I recently had the opportunity to visit the class of Jennifer Campbell, a Social Vocational Integration Services (SVIS) teacher at the Marymount Adult Centre, EMSB. Jennifer regularly uses tablets and the students’ mobile devices to help with student learning. During my visit, Jennifer’s class was using Kahoot! to review material. Kahoot is a tool that helps teachers gauge overall understanding of their course material in a fun and game-like environment. Students are awarded points for accuracy and for how fast they can recall information. Learn more about how Jennifer is using Kahoot! with her class in this short video:
Here’s what I took away for my time in Jennifer’s classroom:
- Formative assessment in action: Kahoot! allowed Jennifer to identify problem areas and created many opportunities for rich discussions between each review question (i.e. – evaluation for learning)
- Students worked collaboratively in groups. Before answering, they discussed and debated their answers.
- The classroom atmosphere was competitive, but non-judgmental.
- Kahoot! gave ALL the students a chance to be actively involved in the review process. No one was sitting on the sidelines. There was lots of cheering too!
- Kahoot! works on any phone, tablet or computer with a web browser. There were very few technical glitches and this allowed students to use their own devices in a productive way in the classroom (i.e. BYOD).
Note: If you’re a looking for a similar tool but with a non-competitive approach, be sure to take a look at Socrative. For teachers in multi-level or individualized class settings, using Kahoot! or Socrative can be a little tricky as the whole class (or at least small groups) needs to be be working on the same material for the tool to work as it was intended.
Last but not least, I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank Colleen Glover (Nova, NFSB) who presented how she uses Kahoot! with her math students at one of our recent RECIT workshops.