Baamboozle Review

Baamboozle is a gamified learning solution for classrooms.

Geared for educators teaching young kids, Baamboozle is an excellent way to increase engagement in the classroom and make your lessons more exciting.

With a teacher base of over a million, you might be wondering what makes it so popular. Today, I will be reviewing Baamboozle and telling you all you need to know about using the platform in your classes.

Let’s get into it.

Baamboozle Overview

Baamboozle lets teachers use games as a way to educate children. Whether you teach math, vocabulary, or another subject, there are tons of games on Baamboozle that you can use to make your classes more exciting.

Gamified learning has many benefits, especially for younger children. It makes classes less boring and makes learning fun, motivating kids to pay attention in class.

If the classes are fun, the children will also look forward to going to school and learning new things every day.

Baamboozle has a limited free plan. We will be exploring both the free and paid versions of Baamboozle , but let’s go over some key features first.

Key Features of Baamboozle

Display Games on a Single Screen

One way that Baamboozle stands out from many other gamified learning platforms is that it allows you to display games on a single screen to the entire class.

Many other platforms require each student to have their own screen. Many schools hand out Chromebooks, tablets, or other affordable devices for this reason, with which students can connect to a game via a special code.

However, with Baamboozle, only the teacher needs a screen. It should be large enough for the entire class to see, obviously, but using a projector can help.

Play With a Class PIN

You can also allow students to play online from their own screens with a class PIN. Set up a class PIN for your game and then provide your students with this pin.

Students do not need an account to play a game. They also don’t need to provide their names or other details, like an email address, which would make things unnecessarily complicated for young children.

Instead, all they need is a simple PIN to connect to the game.

Wide Variety of Games

Baamboozle relies heavily on games created by teachers. That doesn’t mean you have to create your own game, although you certainly can.

There is a massive library of games already created by other teachers. You can search this library and find pretty much any game that meets your needs.

For example, the “How Do You Spell That?” displays an image and requires students to spell it out. It’s a simple game for learning how to spell correctly.

Meanwhile, for history teachers, there are games such as “Women in Arts, Guess Who?” Students have to guess who the displayed woman artist is.

“Which One Doesn’t Belong?” is an “odd one out” game for young children. Children have to categorize images and decide which image doesn’t fit in the same category as the others.

To better find games that meet your needs, you can use the advanced search filters. You can search for games by language, popularity, and even by how many questions the game has.

If you are bored with the games you have been playing, you can search for newly added games. Since teachers can add their own games to the library, new games are available all the time.

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There are also game collections, such as the “Math & Word Problems” collection. These collections of games make it easy to plan a curriculum for the week or month, depending on which subject you are teaching.

In-Game Settings and Options

When you create a game, you can choose from several settings and options. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can customize your game, because what works for some students might not work for others.

First of all, you can choose how many teams to divide your students into. Depending on the game, you can have up to eight teams.

There are three game modes to choose from:

• Quiz: This game mode consists of questions only. It’s a great way to quiz your students on a subject.
• Classic: The Classic game mode adds power-ups in addition to quiz questions. This makes things a bit more fun and exciting for students.
• Classic Jr: This is a twist on the Classic game mode for younger students, as it makes it easier to get power ups.

There are many power ups available. They include:

• Star: Earn double points with this power-up.
• Rocket: The Rocket power-up takes the player to the first place.
• Banana: The banana, on the other hand, pushes the player to the last place.
• Eraser: This power-up resets your score.
• Virus: This power-up resets everyone’s score, leveling the playing field.
• Heart: This power-up causes the other team to win up to 25 points.
• Shark: The Shark power-up, on the other hand, causes the other team to lose up to 25 points.

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You can always toggle individual power-ups on and off.

Some available game settings include:

• Switch between a number-based and an emoji-based grid when displaying hidden cards.
• Play games with or without scores. Playing without scores might make it less intimidating for students who might otherwise feel bad if they get a lower score than others.
• Add a timer for questions so that students only have a certain number of seconds to answer.
• Select whether students should lose points for wrong answers. Another option is to have wrong answers completely reset the score. Again, you might want to take a “there are no wrong answers approach” so students don’t feel demotivated.
• Shuffle the questions so that there is no set order.

Once you start the game, you can give each team a personalized name. You can also turn the audio off; by default, the game will provide sound effects for right and wrong answers.

Finally, you can choose a special theme for your game. There are many themes available, and while most are best suited for vocabulary games, there are some for other games too, such as articulation.

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Pricing

Baamboozle does have a free option, but it only lets you play the game of the day and some other games that are sometimes made available to free users.

If you want to access the full range of games, you need to upgrade to the premium plan, called Baamboozle+.

Fortunately, it’s pretty affordable, costing only $7.99/month. If you pay yearly, it is $59.88/year, which comes out to just $4.99/month.

Baamboozle does offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked. If you try Baamboozle only to find out that it’s just not for you, you can always ask for a full refund.

Also, you can cancel your subscription and still keep the games you created, as well as your folders. They won’t get deleted, so you can always come back and renew your subscription at any time.

If you are paying monthly, for example, you might cancel your subscription for the summer months, when there is no school.

As always, check the pricing page for updated pricing information.

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Conclusion

Baamboozle is a great gamified learning platform for teachers seeking to boost engagement in the classroom. There are endless games to choose from on any subject, especially when it comes to conversation starters or word/vocabulary games.

The games are a bit simple, but that’s what works best for young students. By dividing your students into teams and adding gamified learning elements such as scores and power-ups, you can make your students look forward to school each day.

If you want to try it out, sign up for the free plan and play the game of the day for a few days. Once you have gotten a feel for the platform, you can sign up for the premium plan.

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