Top 10 Mission.io Upgrades for 2025-2026

The 2025-2026 school year is underway! Our team here at Mission.io could not be more excited for another year of Missions, collaboration, creativity, and student growth.

To make sure you and your students are getting the most out of your Mission.io experience, we have a couple of upgrades that we are excited to share with you. These upgrades come from your feedback, emails, and our own observations — keep it all coming! We love to get your feedback and hear all your ideas on how to make Missions more effective and engaging for students. 

Today, we’ll focus on our top 10 upgrades that we’re most excited about, but these aren’t all of them. We’re highlighting these 10 to ensure that you take full advantage of our features so you and your students can get the most out of each Mission. Keep an eye out for continued upgrades and changes, and let us know what else you would like to see from us.

Watch a video about our Top 10 Mission.io Upgrades for 2025-2026 here.  

1. Dashboard Facelift

We’ve redesigned our thumbnails to show standards, subjects, and mission types more clearly. This will help you find Missions easier and know which ones will be best for your classroom. This facelift also includes three new icons to highlight our three types of Missions: decision Missions, design Missions, and writing Missions. 

2. Mission Walkthroughs

We want every Mission to have clear benefits and be accessible for teachers and students. Going forward, every Mission will have a built-in walk-through video to help you be prepared. The walkthrough will cover what the students will be doing, what success and failure look like, and how teachers can support students during that particular Mission. The videos will also have a chapters feature so that you can jump to the parts that are most relevant to you.

With this feature, we’re excited to help you feel as prepared as possible going into each Mission so you and students get the most out of it as possible. 

3. Pre-Launch Orientation

This new feature was inspired by you, the teachers who were taking initiative and doing this in your own classrooms. The purpose of this is to introduce Mission.io and elevate understanding. To create Mission-driven classrooms, our pre-launch orientation (also find a Kindergarten to third grade how-to video here and a fourth grade and up how-to video here) will walk you through the ins and outs of a Mission and all the features you need to succeed.

There are three orientation slidedecks, built for kindergarten through third grade, fourth grade and up, and faculty. 

4. Accessibility Features Revamped and Expanded 

Our accessibility features are new and improved so that Missions can reach every student. There are now two ways to edit accessibility features. On the class list, there will be an “edit” option next to each student’s name. If you forget to edit this beforehand, don’t worry — you can edit accessibility features during the Mission for individual students as well.

Some of our revamped accessibility features include language translation (we’ve added new languages but are always looking for more, so send us your requests), a text-to-speech option, and captions on student screens. Once these accessibility features are added for a student, they’ll be set for every Mission, so no need to change them every single time. 

5. Captions

Speaking of captions, we are now making captions available for all students. When a character is speaking or giving instructions, students will see captions on their individual devices. They will now also be able to access a caption history so they can go back and review any important information they missed. 

Students will also easily be able to translate captions into their own language. Supporting English language learners is a top priority for us, and we’re excited to make Mission.io accessible to them and support their collaborative efforts. 

6. Launch a Mission with No Class

Do you have mixed classes? Changing rosters? Or simply no time to create a class before a Mission? This update is made with you and other specialty teachers in mind.

With the new quick launch feature, you can quickly launch a Mission without the hassle of a roster. Students will then add their own names and create a class. Once the Mission is over, you can save the class for future use, or delete it with no worries. 

7. Move Students Around in the Lobby

In the student lobby, reorganizing and balancing teams is now easier and quicker. With this feature, you can balance out teams if students are absent. Additionally, you can break up teams if there are some students who shouldn’t work together. You know the ones.

8. Annotation Station

With our new annotation features, students can have better access to key information throughout an entire Mission. Students  will sometimes be prompted to  highlight or underline key details of a text. When they underline it, that becomes important data they can have access to later in the Mission.

This feature is part of our push to integrate  literacy standards into our Missions. Let us know how this works for your students and what successes you see from it.

9. Analytics Page Facelift

We always want Mission.io to be more than just game time for students. We’re constantly measuring growth and essential skills, and now we’ve made that easier for teachers to see, too.

On the updated analytics page, you can now better differentiate between subject mastery and other skills (such as collaboration or initiative). You will be able to see the class as a whole and how many students are proficient in a given area for that Mission, as well as how individual students performed on different standards and skills. 

With this new feature, teachers will have better insights into what areas need more focus for the entire class. 

10. New Missions

We’re constantly updating our Mission Library with new and exciting Missions. This school year, we have some of our favorite ones yet. 

There are lots of new Missions for fifth grade students, but they’re also open to everyone. In particular, we have a lot of exciting Missions on social studies, writing, and scientific arguments. Try these out and let us know what you think, so we can start developing these Missions for other grades.

We’ve also edited our Station Training Mission for K-3. For 4th grade and up, we’ve completely rebuilt the Station Training Mission. For 4th grade and up, there’s also a new Intro Mission. This Intro Mission is a multipath Mission with different endings, so students can have a new experience every time. 

Mission.io is constantly improving and upgrading. We’re excited for you and your students to embark on so many new adventures this year. Contact us with any and all feedback on these changes and improvements you want to see in the future.