Website: Kahoot
What does it help with?
It is an incredibly engaging student-friendly teaching and learning tool with a mobile and tablet friendly, game-based pedagogy. With a simple and fast drag and drop interface, teachers and students can create and manage ‘Kahoots’ in the form of quizzes, surveys or polls.
What grade and age range? Grades K-12 (age range, 5-18 yrs)
Is this core/supplemental/special needs/extracurricular/professional development or what?
Kahoot! is a platform that can be used in many different ways. Some teachers build whole lessons around a game of kahoot or run activities where students create their own content on Kahoot!, in those cases Kahoot is the core of lessons.
Other teachers include a kahoot as a supplement to their lecture and classroom activity. They might do that to introduce a topic, do a review or to give the students an energizer during class.
Kahoot! is used in many special needs classes, extracurricular courses and we know of teachers giving students homework where they create their own kahoots or play kahoots in Ghost Mode. (In Ghost Mode you replay a game.)
With Kahoot! students create their own learning games, which they play back with their classmates to share their understanding of topics - teachers assess the quality of questions/answers as well as how they present their games. It's common that students go home, create their own kahoots to play with friends and family, after learning how to play Kahoot! at school.
What standards, if any, is it mapped to?
Kahoot! focuses on how you learn, not what you learn. The Kahoot! community creates the content, and aligns it to the curriculums they’re teaching. Kahoot! provides a way to tag content to specific standards, enabling other users to discover games that align to standards they’re teaching or learning.
What is the pricing model?
Kahoot! is free.
Are there other services around it?
Kahoot! is an independent platform for creating and playing learning games.
What makes Kahoot unique?
Kahoot! encourages learners to look up, creating a trusted learning space which generates discussion, collaboration and motivation around educational content. The game is designed to bring emotion into the learning experience - through game mechanics, music and visual design, creating memorable moments that help learners unlock their potential.
How is it designed for user interface, user experience?
Accessibility and inclusivity are core Kahoot! values. Kahoot representatives told us that they focused on how to bring the student at the back of the class to the front (for the right reasons). They believe technology should “just work”, and that it should maximize the precious time learners have together in class. Kahoot! is a design-led business, founded by designers. This ethos is apparent through the entire experience.
What instructional design principles are at work here?
Kahoot! is first and foremost about creating a positive learning environment by bringing collaboration, emotion and play together. Technology is merely facilitating the social learning experience. The deepest way to use Kahoot! in a classroom setting is to challenge students to become the game designers and then to facilitate the gaming experience, playing with their classmates - this encourages deep research, critical thinking, creativity, question design, as well as facilitation and presentation skills. Besides this use case, teachers guide entire lessons through the game - creating a fundamentally more social and engaged learning environment.
Teacher Reviews
“A classroom without Kahoot! is like a car without wheels” - Kahoot!’er, New York
"Kahoot is a game changer. It brings Learning, Pupil Voice and Assessment into 21st century education in an extraordinary way.” - @mrfrieltweets
“Kahoot! has changed the way I teach and think about my class... Who wouldn’t love a tool that can bring teachers and students engagement and joy?” [by Clare Rafferty, Teacher, Australia]
