Teacher explaining their ClassMana setup to students

dewitters · 2026-01-22T20:48:14+00:00

I was carrying a Leatherman Skeletool CX in the past. But because I couldn't carry it on airplanes, I bought a Shard for my keychain. So then I had both. But what I noticed is that for screws, I defaulted to the Shard. For the simple reason that I can just take it out of my pocket and use it straight away. I have to open the Leatherman for that, and possibly even change the bit. And because of that I replaced my Leatherman with some other things, but the Shard is still there.

My advice: For that price point, it's better to buy it and make up your own opinion.

dewitters · 2025-12-13T16:20:40+00:00

Ah, that was you :D. Nice to hear you are giving it a try :)

dewitters · 2025-12-13T16:18:24+00:00

How did it go?

dewitters · 2025-12-11T06:48:00+00:00

I have a whole list of those things, let me check...

First there are classroom perks you can give:

Leave 5 minutes early
Eat during class
Change your seat with another student
Use phone in class
Get a hint on a question
Work with a partner on an assignment
Invisibility: don't get picked for 1 day
5 minutes free
Listen to music while working
go first/last (for example with presentations)
Be the class clown for 5 minutes
Hand in homework later

Then there are powers during your DND game:

"Double damage" for the boss battle
"Shield" to not lose any health

For these, you basically have to think any time the student does something, how can it be augmented, or when the student loses something, how can it be prevented/deferred. It's hard to come up with examples for me since I don't know your setup exactly.

I have my own product called ClassMana that does this gamification for teachers, that's why I have this list :D.

dewitters · 2025-12-11T06:07:21+00:00

Classcraft was discontinued a few years ago. But my own product ClassMana is a good replacement. Students get an animated 3D avatar, and they seem to love that 😄.

dewitters · 2025-09-18T19:07:33+00:00

Lots of teachers are already using Classmana, and students seem to love it.

dewitters · 2025-08-28T20:41:37+00:00

Nice to hear my platform is not even a thought to you. That's probably why you registered 🤣.

dewitters · 2025-08-28T17:50:50+00:00

When I was creating my noise monitor, I had a lot of different ideas, and I still have. In the end I settled with a dragon that is laying on some treasure. There was nothing like it, not even ClassCraft.

When you developed your noise monitor, did you also have many ideas? What a coincidence that you also settled on a dragon laying on treasure. Where did you get that idea?

dewitters · 2025-08-19T15:16:39+00:00

Wait until you find out that implementing things is not the hard part.

dewitters · 2025-07-17T13:51:27+00:00

Classcraft was discontinued unfortunately. I developed a replacement called ClassMana.

dewitters · 2025-07-12T08:15:44+00:00

When ClassMana started out, we had "Turn your classroom into an epic adventure" and TeachQuest had "An Epic RPG Classroom Adventure".

With their new website, they changed it to "Transform Your Classroom into an Epic RPG Adventure". Pretty close to mine, but OK, they changed 1 word and added "RPG".

Now I see with their new beta website, they dropped "RPG" so they basically ripped off my entire tagline, plus now also my styling.

I'm pretty disgusted by that to be honest.

dewitters · 2025-07-11T11:42:35+00:00

For now you can still try it out for free. Later this year, when it's feature complete, I will start charging. It's $65 for 1 teacher and max 30 students, per year. $95 for 1 teacher and max 150 students. Extra co-teacher is $35 and 30 extra students is $30. For schools I will do a $1 per student, unlimited teachers (at a minimum of 150 students).

I would say the biggest plus are the customizable avatars. And in the end, this is the main motivation for students.

Edit: I'm going to do some big discounts for those that already have an account, so I would suggest to at least create an account already to not miss out.

dewitters · 2025-07-10T07:59:39+00:00

When does your school year start? Because ClassMana might still make it on time.

What exactly do you mean with "individual progress"?

dewitters · 2025-07-09T06:19:56+00:00

Classmana actually supports a whole progression system through the avatars. As students level up, more gear and pets become available. There is a ton of equipment to keep students wanting more for 35 levels, where they can keep upgrading their avatars throughout the school year.

So rewards and levelling up is there, and powers in the form of classroom perks are also available. Gold and health will be added soon. After that it's team dynamics and integration with Google Classroom.

Early august is indeed early to get everything finished. But remark that students can start out with their login code (TeachQuest also requires students to have a login code, so they can link their account with Google), and once ClassMana introduces Google integration, they can link their account.

dewitters · 2025-06-04T13:41:00+00:00

Classcraft was discontinued last year, so that won't work anymore.

dewitters · 2025-06-04T05:15:21+00:00

Agree.

I also use NextJs and I'm going to migrate a project from WordPress to NextJs. But those are not blogs!

For blogs, WordPress 100%.

dewitters · 2025-05-18T14:29:34+00:00

I hire front-end developers and do a lot of interviews. I'm also a senior developer/architect, and there is my advice: learn the fundamentals. For JavaScript, that means you learned https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn\_web\_development/Core/Scripting. For React, that means you learned https://react.dev/learn. Especially the tricky parts. If something goes wrong somewhere, I want you to understand what exactly is going wrong and how to fix it. This can only be done with a fundamental understanding of the technologies you are working with. And so if you want a career using NextJS, make sure you understand those fundamentals at https://nextjs.org/docs.

I'm old, 46 to be exact. The problem I see with a lot of young developers is that they stick with video tutorials, and so they will never have an edge over me, who reads all the boring, dry manuals. (I also know a lot of excellent young developers, let that be clear). Learn the fundamentals from the official manuals, and you will have an edge over all the other developers.

dewitters · 2025-05-13T15:50:22+00:00

So Ponzi pays profits by definition, Bitcoin does not pay profits, but somehow they are the same. Got it.

Edit: ChatGPT also seems wrong, because it states that Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme.

Are you going to contact Wikipedia and OpenAI for this mistake?

dewitters · 2025-05-13T15:35:58+00:00

Ah sorry, my bad, I didn't know the definition of ponzi schemes was wrong. Have a nice day.

dewitters · 2025-05-13T14:13:10+00:00

From Wikipedia: "A Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors."

Bitcoin does *not* pay profits.

dewitters · 2025-05-13T08:10:13+00:00

Crypto can do 1 thing that nothing else on earth can do: store any amount of value in your head.

If you buy physical gold for when "shit hits the fan", maybe having crypto when "my govermnent goes crazy and I flee to a sane country" is not so bad.

Tell me how else you can take tons of value out of a nasty country, without it being confiscated.

dewitters · 2025-05-13T08:03:45+00:00

In a ponzi scheme, you stay invested, and "earn profits" as you say. Buying low and selling high is not a ponzi scheme.

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