Kahoot! - For Fun or For Assessment

    For this week's blog post I have decided to talk about Kahoot!  I first learned about Kahoot! in the first course that I took for my masters degree.  As an adult student, I found Kahoot! to be anxiety inducing due the timed responses.  I have enjoyed using Kahoot! and have even had it as part of group presentations for my courses.  I thought it would be a great tool to try in the classroom, but have yet to built it into our day.  However, last school year, my students did get the opportunity to use Kahoot! as part of a culminating activity after an Elder visit.

    There are a few reasons why I have not used Kahoot! in the classroom as of yet:

1. The questions are timed.  I feel that if I become anxious as an adult on timed questions, students would too.  I do not like the feeling of the pressure to not make an error or to not be the first one to answer the question.  Only recently I have learned that the time students have to answer the questions can be changed.  

2. Access to Devices.  My students do not have one-to-one devices in our classroom.  Previous to Covid, I could have had students work in groups to participate in the quizzes, but now that is less of a possibility.  A quick search on the Kahoot! site reveals that it is possible to set up self-paced kahoot! activities for students.  This would work in my classroom where the ratio is two students per device.

3. Assessment.  If using a Kahoot! game, what does it really assess?  How fast a student can read the question and answer options?  How quickly a student can tap or click on a answer?  How good of a guesser a student is?  Does it really assess the knowledge a student has or just their ability to recall information that they just listened to or read?

    Here are a few reasons why I would consider using Kahoot!:

1. Student engagement.  When my students participated in a Kahoot! activity to wrap-up a learning session with an Elder, they were so excited to play and were all 100% engaged in the activity.  They were excited to answer each question and celebrated when they got the right answer.

2. Team work/ Collaboration:  My students had to work in groups of 2 or 3 for the Kahoot! activity due to the number of devices that we had access to.  They had to work together to decide on the response that they were going to choose.  This did become tricky as the individual who created the Kahoot! did not adjust the time limit of the question.  Students relied on each other to share their knowledge in order to answer the questions.

3. It's fun.  I probably wouldn't use the Kahoot! quizzes as an assessment tool, but rather to engage students in working cooperatively with classmates and give another opportunity for collaboration.

    My experience with Kahoot! has been primarily participating in quizzes and creating quizzes for group presentations.  Looking at the website, Kahoot! has many other uses that I need to explore before I fully implement it in my classroom.  I like the idea of a self-paced Kahoot!.  It looks like students can complete it from anywhere and on their own time.  I think it would be great for students to create their own Kahoot! game.  I think this would be a better form of assessment than them participating in a quiz. I believe that Kahoot! best serves as a formative assessment.  The timed quizzes would not give a true picture of student knowledge in order for it to be a valid summative assessment.  The self-paced activity would work for having students practice looking for information as opposed to showing what they already know.