Kahoot equals easy, fun, gamified assessment

I know none of us have ever been to a bar and played one of those trivia games with the special keypad. But I have heard of them. Perhaps you have as well. Questions come up. The time counts down. The quicker you type in the correct answer, the higher your point score. After every question, you see everyone else’s score – giving you the chance to compare your score with the rest of the group. It can be incredibly addictive and a lot of fun to play.

I mean, that’s what I’ve been told. I would never sit in a bar, playing some silly video trivia game over drinks and snacks with friends. Because that would be, well . . . okay. Yes. I’ve played video trivia games over drinks and snacks with friends. It’s incredibly addictive and a lot of fun.

All good games have three basic elements. These elements combine to make it hard to walk away from the game. The first element is a goal. There has to be something that players are working to achieve. The second element is some sort of instant feedback. All good games give you some idea of how you’re doing, while you’re doing it. And finally there’s something called flow.  Flow is the perfect balance between too easy and too hard. The game has to be hard but not so hard that you can’t win.

The video trivia game has all three. I want to have more points than everyone else. I get feedback after every question telling me how I’m doing. And during the questions, as time is counting down, wrong answers slowly disappear until just at the last second . . . only the correct answer remains. This helps provide a balance between hard and easy. And so millions of people get hooked into playing the game.

All this to say that there’s a new assessment game in town. And it contains the same sort of elements that a good game would contain.

It’s called Kahoot!

Think Socrative or Infuse Learning and you’re starting to get the idea. Kahoot takes the idea of the assessment clickers perfected by Socrative / Infuse Learning and adds gaming components.

Using a simple drag and drop tool, educators create and manage “Kahoots” in the form of quizzes, surveys or polls related to the topics they’re teaching; either asking quick questions to get feedback or opinion, or more in depth questions for formative assessment.

One of the big differences between Socrative and Kahoot! is that the questions are projected on a screen in front of students – much like the video bar trivia game. Your kids use any smart device and browser – phone, tablet, or computer – to join the Kahoot using a specific PIN number. You provide the question and possible answers.  The kids see the answers on their device and select the answer they think is correct. This is the other difference between Kahoot! and other student response systems – it’s not an app, so it’s device neutral making it perfect for BYOD schools or for classrooms with a variety of devices.

Get started by creating an account at Kahoot! Play the sample quiz. Make a few of your own Kahoots. You can add a variety of multimedia to your questions. And when the assessment is over, you can download a spreadsheet with student answers. Try ’em with your kids. You can even have students create their own Kahoots as review or assessments.

There’s not much that beats a good video bar trivia game but Kahoot! comes pretty close.