Kahoot It!

I'm not normally one for flash and jazz in an app or website, but I'll make an exception for Kahoot! 

I was introduced to this during our FIU summer sessions as a way to engage students, get them to collaborate, and review information at the same time. If you're familiar with pub trivia, you're familar with the format of Kahoot! games. In a nutshell, you (the teacher) create a multiple choice quiz, and when you play with a class, they answer timed questions, the faster they answer correctly, the more points they get, and the leaderboard updates with standings after each question. The only problem I noticed when playing with my homeroom was that they got a little overly competitive and one team got really upset when they weren't in the top 5 anymore! But I guess that's a good problem to have, when they're so into an activity that they want to be successful that badly... right?!

Let me walk you through how to set up and play a Kahoot! quiz:

1. Visit getkahoot.com to set up your free account.

2. Play the intro Kahoot! to get a feel for how it works! You can do this with colleagues, with one of them acting as the teacher, or you can toggle between tabs in your browser - one of them being the teacher dashboard and one being the student screen. But this can be confusing. So use it as an excuse to get together with your colleagues and try it out together!

3. When you're ready to create your own Kahoot!, click on that button and set up your preferences for this quiz.

You will see there's the question text box, the optional image, indicator for whether its a question for points and a drop down box for timed questions (once all students answer, though, it does move on automatically.) You will then type  in our four multiple-choice answers and click the button below to change the right answer to "Correct."* I haven't yet figured out how to make it shuffle the answers each time, but maybe that's coming down the road.

*You can select more than one answer to be correct.

4. When your quiz is finished, you'll be able to access it by clicking on "Me" in the top left corner of your screen.  When you're ready to play, click the "Play" button to launch the quiz in your classroom.

5. Project the Game Pin screen and instruct students to join with the game pin. Or, as our instructor did in the summer FIU session, just project it and tell the kids to join the game. Let them figure it out and develop their problem-solving skills!

As I did it in my FIU session and later with my homeroom, this is a great format in which to have students pair up and collaborate on the quiz together using 1 device between the two of them. 

Each team will select a team nickname...

...which will then pop up on the Game Pin screen. Once all teams are ready, click "Start Now" and get ready, because it'll get rolling pretty quickly.

6. Each question will show on the screen for a few seconds before the choices even pop up. Once they do, the correct answer will have a corresponding shape which the students will use to make their choice.

Teacher/Projected Screen

Student Answer Screen

7. Once all groups have answered or the time is up, whichever comes first, the correct answer will be revealed along with how many teams selected which answer. (Formative assessment, anyone?!)

8. When the quiz is all over, you can crown the winning team! It will even give you options for exporting the quiz results and information. 

Get with some colleagues, try it out, and have some fun!

And for those of you from PJHS, check out the Student Handbook Kahoot! I put together for my homeroom. And you can edit it to suit your own group of students.

Happy Kahoot-ing!