At Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, California, the teachers have loved integrating Kahoot! into their classrooms. In fact, it’s taken over the school by storm! Science teachers, math teachers, drama teachers – all of them play Kahoot! The teachers can’t stop talking about how much they – and their students – enjoy it. The school recently upgraded to Kahoot! Pro and this has made creating and sharing kahoots even easier. Here, they discuss their Kahoot! experience.
Effortless formative assessment
Kahoot! provides teachers with a fun way to assess how well students are learning materials, and sometimes they don’t even realize it. As Thien Pham, a computer arts teacher and the self-titled “King of Kahoot!” puts it, “I can be the cool teacher and not be testing, but actually test!”
Social studies teacher Kevin Anderson uses Kahoot! as a formative assessment tool to see if students are retaining knowledge. “Only 20% of the students know this material? I thought it was obvious!” Kahoot! has helped Kevin isolate areas where students are struggling with the material so that he can go back and review concepts.
Easily collaborate with other teachers
With Kahoot! Pro for schools, it only takes a few seconds to share games with your colleagues. Stephanie Wang, the instructional technologist, says that Bishop O’Dowd has “over 1,200 students, so we have a lot of teachers that teach the same subject. Being able to share kahoots across the same kinds of classes in different time periods can be really beneficial and time saving.”
Technology without any stress
If anxiety around complicated technology is preventing you from trying Kahoot!, you have nothing to fear. Stephanie points out that kahoots are “easy to make and easy for the students to join.” Teachers are able to quickly take material they want to cover in the classroom and incorporate it into a kahoot.
Romeo Baldeviso, the director of technology and a geometry teacher, echoes Stephanie’s sentiments: “when I set-up my first one, it was pretty easy. The kids were engaged and I’ve had great results!” Best of all, the platform is easy for anyone, regardless of how tech savvy they are, to start creating. This ease of use was a relief for drama and film teacher William McNeil, who says kahoots “are fun to make. It’s not stressful around the tech.”
“A fun way to learn and play”
Kahoot! has become one of William’s favorite classroom tools. His students share this sentiment because “just the announcement of “we’re going to play Kahoot!’” receives shouts of “yippees and yays!” The contagious enthusiasm of playing Kahoot! is hard to ignore. The classroom “gets loud and ruckus” William says, “but they’re tuned in to it so much” as their behavior shifts positively.
Mario Mihalik, a science teacher at Bishop O’Dowd, has also noticed how students have latched on to Kahoot! “It’s inviting to the students,” he says, “especially with the background music. The students love that. It’s a fun way to learn and play!” If you’re looking for a way to liven up your classroom teaching strategies easily and effectively, give Kahoot! a try by signing up for a teacher account today.
