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!