Kahoot!: Competition is a Great Thing

Hard to believe that another school year has started.  Only seems like yesterday I started my new journey in becoming a Technology Integration Teacher and here we are 3 years later.  As I write this, teachers have already been back for a week and we have had students for 3 of those days.

This year, in my opening tech training to the high school staff, I demonstrated three new concepts/tools for possible implementation into curriculum: Kahoot!, Plickers, and Google Classroom (more to come in a future post).  I was not surprised to see the excitement from the teachers when they were demonstrated.

Kahoot!
This web 2.0 tool, hands down, is my new, absolute, favorite game based learning tool.  I first learned about this when I attended the ISTE 2014 conference in Atlanta this past summer and wondered why I had not discovered it sooner.


Why I love it you ask?

• Teachers create a free account
• Teachers can create their own or use public Kahoot! game quizzes
• Kahoot! works on any platform to include mobile devices
• Kahoot! is very engaging, competitive and fun
• Teachers can get a print out of results

How to Start:

A teacher creates a quiz topic. Then they determine what questions to ask. With each question a picture is associated to it to help give clues for the participants.  In most cases, there are four choices for participants to choose from and the teacher can decide how long each question should be for participants to respond to the question.

Implementing into the Classroom:

Before playing the game, participants enter a code on their device to get into the quiz.  Once everyone is in, the teacher starts the quiz game.  The first question is displayed on the board for the participants to read the question and figure out their answer.  Once the participants have an answer, they click on the appropriate area of their screen on their device to lock in their answer.  What is important to note is that participants earn points based on how fast they locked in their answer assuming it was answered correctly.  After time is up, participants individually see how they are rank on their screens and the top five are showcased for everyone to see on the board. Then the teacher starts the next question. This process is repeated until the quiz game is done.

I have made 9 Kahoot! games already within the last 2 months to help reinforce information that was shared during tech trainings.  In every scenario, teachers were engaged, competitive, and showed excitement for learning.  There were even some instances where teachers were saddened that we stopped a game quiz early due to time constraints. All they wanted to do was continue to play the game.

Uses for Kahoot! in educational settings:

• Reinforce a new concept
• Review for assessments
• Advisory activity

Beware, Kahoot! is VERY ADDICTING. Kahoot! is just another example of how technology can help make learning fun but yet reinforce material at the same time.  Guarenteed, if you have not tried Kahoot! you will love it as well as your students. I look forward to hearing how teachers at BHS decide to use Kahoot! in their own classroom.

Of course, if you have any questions, you know where to find me! 

Using Keynote to Create 'Animated' Videos

Each year, the Biology department at BHS has students explain the mitosis process in a unique way.  Over the years, the idea as to how students would complete the task has evolved.  Mrs. Morrissey explained to her students how students used to create physical flip books, demonstrating the mitosis process, many years ago.  Then, students used PowerPoint to have an 'animation' of the mitosis process through replicating slides and 'flipping' through them quickly to get the movement effect.  At times, students finished product would turn into 300 slides to make this happen.  Fast forward to the year 2014, and students are now using Keynote to help make actual animations on slides.  

It is important to note that in many instances, students had actually never used Keynote prior to this project.  PowerPoint, yes, but Keynote, no.  I am a firm believer that it is always good for students to be aware of different software and tools so that they are exposed and knowledgable in different situations.  This project most certainly helped students understand Keynote.  In order to help make sure that the technology did not get in the way of learning, a couple of resources were created for the students to help them in their adventure of explaining the mitosis process.

Introduction to Keynote:

The project was explained to the students as well as a quick introduction to Keynote - how to add 'animations' to slides on the first day.  Students referred to the Keynote Hints Documentation.  Students were also reminded that if their questions were not answered in this documentation that Google was another great resource to ask the question.  (It is amazing sometimes that students forget that they could do this even though they use Google to help answer content questions they might have).

Recording, Exporting and Uploading Keynote Presentation:

After day 1 of introducing Keynote, I began to think about the submission process that the teachers used in past years and wanted to come up with a more efficient way.  Thus, we came up with a process for students to actually record their Keynote presentation and make a true animated video.  Several benefits result in this new process: 

• Students could choose to speak as the presentation was being recorded.
• Students would export a .mov file, which would allow them to upload that file to their Google Drive account (a keynote presentation cannot be viewed online even if it is uploaded to Google Drive)
• Students could easily change permissions of video to anyone with link and provide the teacher with the link to the video (Teachers no longer needed to rely on the Community Folder - Teacher Drop Box that we have at school on our network)
• Teacher could watch and grade the animated videos anywhere that teachers had internet access (best to use Chrome)

Students were given several additional days to work on the project.  During this time, students were told that they could actually record their presentation to make it an animated video.  The documentation, linked below, walks students through the process of recording, exporting and uploading their file to their Google Drive account.  Recording and Exporting a Keynote Presentation Documentation

* Students used Chrome to upload the non-Google file online to their Google Drive account.

Receiving Files:

Teachers created a Google Form for students to submit their link to their project so that they could easily grade their project.  This link below walks teachers through how to treat a Google Form as a 'Dropbox'. Creating Teacher Dropbox with Google Forms.

Student Examples:

Now the most important part - actually seeing some student work.  They created some great animation videos! (click on the student name to actually view the animated video)

Katharine Cusack

Emerson Desmarais

Will Ebert

If you have questions regarding using Keynote in your own curriculum, just stop by and we can chat!
Happy Learning!