Yesterday I announced that we were launching a program to help schools move to a virtual learning setup using our Showbie and Socrative apps.
In this message, I promised to give Showbie and Socrative free to Schools through the end of July 2020. I intended to offer our apps to all interested schools in order to help everyone get through the most critical phase of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Earlier today, many of our customers began formally learning from home, relying on our systems to form their virtual classroom.
Within minutes of the start of school, hundreds of thousands of students and teachers flooded into Showbie to begin their distance learning activities. Unfortunately, the surge of traffic completely overwhelmed our systems and took them down. Quite frankly, we have never seen this level of synchronous load before. While Showbie has suffered small outages from time to time in the past, this event was unprecedented.
When we made our offer yesterday, we did so with the sincere intent to help the global education community in a time of great need. However, after today’s events, we realize we cannot do so by offering unlimited access to our platform. Instead, we must work to ensure Showbie and Socrative are stable and reliable for our customers. It is imperative that when they return to online learning next week, the apps are responsive and enable learning to happen.
Therefore, with a heavy heart, I have decided that what is best for our customers, and for the sustainability of our company through this period, is for us to step back from the promise we made yesterday. We will be unable to provide all schools with unlimited Showbie Pro and Socrative Pro for free until the end of July. I apologize for making an offer we can’t fulfill and for getting so many people’s hopes up that we would be able to help them through a time of crisis.
The More Prudent Offer We Should Have Made
Schools
We are pleased to provide existing and new school customers with an additional five free teacher licenses to Showbie Pro and Socrative Pro through the end of July.
Districts
Existing and new Districts/multi-school entities may request an additional 25 free teacher pro seats per product.
Please complete this form if you are a school or district administrator and we’ll supply you with your extra licenses. 😀
If you have already contacted us to take advantage of the earlier offer, we will be in touch with you next week to follow up on either of the above options.
I hope you can accept my sincere apologies. I know you are in a very stressful place and we are all trying our best to help each other through this challenge. I hope that over the coming days, weeks, and months the Showbie team and I can work to regain your trust.
Sincerely,
Colin Bramm
CEO & Co-Founder
Showbie Inc.
In light of the need for schools to consider distance learning in response to the Coronavirus threat, we are offering our applications to support continued education in your community.
For our Showbie Pro and Socrative Pro school and district customers:
We are providing free additional licenses to cover all your staff and students on Showbie Pro and Socrative Pro through July 31, 2020.For schools and districts that are not currently our customers:
We are providing free access to Showbie Pro and Socrative Pro for all your teachers and students through July 31, 2020.To take advantage of this opportunity, please have your school or district administrator in charge of your COVID-19 response plan, complete this application form. Our team will get back to you within one business day with setup instructions and next steps.
Showbie and Socrative form the essential tools to manage a distance learning classroom. Both applications are available cross-platform and are useful on home computers, tablets, iPads, or mobile phones.
Showbie is a real-time application for communication and feedback with key features to support distance learning, including:
- Communication and chat
- Parent access
- Staff curriculum development and co-teaching
- School oversight
- Assignment/curriculum distribution
- Verbal feedback through voice notes (works cross-platform)
Socrative enables distance learning through formative and summative assessment:
- Deliver self paced, practice, check for understanding assessments
- Unit testing and exams
- Asynchronous and synchronous room modes
- Socrative integrates with Showbie
We have set up distance learning resources on our product support sites to help guide you through the process of using Showbie & Socrative to support your distance learning response plan:
We’re here to help you during this challenging time! If you have any questions, please contact us, and we’ll respond as soon as possible.
Please stay safe and healthy,
Your Showbie & Socrative team
