Have you heard of Kahoot?!

Hi there, friends!! 

It's Mollie! Have you heard about this new thing called a Kahoot? I don't know if I'm just behind on the times, but I am in love with this awesome technological tool!

Kahoot is is a game-based classroom response system that allows schools, universities, and businesses to interact through quizzes, surveys, and discussions. This tool allows for the audience to answer questions in a trivia-like format WITHOUT any type of clicker system. The benefits of Kahoot are endless. Students are engaged by playing a game and receiving feedback instantaneously. They are interacting with the content in which they are learning by thinking about the topics they are studying. There is a sense of accountability that is created as each player answers the questions individually for recorded results. Using this free website is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. After a little bit of fiddling around, I was able to get a Kahoot up and running in no time. And the website is very informational! (Here is the website... https://getkahoot.com/) There is no login required for any student, but they would need some sort of technology such as a laptop, netbook, smartphone, iPad, chromebook, P.C., etc. to input the game code and choose their answers (see screenshot above). The interface is very easy for students to understand because it uses shapes and colors to indicate the answer choices. At the end of the Kahoot, there are many possibilities for the teacher to analyze the data they have received from the game. Kahoot also has it’s own blog where they give tips, run contests, share success stories, etc. 

I have only touched the surface with the capabilities of Kahoot! but so far it has been a fantastic resource for my classroom. I dove right in and created a Kahoot! based on our Word Study unit that we were working on at the time (see screenshot above below). I created the Kahoot like a practice quiz before their end of the month assessment. My students absolutely LOVED it! They were literally jumping out of their seats. In fact, at one point I had to calm them down because they were so engaged. They each had a netbook to respond to the Kahoot with (it would be much easier if they all had a smartphone). They easily went to the website to sign into the game. They really enjoyed creating the nickname that would show up on the board as they joined the game. Even more so, they enjoyed seeing their nickname pop up after each question if they were on the points leaderboard. I was a bit worried about whether the students that were not receiving high scores would be shown, but they were not. When the Kahoot was over, they all celebrated and congratulated the winner and I could look back and see who knew what for the quiz! I cannot wait to use more of Kahoot! in the future.