Fun And Games, Device Delight

At the end of October Heather Moorefield, Education Librarian at Virginia Tech and current chairperson of the American Association of School Librarians Best Websites for Teaching & Learning tweeted about a service which appeared to be an engaging, interactive student response system.  It was followed this week by a tweet from John Schumacher, teacher librarian, co-host of the monthly #SharpSchu Book Club, 2014 Newbery Medal Award Committee member, blogger at Watch. Connect. Read. and former member of the Best Websites for Teaching & Learning committee.   I went to the home page of Kahoot! not knowing what to expect but ready for a new educational adventure.

Kahoot! is a game-based classroom response system which can be used in schools, universities and businesses.  Along the top of the informative tool bar the following are addressed:

• Response System
• How does it work?
• Game-based Pedagogy
• What's different? and
• Who's it for?

Meaningful questions can be asked by both teachers and students with ease.  In three simple steps Kahoot! can be ready to use; create, launch and play are the components.  As long as a device has a web browser Kahoot! will work.  The people who designed Kahoot! based it on the idea of teachers being leaders and learners in turn becoming leaders and teachers.  One of the main differences of Kahoot! is that users can not only respond but create.  

To begin simply click on any of the purple Get My Free Account buttons.  For step one you are asked about your role, teacher, student over 16, student 16 and younger, business or use it as a social platform.  As an educator you will be asked to name your school, choose a username, give an email address and password.  You will be asked to read the terms and privacy policies.

If you are a student 16 or younger in addition you will be asked to give your date of birth.  As this company is based in Norway I am wondering if this age is similar to the age 13 limit under the laws of the United States.  I would ask for parental/guardian approval before allowing students under the age of 13 to use this service. 

As soon as your account is created you are taken to your dashboard.  Along the top, left to right, at a glance you can create a Kahoot!, see the number you have made, the number made by others, get help (Contact Support, FAQs, Known Issues, Join the Community, Suggest a Feature) and view your profile (Profile, Change Password, Sign Out). 

Moving toward the center you are invited to watch a video, play an intro quiz, find a public Kahoot!, create your first Kahoot!, or share on Facebook, Twitter or via email.  

Along the right side statistics can be viewed as well as a couple of articles about encouraging student participation.

Further down the center I clicked on Quiz, Discussion and Survey in the create new Kahoot! box to study my options.  In designing a Quiz you have the ability to make one with an unlimited amount of multiple choice questions.  The difference between Discussion and Survey is that the former asks for opinions and invites debate on a single question, the later on an unlimited amount of questions. 

For the sake of testing out this website, I decided to design a short quiz on the recent Mock Caldecott unit we've been doing with our fifth grade students.  You are first asked to title your quiz. 

At the next window the quiz creation process begins.  Type in your first question.  You can add an image or a video (experimental stage).  Beneath the image you enter in four answers, one of which is correct.  You change the word incorrect to correct with a mouse click.  Make sure you decide to make it a points' question or not and to set a time limit.  When you are done, select the +Add question button.

During the course of creating your quiz, on the left-hand side in the corner you can toggle back and forth by choosing your question number.  You can edit or delete a question at any time.  When you have a completed the quiz click on the green button in the lower right-hand corner, Re-order questions.  At the next screen you can drag and drop them into position.

Then you are asked to check settings.   Here you select language, privacy settings (public or private), primary audience (school, university, business, training, event, social),  enter in a short description, difficulty level, and tags.  At the next window you can give your quiz a cover image (optional).

The final screen options are:

• play now
• preview
• edit
• share with other users, on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+  or via email.

Your Kahoot! can be shared on the community page too.  I decided to preview my Kahoot!  At the preview screen there are more choices for making your Kahoot! as interesting as possible.

Whether you decide to play on another device by logging in to kahoot.it or use the device at the site on the right, once you select launch the game begins.  A different pin number shows each time the game is played.  When you enter the number in, you are asked for a game name.  It can be anything.  I played this at the site and on my tablet.

When a question appears a series of shapes are associated with each answer.  As a player you choose the shape for the answer you believe is correct.  If you are correct a point value is assigned to your name.  The top five people with the most points are continually listed.  You can play the quiz answering all the questions or quit early.

The link for my created Kahoot! is here.


I highly recommend educators using Kahoot! in their classrooms.  Students under the age of 13 can participate in one of the designed modules, Quiz, Discussion or Survey without registration; all they need to do is think of a game-playing name.  If you desire to get the full benefit of this site students will need to register so they can become creators also.

Signing-up is a snap, the terms and privacy policies are short and to the point, ease of use is fantastic.  I can't wait to try this with students as soon as possible.  Thanks to Heather Moorefield and John Schumacher for their recommendations.