Kahoot

Gaming is fun and learning is useful, but how can we combine them. The answer might be Kahoot, a social game where you combine knowledge with smartphones and competition.

I was introduced to Kahoot when attending an ict-seminar half a year ago. More than 200 people were crammed together in an auditorium at NTNU in Trondheim. It was not difficult to understand I was not sitting together with a collection of athletes. Teachers who looked they had swallowed footballs instead of playing with them, square eyed ict-administrators, bossy dressed headmasters and some cavemen that I don’t know much about except that I can tell from the pale green face colour, they hadn’t seen the sun the last couple of years.

Well, enough about that, every one of us were trying to answer the instructor’s questions as quick as possible, and the way to do so was to push either the red, blue, yellow or the green button on the smartphone. After we had answered one question the top score was showed on the screen in the front of the classroom, which of course trigged our competitive instinct…on the next question I want to do better, I want to enter the top score list!!!

Can “gameshows” or a quiz turn out to be educational? It is definitely fun, but is it more than only fun? Well, the answers will of course depend on what kind of questions you put into it, and what kind of goals and audience you have. You cannot put open questions that require long answers into Kahoot, this is a tool where you have to be short and concise. However, if you want some answers about facts like numbers, names, places, etc., this quiz tool fits perfect. As a teacher, you therefore have to accept the limits of this tool, but you should also know what it does better than most teachers and schoolbooks – a motivator for the students to find the answers, which means the students is led into a learning process, some of them without knowing.

In this video you can watch 5th graders use Kahoot

I am convinced you can use it in any subject at school. Maybe you want to use it as a teaser when you introduce a new topic in geography. Testing what the students have learned from their homework in maths, or your latest lecture in music, works perfect with Kahoot. You can also let your students make their own questions and create a Kahoot they can use in class, asking questions and teaching others is often the best way of learning.

As you probably understand from what I have written, I am a Kahoot fan, and if you are a teacher or a student, and have not tried it yet, you really should hurry up and enter this webpage where you can make your own Kahoot games: https://getkahoot.com/

Have fun and end up smart!

Can it be fun to learn about Peer Gynt?

My blog is called “Learning is Fun” and in a previous blog post I jot down some thoughts about this. My conclusion, if I had any, was that you are in a learning process almost all the time, maybe except when you’re asleep. You don’t only learn things at school, but also among friends, from your parents, on Internet or from books. But often, the best way to learn new stuff is to do what you’re going to learn, not just read about it. Are you going to be a plumber, well then you have to do some plumbing, not only read about tubes and hoses in a plumber book. If you want to become a drummer you have to practice on the drum set, you can’t learn it only from reading.  But theory is also important, a plumber have to know what kind of tubes he has to use in different situations, if he uses wrong dimensions, water leaks and expensive damages might be the result.

In school it’s easier to work with practical activities in some subjects than others. Music, arts and crafts and PE are subjects where we mostly do things instead of read about them. But it is more challenging to find good practical activities in English, Norwegian, religion and social studies. I really want tips about how we can make these lessons more fun and interesting while you are learning at least as much as you do today.

Here is a video from a lesson in Norwegian (I can’t guarantee you that our school has economy to hire all these people….sorry..)

Netiquette

After today’s brainstorm in class about netiquette, lists of guidelines or rules popped up. Here is a summary.

• Don’t “touch” things you don’t know what is – use safe websites.
• Be critical to information you find on the Internet - use trusted sources.
• Don’t give personal information to strangers.
• Don’t bully online….or anywhere else.
• Be positive when you give comments to other people, or when you write about someone else.
• Use “free to copy” (Creative Commons license) pictures, texts or music, or ask the owners first, when you want to post something on your website or blog.
• Don’t be a hacker or create viruses to hurt other people
• Think twice about what you’re going to post on Internet. Don’t post stuff you might regret.
• If you’re going to meet someone you have only met on Internet, you should bring someone with you.
• Be careful with clicking on ads, they might be viruses or you might even be hacked.

A lot of good advices, don’t you think?

What if learning isn't fun?

My blog is called “Learning is fun”, but what if I’m wrong. Maybe learning can’t be fun. I think everyone agree with me when I say that you have to learn to read, write and calculate to live a normal life in our society. It also might be necessary to have some particular education to get a job. But is it fun to learn or is it just some boring stuff you just have to go through?

Well, first I have to figure out what learning is. Is it only at school you learn stuff, or do you also learn different things in your spare time when you surf on Internet, when you visit new places in your holiday, when you play the guitar or talk to your old grandfather? I think that everything you experience might turn into new knowledge, and suddenly you have learned something new without thinking about it. Isn’t that cool… learning without thinking about that you have to learned something?

I think that when you have new experiences, like repairing your bike that just broke down, talking English or even Spanish to the guy in the ice cream bar at the beach in Spain, you don’t think about learning. If you are very in to Volvo or BMW, and suddenly find an article on Internet about a brand new model that will be on the market soon, you have learned something new. If you like playing the guitar and manage to compose your own song, you have learned something new. I think that most of you agree with me when I say that these are not boring ways to learn, they even might be fun.

But what about school? Is everything you learn at school boring? If so, how can we turn the school into a more fun and interesting learning arena? I want comments!

Good advices

Useful advices from headmaster Hallgeir Gammelsæter when he opened the new academic year at Høgskolen i Molde August 20, 2014. This is an extract from the end of his welcome speech (rbnett.no)

Even though many people think so, and especially here in Norway, the welfare and knowledge will not come by itself. I have two important advices to the students, the first about organization. You will have much freedom; some of you will have days without lectures, so to organize your studies and spare time well will be crucial.

The second advice is about language and communication. This is a central point in today’s society, and to develop a good language it requires reading. You should prioritize books that take a long time to finish, and I’m not only talking about your school books.

Especially the last lines about reading are important, are universal and include every single human on earth. Without having good reading skills, you will have problems with acquire new knowledge, both at school, at work and in your private life. 

Irregular verbs rap

Memorizing page after page with lists of irregular verbs in three different forms feels like a nightmare to many pupils. I doubt most teachers are able to copy the guy in this video, but he has certainly found a fun way to keep his pupils' focus...enjoy :)

Why publish schoolwork in your blog?

After working as a teacher for several years, I think I know what mostly happens to a text produced by a student or pupil.

It begins with thinking, brainstorming, writing keywords, making a structure, and at last, writing the complete text. Several hours of hard work! Some days later, or maybe a couple of weeks, the student receives an evaluated assignment back. But what does mostly happen with the text after this moment? A brief glance at the teacher’s comment, while some more attention is payd to the grade before the text ends its life in the school’s trashcan.

Isn’t several hours’ hard work at the computer worth more than this? Don’t these texts deserve to live longer? And the answer is of course yes, the texts indeed deserve a longer life, and one way to postpone death is to use a blog.

Why blog?

Blogging might sound a bit scary. Publish texts on Internet so that everyone from all corners around the world is able to read them. Why can’t I just save them on my computer? Or in the school’s LMS? 

Feedback is a keyword. A text won’t have much value to anyone in a trashcan. Stored and locked up in a computer or a restricted area on Internet, it isn’t worth very much more either. The value comes with readers. When you let other people read your text where they give comments and feedback on what you have written, your text will suddenly live a life, maybe a bit out of your control, but it shows that it has value to more people than just you and your teacher.

Hopefully you will enjoy writing texts even more after publishing them in your blog. But as a blogger you also have a responsibility. If you wish positive and nice comments on your blog, you have to give such comments to other bloggers as well. And remember, no text is too small or too big to be published, and most topics are acceptable.

Have fun J