Kahoot!

If you’ve ever used either Quizdom or the ActivInspire voting paddles, you’ll realise that they’re quite good for assessment and for plenaries. Unfortunately they have a few draw backs. For one, most schools don’t have many sets (the voting paddles are expensive) and the equipment is often bulky. This is really inconvenient when you simply want a ten minute plenary at the end of lesson.

Kahoot! aims to make things a little simpler. For a start, it’s free. That’s always a bonus as a teacher. Secondly, it’s got a nice, simple web interface that makes creating quizzes a breeze. I find the fact that Kahoot! looks lovely, with nice snappy animations also makes pupils more engaged than the comparatively boring/laggy Quizdom animations.

All you need to do is pick your questions and answers and get students to go to http://www.kahoot.it on their mobiles. There they can you use their fancy smartphones (which most kids have) to answer questions and compete. The website also has a fantastic section of public Kahoot!s you can browse and search for. I like the sharing element. I also like the idea of getting students to create their own Kahoot! as a homework exercise.

There are a few things I’m less keen on. I think quizzes often promote a frantic ‘me me’-ness that I think often ignores higher learning in favour of surface level facts. I often make the other answers common misconceptions, but I still find the class frenzied at the idea of completing the quiz and not particularly bothered about the maths.

The other problem is with Kahoot! itself. It’s a lovely website, but lacks a few features (it NEEDS image embedding for answers, so I can show a picture of a circle as a possible answer) and the initial setup can be a bit of a trial. But I’ve enjoyed using it, and I recommend that you at least try it.

It’s interesting how websites are slowly starting to fill a lot of educational need. With Desmos, Kahoot! and the new, revamped, FANTASTIC Class Dojo, I’m really excited to see what else people come up with in the next few years.

PS: Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I am going to  try and get more stuff on here soon.