The wonders of Kahoot

Rarely have I seen a class of 16-year-olds as eager as when I introduced them to Kahoot in a Spanish lesson not long ago! Kahoot is a free, interactive quiz maker, and is very easy to use. You simply type in the questions you want and add up to four alternatives. This may only sound like any ordinary quiz you have done before, either for fun or for more educational purposes (or both, as if the two need to exclude each other). The difference becomes apparent when you learn that everybody participates at the same time, under the pressure of a limited time and some pacy music. Each student needs to join in with a pin code and username. After each question, each student can see how well he or she performed on that question compared to the others, based on how quickly the student chose the correct alternative. Everyone will see the correct result on the big screen in the classroom, and also how many who chose which alternative, and who is in the top five.

My questions were rather mundane — asking about grammar and food in Spanish. So why did everyone engage in this as if they were about to win thousands of kroner? I believe we are all born to play, and we are also competitive by nature, it’s just that as you grow older, you sometimes downplay these sides of yourself outside the sports fields. But this was all forgotten during the first ever Kahoot in my class. An unexpected highlight here was that it was one of the quieter girls who was the first to win. The second attempt had to be interrupted after only three questions due to technical problems, but it was charming to see that a girl who struggles with the language and who never raises her hand won that round.

After this little jewel was introduced at my school it seems like every teacher wants to try it out on their students. Let’s just hope that the students will not get tired of it. As a entertaining recap and an educational game, it works very well.

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