From Rote Learning to Blended Gaming with @GetKahoot!

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From Rote Learning to Blended Gaming with @GetKahoot!

I first heard of Kahoot from @MmeM27 who teaches French at our school. She was using it to teach French vocabulary in a very engaging manner. I noticed she had placed face images as questions and the students had to determine the appropriate emotion. Impressive.

I immediately saw a connection to my math program.

Our first strand of math is always Number Sense – more specifically adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing and order of operations of integers.

It can be dry. It can be repetitive. Their are rules to follow when solving integer problems and nothing but practice makes one understand said rules.

Kahoot changed that this year.

From their website:

Kahoot! empowers educators and captivates learners. Through the creation of a trusted learning space, educational content is delivered by asking meaningful questions in real-time, creating a social, fun and game-like environment.

Kahoot! flips the classroom with a pedagogy based on encouraging a loop from ‘learner to leader’ within the learning space, which maximises the precious learning time spent in the classroom and empowers learners to lead.

I got started with their simple sign up and quickly made my first “quiz”. What sets Kahoot apart from other “clicker” style audience participation services is the gaming component. Students play as individuals and are given a score after each round.

After our “quiz” I noticed the ability to save results and get specific data from each student. A great way to check student learning both as a group – and individually!

Formative assessment and adaptive teaching happens through our data providing educators with a ‘snapshot’ of each learner’s current understanding AND longer term tracking of progress.

Our class was quite engaged so I checked the gallery for a new pre-made quiz. Their public gallery is quite extensive and I now realize there is a good chance a “quiz” exists for just about any curriculum topic we are exploring this year.

With all the success, I took Kahoot a little further and we played a “quiz” based on math concepts not yet taught. Wouldn’t you know it the students began to notice patterns and understood the math concepts in about twenty minutes time – without it officially being “taught”.

More from Kahoot:

Gaming mechanics provide additional engagement, motivation and rewards through learners’ participation, with a game-based pedagogy which is proven by academic research.

I can see Kahoot being a great way to engage History classes with specific facts. Or English classes with forms of writing. Anything that is of a knowledge base is now a fun MC game.

I love polleverywhere. I love Socrative. I especially love Kahoot. It works on any device and your audience simply enters a code to join your game. Check it out at https://getkahoot.com/

How would you use it in your classes?

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