by Elise Volpi
This review is part of a series of assignments submitted for the graduate level course EDUC 5255: Digital Literacies and New Media in Spring 2020. The authors are M.A. students in Literacy Education at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Each author reviewed a digital tool or application they use in K-12 settings.
Screenshots from the tool publisher website and app (Kahoot!) are used for educational and review purposes, adapted and transformed under fair use guidelines. Copyright of the product and images belongs to Kahoot!
Description
Kahoot! (website + app) is an interactive learning platform in which students, teachers, and others can create, share, or play learning games and quizzes. It is available in every subject, language, and on any device. You can play the game or quiz live with the questions on the big screen or on a personal device with the questions on your individual screen. This allows for collaboration between students or a self-paced individual experience. With a classroom of diverse learners it is important to have these options of play because one may support others better than the other. The app puts students on a leaderboard as they answer each question. Kahoot! is used around the world at schools, companies, and events. In the classroom Kahoot! serves as an engaging tool in many ways such as content review, skill practice, formative assessments, etc. Kahoot! seems to be appropriate for all ages as it is advertised on their website to schools, homes, and businesses. CommonSense.org suggests that in the education world it is most appropriate for Grades 3-12.
Pricing
Teachers can obtain Kahoot! Premium for free during the COVID-19 school closures.
Kahoot! has 5 levels of pricing ranging from $0 for the free version and $720 annually for the premium plus version. Here is an outline of what you can expect at each price level including the features from the lower level.
Free
- Create, share, and play games
- Add quiz questions
- Import questions
- View and download score report
Standard
- Collaborate with a team to create games
- Organize games into folders
- View and download advanced score reports
Pro
- Puzzles
- Slides and images between questions
- Polls
- Image library
Premium
- Open-ended quiz questions
- Word cloud
- Branding games with school logo
- Create a public profile
- Share license key
Samples quizzes
Below are two screenshots of first a quiz I created followed by a quiz that another teacher created. Both quizzes are on the Kahoot! discover page and can be used by anyone with an account. The questions, answers, and pictures are customizable by the creator of the quiz.
Integration in my second grade classroom
I chose to review Kahoot! for my digital tool project because as an educator I am constantly looking to create an engaging environment for my students. Any way that I can teach the content in a new, exciting, interactive way I do so that I can expose my students to a variety of skills and ways of learning. Kahoot! is used by several other teachers at my school and it is highly recommended especially as a review activity. My students have used this in the classroom before but I wanted to explore the different features and everything the tool had to offer. I also wanted to share this with teachers in our classroom because I think this is something that is applicable to a wide range of grade levels and subjects.
The ways that Kahoot! can be used for literacy instruction are endless. In the classroom I use it mainly for unit reviews. Usually at the end of a book before we take a Performance Based Assessment, students will work with their literacy buddy to answer comprehension and vocabulary questions. Another way I have used it before is with phonics practice where again students pair up with their literacy buddy to recognize, identify, and apply sound patterns to a picture or word. Kahoot! can be used for formative or summative assessments as well. While I have not yet used Kahoot! for a summative assessment, it would be an efficient resource to evaluate what students have mastered and what they need to continue to work on. This tool offers feedback on student’s progress which allows the teacher to plan instruction from there.
The following are just a few major standards that can be met while using Kahoot!
Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.
Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.
Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot.
Review
There are many pros to using Kahoot! The major benefit of using Kahoot! is increased student engagement. It is easy to use with a simple game pin to login and then only four consistent choices for answering. Also, this tool allows for instant feedback after each question helping to guide students and provide information to teachers. The option of collaborative competitive mode and self-paced mode is another important pro that is being cognizant of the diverse learners in the classroom.
There are also some cons to using this tool that should be acknowledged. Students have the freedom to choose their own username which could take time, they may use something too silly, or it may cause some disagreement between partners. Also, to my knowledge, there is no option to have the questions read aloud to the students so the teachers have to do it. On the collaborative competitive mode the students are unable to see their questions or answer choices on their screen, they can only see the shapes that are correlated to which answer they choose.
Related tools
Quizziz is a similar app in which students can engage in a learning game or quiz. However, the questions and answers are displayed on individual devices whereas they are not always in Kahoot! The quizzes are self-paced rather than waiting for other classmates to complete a question. Just like Kahoot!, teachers can still display a leaderboard to monitor student progress throughout the quiz.
Quizlet is another app where students can take a quiz at their own pace from anywhere on any device. This app allows teachers to make notes. There is also a live format where students can collaborate and access lessons together. This app sounds like it would be more applicable to older students who could navigate technology with more ease and go through the quiz without significant support.
Differentiation & Customization
Kahoot! has features that allow for different degrees of differentiation and customization. It is helpful that I am able to set the amount of time that a question is displayed each time the quiz is played. If I am presenting this quiz in small groups then I am able to differentiate for students with different reading abilities and processing times. The two modes of game-mode on a big screen or individual mode on an individual device is also helpful for this same reason. Some students especially with the age range I work with have a difficult time transferring their eyes from the board to right in front of them and back again. This may make those students feel anxious so it is important to choose a setting that will best support your students.
Not only is Kahoot! differentiated within but it allows for the teacher to provide further opportunities for intentional differentiation in the classroom. If used as formative assessment, Kahoot! can provide quick checks to monitor student progress. With the app providing specific data and feedback, teachers can supplement or alter their future lessons to meet the needs of the students.
Overall
Through my evaluation of Kahoot! I believe that it is a wonderful resource for teachers looking to increase student engagement and receive academic feedback in the classroom. Kahoot! can be played across a variety of subjects and in a variety of different ways that it is applicable to a range of diverse classrooms. I look forward to sharing my findings with other teachers to see how they would implement this in their classrooms and I plan on incorporating this app more consistently into our everyday learning.
References
Learning games: Make learning awesome! (n.d.). Retrieved from https://kahoot.com/
Powers, M. (2020, March 15). Kahoot! Review for Teachers. Retrieved from
The Literacy and Media Lab 