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WK 7 Review of Kahoot–I love it!

A Review of Kahoot

I chose to evaluate Kahoot a free game-based learning programmed designed to engage an unlimited number of students through engaging “real-time” game design for ANY subject and ALL ages. It works great  for review and as a formative assessment tool because it provides insight to teachers and students love it.  

To review this site, I went to the Kahoot website by entering it in the Google search engine. Then I followed the easily outlined steps provided on the site. In order to evaluate this product, I explored the website, practiced it as an operator and student, as well played the learning platform with students.

The ease and effectiveness of Kahoot resulted in a fantastic review. I highly recommend trying this in your classroom, as a highly motivating and engaging technology based learning tool.

TROUBLE SHOOTING: many of these can be solved at https://getkahoot.com/support/faq/
  • Initially, a common mistake might be to enter Kahoot into Google which brings you to the user version of it. instead as an operator you must create and explore Kahoots at: getkahoot.com Many of my students did the same or they would pull up to page that only said Kahoot.
  • It is helpful to type Kahoot it in Google or type in https://kahoot.it/#/  This was a common issue among all classrooms I tested this out in as well as for myself

Pedagogy and Content

Educators could use this program to engage students through teacher created quizzes and review games that are live in real time. It is an intuitive program that is designed to easily learn and can be launched within minutes for use within the classroom. It is ideal for review, pre-assessments, and post-assessments. The data from Kahoot is a great tool to know where students are at. Teachers may use the results of the platform chosen in Kahoot as data to help guide differentiated instruction.

It takes a short amount of time to learn this program well enough to get started, although it does take longer to fully take advantage of what Kahoot has to offer. I took about 5-10 minutes to get signed up and  AT LEAST  5-20 minutes invested before each class period in order to create or explore other lessons that might be able to engage students while covering the necessary content. If you are lucky you can find a lesson within a few minutes already created by other educators or you can spend some time creating a Kahoot that matches the learning needs of your students. The majority of the time, I was able to find a Kahoot that matched my learning targets.

It takes some additional time to really know the program. You can plan for at least a minimum of an hour exploring the site to learn all of Kahoot’s possibilities. I also found that you will need to set aside a few class periods to test this out on students or prepare for an extra 5-10 minutes to test it out yourself by launching and logging in as a student.

The most time consuming element of Kahoot is designing or choosing a Kahoot that matches your students’ needs. After selection of a Kahoot is done, as an operator, you have the option of editing, previewing, playing, and or sharing it with others by providing an access pin. This access pin can be entered on almost any device that accesses the internet using the web addresses. Once a pin has been entered students will give themselves a name and an optional emoji to personalize their player’s name. My Students loved this aspect of the game.

There are 4 types of Kahoots that can be created and played either in classic or team mode.: quiz, jumble activity, discussion, or survey. Currently, Jumble can only be played in classic mode. In team mode students will get together in groups and use only one device to enter their answers as a group or in classic mode which they all need their own devices and will be playing against each other. (TEAM MODE REQUIRES LESS BANDWIDTH)  Each round of questions will result in a quick scoreboard view which encourages students to stay focused and try their best.  While taking part in a Kahoot students are motivated because of the game based rewards.  

Software Operation

To get started you simply go to getkahoot.com to create a free account. You click on create an account and fill in the short answer form and within seconds you can begin intuitively creating a learning platform that meets your students’ needs.

Once an account is created you can create or explore learning games related to your learning targets. As an operator of the system you may chose to launch a quiz, discussion, jumble activity, or survey which once created are known as Kahoots. They can be played in classic or team modes.

To create a Kahoot it is as simple as filling in the pre-designed form that allows you to drag and drop images as part of the self generated & timed questions. Each Kahoot has a form that includes: a title, description, visibility option, language option, audience selection, cite references, link to an introductory video, and an option to upload an image. You have the option of selecting 20-120 seconds per question and how many questions you would like to create. The time selection allows for great time management skills as well as differentiating the time of questions based on students’ needs.  If trying to achieve mastery or would like to ask the same question twice it is as simple as duplicating a question by the click of the duplicate question icon. The questions at any time can be rearranged into a preferential order for asking the questions.

After deciding on which game to play you may create and launch it. At this point a specific pin will be provided so that students can join the Kahoot. At the start of each Kahoot game you will display the screen with Pin on the overhead board if available and allow students time to join. As they join their names will appear on the screen. Once ready to take the game you may begin the time response games testing their selected skills base.

All the steps involved of operating this system are very user-friendly to both the student and educator. All steps are self-explanatory, however, if you run into a problem or issue there is an informative page available at: https://getkahoot.com/blog. In this section there is a blog for users to share their discoveries and a help section to review frequently asked questions or a place to ask a question. Any issue you run into, you should be able to solve by visiting this page.

TROUBLE SHOOTING: many of these can be solved at https://getkahoot.com/support/faq/
  • Initially, a common mistake might be to enter Kahoot into Google which brings you to the user version of it. instead as an operator you must create and explore Kahoots at: getkahoot.com
  • Pictures that can dragged and dropped into the Kahoots are usually as simple as dragging the images, however, in rare instances they do not work. There are steps to resolve this on the Frequently Asked Questions page.  I was having to save the picture then upload it, in order to view it.
  • Background music-I had not known this an option that can be customized with user preference until reading through the help question at Kahoot. This is something I did not find intuitive to the program but can be done fairly easy with the steps provided.
  • Muting because of the noise created by the Kahoot game while having it open with other tabs. This I had to go to frequently asked questions page. I found the easiest way is to exit out of and sign back in when I am ready to use it.
  • The arrangement of questions are done with a simple selection, dragging and dropping of question while creating the Kahoot.
  • You can duplicate other teachers’ lessons easily and then edit the questions–this might be the quicker option. I found this to be a fraction of time it takes to create your own Kahoot platform. TIME SAVER
  • Another great time saver is to duplicate another premade test and adjust the names and questions in the test to be more customized to your classroom. TIME SAVER
  • You can only have so many characters as your answers to your questions–I had to adjust my questions and answers so they would work.
  • Students liked the music–It is upbeat. I know there is a way to adjust music to your preferred choice. I had to search this because I found it less intuitive.  

Infrastructure

Kahoot is an online “real-time” game based learning program that requires each student to have a device that accesses the internet through a server and has been tested to work on:

  • Chrome
  • Firefox
  • Internet Explorer
  • Safari
  • Edge

You can test to see if your operating network is setup to handle Kahoot at: https://test.kahoot.it/  For the most part, Kahoot is designed to be able to played within the normal size classroom with ease. The larger the user population, the more bandwidth is required. Kahoot has some guidelines for the number of players per recommended available players available in this section.

It is important to note that Kahoot’s websockets might pose some problems for the user because of some server’s settings or firewalls. Kahoot requires access to port 80 and 443 on the list of host at: https://getkahoot.com/support/faq/#what-network-configurations-do-i-need-to-ensure-kahoot-can-be-used-in-my-venue

Currently, this operating system runs smoothly with more than one class using this system at a known time at my school district. I did not notice any issues with speed or delivery because of bandwidth issues. It ran smoothly and was done with ease.

TROUBLE SHOOTING:many of these can be solved at https://getkahoot.com/support/faq/
  1. If bandwidth or internet is down Kahoots can get lost while creating
  2. A common issue for me was creating the Kahoot in advance and losing the pin and or Kahoot I was planning to launch. This can be resolved by going to the Kahoots “My Kahoots” tab and if named precisely it can be easily found. It is important to name your documents in a way that can be easily alphabetized. For instance, remember to exclude articles from the title.
  3. Once you get started and a kid got bumped off, I had issues getting them back on because I lost the pin. We never were able to see if they could get back on. We plan to test this tomorrow by writing the pin down in advance. At least 1 student per round would get knocked out and was unable to join.

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