'Must Try' Classroom Tech Tools: Kahoot!

Technology in the classroom is constantly evolving. There's always a new tech tool out there to explore in your classroom. One of my favorite finds this year is an incredibly fun site for reviewing content with your students... Kahoot!

I first learned about Kahoot last year, when my friend Juliet posted about it on Teaching Trio. Since we’re not a 1:1 school, I had kind of written it off as something that looks really cool, but just won’t work for my class. (I was SO wrong!)

Fast forward to this year, and I finally gave it a try. I am HOOKED! My class is HOOKED! If I dare to review before a test with anything other than a Kahoot game, there is likely to be a mutiny in my classroom! By the end of the year, my students were asking, "are we going to Kahoot again before summer?"

In case you haven’t heard of it, Kahoot is a free site that allows you to play ready-made, multiple choice, trivia-style games on a variety of sujects. You can also adapt any of the public Kahoots to fit your specific lesson or create your own games.

Students can play on any internet connected device – desktops, laptops, iPads, tablets, smartphones… you name it! No student accounts are needed – students join your game using a pin number from a web browser or the Kahoot app.

Game play works very much like the popular trivia games you may have seen in restaurants & sports bars. After each question, students can see who is in the lead based on how quickly they entered the correct answer. (Only the top 5 are shown, so no one is ever shamed for being last.) A graph of the number of students choosing each answer choice is also shown, to help the teacher gauge and correct any misconceptions.

Creating games is quick and easy, because the site has thousands of public Kahoots that you can use, modify, and add to. The first time we used Kahoot in my class, I used two public Kahoots as the basis for a review on cells, and had built two ten-question Kahoots in under ten minutes.

I was able to modify the questions and answer choices to specifically fit the concepts I had taught and the questions I wanted to review for the test, so it was a perfect match to our curriculum. My class has never been so engaged and excited about reviewing before a test! We had a blast!

So what if you aren’t 1:1 or BYOD? We aren't either! At my school, we have done away with the big computer lab filled with desktops in favor of several laptop carts. When I want to Kahoot, I just bring a cart to my room, and each student has their own laptop. If you don’t have this option, you can always set up a Kahoot in your computer center during small group work or have students play in Team Mode.

If you want to learn more, Kahoot has a master class with a video and PDF that will help you get started. 

Throughout the summer, I'll be sharing more of my favorite tech tools here on the blog! Follow me on Bloglovin or sign up for email updates so you don't miss any of the great tools I'll be sharing!