Kahoot! - An engaging, effective, and competitive classroom response system!

I tried out Kahoot (GetKahoot.com) for the first time today in all five of my classes and am thoroughly impressed.  Even though it's the end of the year, I highly suggest giving it a try.  In fact, it may be a great way to engage the kids who are tired and ready for summer.

I originally heard of Kahoot! from Garrett Kerr (@KerrentTech) at CUE this year and it got put on the backburner of everything else going on.  I'm glad I had time this weekend to finally check it out.  It's a game changer!

So, here's what I did... and what you can do to get started, too (it's pretty intuitive and user-friendly, but I thought it would be helpful to create a tutorial anyways):

**For some reason the images now don't show up so I have just deleted them all since I don't have the time to re-create all my screenshots.  Sorry :(**

1. Create a free account at GetKahoot.com

2. Choose between making a quiz, a survey, or a discussion.  I made both a survey and then lots of quizzes.  (I'm still not sure on the purpose of the discussion as you can only ask one question and it seems like it's just another way for students to selected pre-given answers, which could be like a survey or quiz...)

3. Give your Kahoot! a name

4. Start adding questions

5. Once you have followed the steps and edited your Kahoot! to your heart's content (which you can always go back and edit later very easily), you are ready to PLAY!

6. Launch the game and get ready for students to join in!

7. Students enter the class and join the Kahoot!

8. The game begins... Timer counts down.  Student responses come in and you see the # of students who have responded.  Once they respond, the color/shape they chose will remain on their screen until the question time is over. 

9. See the results as a class!  Students will get notified on their screen if they got it right or wrong, how many kahoots they got, and who they are behind.

10. Between every round and at the end of the game, it will show a scoreboard before moving on to the next question.

11. After the quiz, students have the opportunity to "rate" the quiz and give you feedback. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Feedback from students:

• At the end of the activity, I told them "this was basically just like doing your 5 practice problems for the day, what was different about it that made you enjoy it so much?"

• It feels more fun. 
• It's interactive. 
• It's competitive. 
• It's challenging.
• It's hands on. 
• They like being timed; it gives them the pressure and motivation to get it done
• From a teacher perspective, they were engaged and involved.  There was excitement and passion in the room.  Students wanted to get the correct answer and wanted to get it quickly!  They liked seeing who they were right behind and trying to get on the top 5 leaderboard.

My thoughts (pros)

• I LOVE the results that you get at the end.  You can do so much with it because you can see exactly what students answered certain problems incorrectly.  It is a great tool for true formative assessment and supporting students.  You can download them as an excel file.  They come pre-color coded, but you can do more sorting if wanted.  It sorts the students by their score, so you can easily see the top students from the bottom ones and pick out the questions with the most wrong answers.

• I like the students have the ability to rate each Kahoot! at the end.  It gives them a sense of ownership and gives you some immediate feedback on how much they enjoyed it.  It was funny to see the difference in ratings among two different Kahoots I did in the same class - one that required less paper/pencil work (more fast/fact oriented) and the one that students actually had to do some thinking and written work.  Not surprisingly, the second one still had good ratings, but it wasn't quite as "fun" as the other one, comparatively.
• After the correct answer is shown, students have a very clear bright green or bright orange/red screen.  If I want more feedback than just what the bar graph shows me, I had them hold up their phones so I could scan the room.  A few times, if it was about 50/50, I would have the students with "green screens" get up and find a student with an orange screen to help. This was a great modification of "peer instruction" and allowed students to collaborate and communicate with those around them.
• I love the music.  It is fun to have the music as students are entering, and the music during each problem created a sense of urgency.  Some students said it made them "stress" a little, but I think that was a good thing because it make them work under a little bit of pressure.  You can always mute it, too. 
• I noticed that there is an app in the Google Play store, and for Apple devices you can just add a bookmark to the home screen for easy access.  I will be doing that on my class iPods and suggesting to the students to do the same.

My thoughts (suggestions for improvements or what I would like to see changed)

• My biggest student complaint was, "Oh crap, I accidentally touched the screen! That's not the answer I wanted!"  Or, they were trying to respond so fast they hit the wrong one.  It would be nice to have the option of allowing students one "go-back" to resubmit (like an option a teacher could either turn on or off with each quiz).   Another idea is to have a "confirm answer" button so they have to click it TWICE before it actually submits.
• It would be nice to have more options for the timer, even just letting the user choose exactly how much time they want.  Some of the harder math problems I wanted to give my students 3 or more minutes for, so I ended up just setting it as 120 seconds, and then reading off the question for them to work on for a minute before starting the timer.
• This may have just been my internet connection, but sometimes the image (which in my case was the actual problem) would take 5 seconds to load up. This made the students lose time working.  I solved this by always just reading the problem to them first and then starting the timer, having the image load up a few seconds later with the problem and answer choices.
• Because of the "mathtype", I just had the answer choices within the question instead of below on the screen next to the shapes.  Students said they wish the answers were right there next to the shapes (even though they were only a few inches away).  I told them there wasn't anything I could do since typing the math answers would not be pretty or comprehensible.  It would be nice if the answer choices could also be images themselves as well, so I could put math answers in there.  I could see how this could help in other subject areas as well when a teacher wants to put up four images (four places in history, pieces of art, parts of the body, etc) and the student has to choose which one it is.
• If the students don't touch their phone/iPod screen, it will shut off (changes I am making is suggesting to students to change their settings when they walk into class to "never" shut off the screen).  Unfortunately, this locks them out of the game and they must sign back in with the code.  Sometimes it allowed the students in right away to join in with the current question, whereas other times it locked them out and didn't let them participate until the next question.  I'm not sure why it happened different ways with different students.  This was disappointing for some students who had the right answer and then weren't able to add points to their score.

My thoughts for the future...

• The multiple choice quizzes only allow for up to four answers.  I understand why - that is what shows up best on the student's screen.  However, I would like to be able to have an option that says "Stuck" and/or "Not enough time" (for them to click in the last 5 seconds).  That would give me better feedback rather than some students just randomly clicking a choice.  Giving only 2 multiple choice answers and then those 2 wouldn't be great (50/50 shot), so for now I will just stick with giving the 4 choices and telling the students not to answer if they didn't get one of the four choices.
• I started this in 4th period today, but students had to turn in the associated work with the problems.  I noticed in 1st period some students basically just trying to do the work in their head and then just guessing.  By having them turn in a paper with their work (whether or not I actually look at it...), it holds them accountable for their participation and focus.
• I am definitely going to use this with peer instruction rather than hand-raising.  The fact that students can't change their answer and if they had the wrong answer their phone shows ORANGE/RED and they can't change that helps.
• I didn't really have any issues with students making fake or "nickname" names when signing in, except in one class.  I didn't give them any training beforehand and had them all signing in as they walked in not really knowing what was going on.  Obviously in the future, I would go over this a little more structured and wouldn't have the issue.  The nice thing is how easy it is to "remove" the students and just make them sign in again.  Once I told the few students that they had to use their real name, it wasn't an issue.

So, those are my thoughts and feedback after one day of Kahoot.  I will be using it a few more times this week and asking my students how they feel about it after getting used to it a bit more and working out some of the kinks. 

Thoughts, Suggestions, or Feedback?  Please comment.  Have you used Kahoot! in your classroom?  If so, how has it gone?

I encourage you to give it a try before summer... definitely worth it!