For the third year in a row, the Kahoot! Cup has captivated young minds and sparked global connections! Steve Auslander, a teacher, hero Kahoot!’er and our ambassador from Indianapolis, Indiana, organized this amazing tournament on November 5th and 6th to celebrate the Microsoft Global Learning Connection. This year, a staggering 845 teams from 35 countries participated! As Steve says, the Kahoot! Cup provides “an incredible lesson for the youth of the world, to learn that we are more alike than we are different.” That’s what we call global learning!

Steve Auslander’s class is ready for the Kahoot! Cup 2019

Steve first tried out connected Kahoot!’ing with a large global audience when he ran a science and technology summer camp several years ago. He asked fellow Kahoot! ambassador Steve Sherman to join from South Africa with his class, along with his friend Paul “Lanny” Watkins from Wales. “So there we were at a summer camp in Indiana, playing Kahoot! with students from Capetown, South Africa and Cardiff, Wales, and we all had a blast singing along to Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, and music from Moana. It was amazing how much pop culture united us.”

After that, his friends encouraged Steve to take his idea even further, and the Kahoot! Cup was born.

Here’s how the competition was organized:

Teachers signed up for a time slot, and their classes prepared to battle it out for the trophy. No matter which time slot a team participates in, everyone plays the same global pop culture trivia kahoot. The groups join the session via Skype, with the screen shared, and the game begins!

Teams not only represent their classroom and school, but also their country with pride. Steve “really loves the excitement generated right before game time when classes from around the world take such national pride and post pictures with their flags and signs.”

Steve kept track of the best scores from the week and at the end, the team with the highest score was proclaimed the winner of the entire Kahoot! Cup. Thanks to social media, it was easy to follow along with the competition. One of Steve’s favorite parts of the contest is seeing videos of students participating in the tournament on Twitter. He loves “knowing that those cheers and squeals of happiness and excitement are happening in classrooms all over the world because of the Kahoot! Cup!” This year, a team from the Kahoot! headquarters in Norway even joined in on the fun.

Keep scrolling to see pictures of global collaboration and play in action!

Playing in the Kahoot! Cup at the Kahoot! office

Interested in playing Kahoot! with other classrooms through videoconferencing? Learn from Steve himself in the connected Kahoot!’ing course, available for free as part of our Kahoot! Certified for schools program. And don’t miss out on next year’s Kahoot! Cup! Keep an eye on Steve’s Twitter account in October 2020 for information on how to participate!