Have you ever wanted to gamify your classroom, but do not know where to start? Below, I have listed the applications I would recommend implementing into your room.
1. Kahoot
Kahoot is a free application that provides students with an interactive experience. Educators have a choice of creating lessons, polls, quizzes, courses, and assessments. The most popular feature is just a short Kahoot where teachers create questions and provide multiple choice answers. Instead of making a Kahoot, teachers can also choose to discover premade Kahoots. Students are presented with the question and must choose an answer both quickly and correctly. After each question, students are shown their standing, and the class is shown the top five students. When giving students the Kahoot, the teacher has options as to how they would like to present it. For starters, teachers may assign the Kahoot for students to play at their own pace. The teacher may also play it live with a whole group with up to forty players. Students play head-to-head to try to earn first place. Recently, Kahoot added different game modes, beyond the classic game modes. There are team modes where students are selected into different groups and must work together to beat their opponent team.
There are also modes where students must work together as the whole class. Submarine Squad requires all the students to work together to swim away from the shark that is trying to eat them. Each time the students answer a word correctly, they get further from the shark. Eventually, two students are shown symbols that they must communicate with the class in order to move on. Kahoot is a great application that has many different features and modes to appeal to all classrooms. It provides great opportunities for students to engage in the content before higher stakes such as assessments. Kahoot also allows for teachers to examine the data after completing it. The application provides teachers with students’ accuracy for each question which is great to use as formative data. Teachers can take this data and change future instruction to meet the needs of the learners.
A teacher's guide to Kahoot:
2. Blooket
Similar to Kahoot, Blooket is another free application that enhances students’ experiences by making it more interactive. Teachers can assign premade questions sets, copy a question set and change some of the responses, or create their own. Blooket allows for teachers to insert visuals such as pictures or GIFs. After selecting a question set, the host must pick which game mode they would like to play. Blooket has a handful of modes that fluctuate from where the students face each other head to head, or are working to be the top scorer. There are over ten different modes that each have their own plot line and provide students with directions to succeed. For example, Crypto Hack is a mode where each student must create a secret password. Then, they are shown a set of questions that the teacher assigned. If the questions are answered correctly, students are allowed to attempt to guess another player’s password. Students receive points for stealing passwords and for getting answers correctly. Blooket also provides teachers with the ability to host a game live, allow students to play solo, or assign it as homework. Similar to Kahoot, teachers can also analyze the data after completing a Blooket with the class. Teachers can see each players’ accuracy which will help with future instruction. One thing that stuck out to me was that Blooket will verify a set to ensure the information on the set is accurate.
A teacher's guide to Blooket:
Please respond in the comments: Do you have any experience with Kahoot or Blooket? If so, how to you use them in your classroom?
References:
Blooket. (n.d.). https://www.blooket.com/
Kahoot! (n.d.). https://create.kahoot.it/?deviceId=ff37cb8d-18db-4611-b751-51650e73e44dR&sessionId=1695659551495
McCarthy, J. (2021, December 13). Using gamification to ignite student learning. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/article/using-gamification-ignite-student-learning
YouTube. (2014, November 14). 5 minute guide to kahoot. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAfnia7-rMk
YouTube. (2020, October 19). Top 5 gamification examples in education today!. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CZtIIy7tRU
YouTube. (2021, February 7). How to play blooket | teacher tutorial. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3H3FLa4FIA
