For many educators around the world, it can be difficult to find time to prepare lesson plans on social-emotional learning, and facilitate activities that are engaging and impactful for students. This has become even more challenging in the last few years with the transitions to virtual and hybrid learning and then back to the classroom. At the same time, educators are recognizing social-emotional learning as more important than ever.
Empatico is a global initiative to foster empathy and understanding among students worldwide. A project of Builders, Empatico’s activities, tools, and games are designed to help students and educators develop and strengthen critical thinking and deliberative dialogue skills. As the demand for SEL resources grew, the Empatico team saw the opportunity of incorporating kahoots into their activities and reaching new learners globally by becoming a Kahoot! Academy partner. Shraya explained that Empatico began their partnership with Kahoot! with three key objectives:
- Leverage their expertise around empathy and social-emotional learning (SEL) to build games aligned with their mission and values
- Spark meaningful interactions and conversations between students (both within their own class and across partner classes)
- Provide opportunities for educators and students to share about themselves, their cultures, and communities.
Since launching their partner profile page on Kahoot! Academy, Empatico has published 40 SEL kahoots, with content covering topics including cooperation, compassion, digital citizenship and global cultures. They have also experimented with different types of Kahoot! experiences that can be easily adapted for most classroom settings, such as Warm-Up Games to help break the ice between new friends.
“By building a content library on Kahoot!, we are able to offer ready-made resources for educators which help address their classroom needs around social-emotional learning,” said Shraya. “Kahoot! helps us make social-emotional learning more accessible, interactive and fun, while allowing educators to measure their students’ knowledge of skills such as perspective taking, empathy, and critical thinking.
“Additionally, working with the Kahoot! team has been critical in making our content more effective, through their constant support and encouragement, sharing of best practices, and constructive feedback.”
Of course, for any educational content provider, the ultimate test is what educators and learners have to say. So how has Empatico’s community of teachers and students responded to their Kahoot! learning experiences?
“Our educators have loved the addition of Kahoot! in our content offerings!” said Shraya. “We have heard extremely positive feedback about how students become excited as soon as they hear the Kahoot! music and realize it’s time to play a game, or how students wouldn’t stop laughing or conversing amongst themselves as they played together, and strengthened their friendship and connection with each other.”
Empatico’s learning content on Kahoot! Academy has also not only supported students, but educators as well, helping them save time and create more dynamic and engaging experiences for their classes.
“Educators have also expressed appreciation for the visually-appealing interface and graphics of the Kahoot! platform, and how these games offer a low-prep and flexible method of delivering important concepts.”