Whilst Kahoot! is excellent for reviewing or assessment purposes, the uses of the platform extend much further: it can be used to instruct and teach new content. We call this blind kahoot!’ing – a term coined by educator superhero Stephanie Castle.

Introduce a new topic by creating a blind kahoot

A blind kahoot is where students learn a new topic from scratch, together. The purpose is not for students to understand the topic right away, but to gradually build up knowledge and understanding as the kahoot progresses. The teacher can facilitate this with the aid of reinforcement questions, and by incorporating media to spark critical thinking.

Blind kahoots work as a great leveler for students, as regardless of skill, they are learning something new together, rather than simply receiving instructions from the teacher. Discover more on the art of blind kahoot!’ing and get your creative juices flowing!

Revise and practice with ghost mode

Ghost mode takes learning to the next step when reinforcing and revising knowledge. Once you’ve played a game of kahoot, you can click ‘Play again’, either immediately after the game, or by navigating to your ‘My results’ page, to launch the same game, but with ‘ghost’ players now alongside live players – i.e., to try to beat your previous score.

Ghost mode is great not only for students in your own class to revise, but also for challenging other classes or colleagues to beat your score, or even other schools in your district or region. Simply share the ghost mode link for the kahoot found under ‘My Results’.

In fact, the possibilities are endless – schools in California could challenge a school in Hong Kong, for example! Check out our guide to get started with ghost mode!

Create a kahoot offline

Students don’t need a Kahoot! account to get creative – they can work on inventing their own kahoot questions with simple pen and paper. Students can use this downloadable and printable template to start coming up with ideas for questions, answers (both correct and incorrect!), and imagery to include.

For a fun group challenge, have students create a single kahoot question individuals (or in small teams) around a specific topic, and choose the best questions to include as part of a final Kahoot!. Students will not only feel empowered that their creation is being played in class by their peers, but they will also be taking leadership of their learning. We call this the ‘learners to leaders’ pedagogy.

Create a ‘selfie’ kahoot as an icebreaker or introduction for back to school

Make back to school fun by using Kahoot! to introduce yourself to your new students – this is known as the ‘selfie kahoot’. This originated with the K!rew themselves – when a new staff member joins Kahoot!, they create a kahoot quiz about themselves so the rest of the company can get to know them. There’s no reason why this can’t extend to the classroom! As a fun icebreaker activity, you can create a kahoot about yourself to play in class to introduce yourself to your students.

Alternatively, you can flip it so you can learn about your class, by challenging students to create a question each about themselves, or even what they did during their summer vacations. A great classroom energizer!

For more ideas, check out Kahoot! Ambassador Carol Salva’s deep dive into selfie kahoots for confidence building and language production.

Wow – that’s a wealth of tips to deepen your knowledge of Kahoot! this summer! Thanks so much Leslie for presenting for Kahoot! during ISTE 2017 – if you haven’t already, you can connect with her on Twitter @lesliefisher!