It was all planned out. An epic Kahoot! session for students at the South African National Science Festival of 2019. The venue was set up and the students began arriving. And then, just when we were getting ready to start, something didn’t go as planned…
When tech hiccups get in the way…
WiFi stopped working in the venue! After several attempts at creating a hotspot with my phone, I realised that we had 280 enthusiastic students packed into a venue (while we expected 90). They were all looking forward to a fun-filled evening. I had a wonderful kahoot quiz prepared, but in the worst possible moment, I couldn’t connect to the internet…
But, what I’ve learned through years of using Kahoot!, is that there’s no room for panic. No matter what, just have fun, so, in this situation, I had to improvise! And here’s what we did:
Improvise! How to play Kahoot! offline
I asked the students to get themselves into teams. Each team was given 4 sheets of paper. They had to write the four color options for Kahoot answers. Red, blue, yellow and green. I explained that I would read out the questions and then the answers. Students had to discuss answers in their groups.
As soon as they selected the answer, they sent a runner to the front. When the first runner arrived I then began a 30-second countdown. Any teams that did not send their representative to the front by the time I reached zero, got no points. Teams could not change their answers once their runner had arrived.
I read out the questions and answer options from the Kahoot! app on my phone in Edit mode as it showed the questions, potential answers and solutions. This allowed me to skip non-graphic questions from the quiz.
Adapt your quiz to any situation
And guess what, the excitement in the room was over the top! The room was buzzing. It all started off as a nightmare with a poor internet connection and more than double the audience size, but we pulled it off with Kahoot! and made it fun for our students, just like they expected. This is evidence that even when your students don’t have access to a device or WiFi and your projector or monitor is no longer showing the quiz, you can still adapt the quiz and make it work in any situation. Don’t panic and have fun!
