs, those assignments are just words. On Classcraft they were part of quests and they unlocked only as students progressed whether they progressed quickly or slowly. That is the feature I will miss the most. June 30 came and went and we noticed that the site was still up! I kept training one of my test character’s pet something that even the teacher can’t rush! So in a sense, I have been able to keep “playing” Classcraft even though gamification isn’t about “playing” an actual game but making the mundane more game-like. I maxed out all three characters and even though the top level is 40 where all the powers and pets are available kids can keep getting XP until level 99. Here are a Mage, Guardian, and Healer at level 99 with their level 40 gear and their level 40 pets:
I copied as many assignments as I could and got almost all the ones from this year’s quests, seen below from a student’s perspective:
I had ready-to-go quests in case I needed them. The grayed out quests below were only visible to me. I could make them viewable and available to students anytime:
But after seven years I had amassed and prepped way more than those above including quests that I copied from the Classcraft website where teachers shared quests they created for their classes. I had these saved in my demo class:
I recently got an email from someone who read one of my old Classcraft blog posts asking about something that could replace it. Here are my responses to our email conversation so far:
Those of us who have been using Classcraft are in search of something, anything, that can replace Classcraft. I’ve been using it for the past seven years and can’t imagine what my classes are going to be like in the fall without it. My students were shocked that it’s being shut down.
Short answer is that there is absolutely nothing that does what Classcraft did. So there is a need for a similar gamified LMS. A petition to keep Classcraft going has 841 signatures but money is stronger than that so that didn’t work.
I subscribed to EMC2 because they have some gamification resources including a fully built and customizable Google Sheet template to keep track of students, quests, XP, etc. More work for me but at least we can keep our gamified theme going.
I’m also considering Class Bank as a way to have kids track money instead of points. I keep going back and forth on that one so I just don’t know. What is stopping me from committing is all the work that will need to go into implementing it.
I have also used a unit from the Gamification Schoolhouse so that is a fun option, too, and it’s something we can replicate.
Finally, one teacher said she just used Wix to create a website with locked pages to create the quest-like feature that I will miss the most from Classcraft. Here’s her website game.
It is so sad that they had something that nothing even comes close to and HMH is just closing it down for profit. Such a loss and now so much more work for those of us who’ve been using it not to mention that future kids won’t even get to experience it.
As for community, those of us who are still on the Classcraft Facebook group have been sharing ideas and commiserating.
This one guy in the Facebook group is looking into creating a Classcraft alternative, he is calling it Maracraft! Here’s the invite link to the Maracraft Discord group.
End email conversation (for now).
There are other ideas and options floating out there on the old Classcraft Discord and the Facebook page but none of them usable alone. Classcraft did so many things that only several tools could even come close to helping us provide some of the experiences. Ugh, what a shame and what a loss.
I have to admit that I was secretly hoping that since Classcraft was still up and running that they maybe would just leave it. Teachers can’t create new accounts, like they said, but I managed to create a new student account and it worked! And then yesterday, Sunday, July 20, 2024, I checked on Classcraft from my test student account and my teacher account and saw this:
It’s finally down. And isn’t that a pretty page – NOT.
Now when I try to go to classcraft.com or app.classcraft.com I get re-routed to hmhco.com/programs/classcraft. They did it. They really did it.
HMH’s new Classcraft will be bereft of all its gamification tools, all the things that make it an exceptional tool and the best one I’ve ever used. No more character avatars with different faces and the ability to change gear so that no two characters need ever look alike. No more powers that students can use in class during class including collaborative powers. No more random events to start every class with our favorite Rider of Vay. No more quests and quest-based learning or at least not the way it used to be with beautiful maps. No more pets. No more gold or XP. No more levels or leveling up. And that’s not even everything that Classcraft provided! They will take most if not all of those things away and make it more of an LMS than a game with a rich story. Oh yeah, they had a complete story line about the land of Classcraft.
