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! 

Creating Your Own 'DropBox' with Google Forms

Ever feel like you are in this situation?

• Want to give students the ability to decide what web tool to use for a project but don't want to receive an email from all of your students with the link to the product?
• Want to ask students to share a Google Document, Spreadsheet, or Presentation to your 'schoogle account' and they don't name it the way you asked.  This then causes an issue as you have to spend time searching for the right document in your own Google Drive account?

Google Form: This is a GREAT solution to the two situations stated above.  Google Forms is one of the options included in your Google Drive account. Several teachers at Bedford High have created what we are calling an Assignment Submission Form (the original idea came from a presentation I sat in given by Allison Mollica.  Basically, teachers are using the form option as a means of a dropbox.  Oh and did I mention that they are doing this with very little work.

Advantages to using this type of system:

• No more emails are sent to your account
• You can grade all student work from one spreadsheet as long as you have internet access
• You never need to change the link to your assignment submission form on your teacher website (even if you add assignment names to question 4 of the Google form)

Here are the suggested written steps regarding creating your own Assignment Submission Form:

A.  Create a new Google Form

B.  Name the Form

C.  Fill in your questions.  Suggested questions to ask in the form:

     1.  Last Name

     2.  First Name

     3.  Block

     4.  Assignment Name

     5.  Link to Assignment

D.  Choose a location for your Responses. (I usually say create a new spreadsheet with the name)

E.  Click on the View Live Form. Copy the link to this form and provide the link on your teacher website.

For those of you who are visual learners, I have also created a short video tutorial:

Creating Your Own Assignment Submission Form

For those of you who have a large number of students or you want to have some sort of system, watch this short video explaining how you can organize all of the student work in different tabs inside of the same Google Form.

Organizing Responses from Assignment Submission Form

So the next time you assign a task for students to complete, and it is web based (either through Google Drive or another web 2.0 tool) ask yourself, should I have them submit it through a form?

As always, if you ever have any questions, stop by room 222 and I will help you troubleshoot how this tool can be used in your situation.

Schoogle Away...

Assessing Blogs? An Example of a Rubric

This year, Mr. McDonald has decided to have all of his Advanced Writing students manage and write their own blog.  Through this assignment, Mr. McDonald is serving three purposes:

1.  Students are able to freely write about what is intriguing to them.
2.  Students are learning what it is like to to write in the 21 century.
3.  Students are learning what it is like to share and collaborate amongst others through their blog.

Mr. McDonald gave me permission to share the rubric that he is using each month when it comes to assessing the blog.  This rubric is assessing students in how well they communicate their thoughts as well as their grammar.  While you might not use the same competencies in your course, the rubric can be adopted to any course and any competency.  To see the actual rubric, click HERE.

If you are interested in knowing more about blogging in your course, how students can maintain their own blog, or how to assess blogs, please stop by room 222 and we can chat!