Kahoot is really an enjoyable experience and is a shared learning platform used throughout the world. This video demonstrates how it is used with various age groups, populations as well as places and the excitement it brings to learning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGLy9jyGjkU (the photo above is also from that video). As such, this week we decided to outline our personal experiences with Kahoot both as students and as emerging teachers as we thought it would be nice to understand both perspectives.

Personal Connections (Below both my partner and I described our own stories of how we have seen Kahoot being used as a game-based learning platform and how it has motivated students to learn).

Arnelle: From volunteering in classrooms, to practicum’s and observational Wednesday visits last semester, I have seen the impact that Kahoot and all game-based learning has on an individual child and their motivation to learn. I have observed that all students are included and participate in Kahoot, I have also observed that Kahoot allows students to work collaboratively, it allows them to work individually and allows students to be competitive or play in a cooperation game style. A story, that came to my mind, while writing this week’s blog post was that, when I was observing a grade 5 classroom, the class was studying English language arts, and focusing on spelling, therefore the teacher had constructed a Kahoot, and put the students in groups of 4, with one IPad per group. The students were able to work collaboratively, and find the correct spelling to the word/ sentences the teacher said out loud. This technique was very useful, ad beneficial for the students, but also the teacher, therefore she could see who was understanding and succeeding and depict those who were struggling, and not helping their groups.

Brittany: My experience with Kahoot has extended from my high school years (it was launched in my grade 9 year) all the way to post-secondary (university). Kahoot is motivating for me as a student, I remember asking to play (intrinsic motivation), as it really helped me engage in learning and understand concepts. This fun interactive surface was able to make it so that children in the class could individually respond or collaboratively work together in small groups. In a classroom that I observed in, we used Kahoot both as a fun way to assess the classrooms understanding as a whole but also children were able to create their own Kahoot questions and play each other’s Kahoot’s as well. This idea extends beyond just the teacher instructing and allows children to create their own games which helps facilitate an engaging atmosphere for the students. I have experienced Kahoot both as a student and while observing various classrooms and I can honestly say that children are asking for Kahoot because they benefit from this learning platform.

Partner: Brittany Johnson