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
Hi Emily, I like Kahoot too. I have never used Booklet it looks interesting, My daughter is in graduate school and they often use games to review before their exams, especially Kahoot. Gamification is a powerful tool for learning at all levels!
ReplyDeleteChristina, it is interesting that gamification can impact various grade levels. As I was researching my topic, I found that gamification is also used in the workplace. For example, employers use gamification to educate their staff, or even allow them to get to know each other. Gamification does not have many boundaries and is helpful to all.
DeleteEmily,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post! I LOVE kahoot and blooket, those are my most used gamification tools! We use kahoot and blooket to both review skills before students are tested on them. It has been an amazing resource to show students because some of them have created blookets on their own and create games with their peers! I highly recommend both!
Emily,
DeleteI love how you shared that you allow your students to create their own Kahoots or Blookets. I think this is a great way to move gamification from a lower-level skill to a higher-level by making them create. This is something I want to try in my classroom and am interested in seeing how it goes. I think it would push students to think outside the box by having them think from a 'teachers' perspective'.
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ReplyDeleteKaitlyn,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your opinion and letting me know about Gimkit. I have heard of this site, but have never tried it out. I think both Blooket and Kahoot can get repetitive after a while, so I am interested in trying new sites. My students like completing escape rooms and love the game Among Us, so I think it would be a great fit to my room. I can't wait to try it.
Thank you,
Emily
Emily, I have experience with Kahoot but not Booklet. I do like to use Kahoot as a review tool for my students. The game is very engaging and the students love to play it. The one thing that I do not like about Kahoot is how it gives extra points for how fast students reply. This can cause students to rush and then they reflect on their answer and sometimes realize they rushed. I will have to try out Booklet, thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Emily!
ReplyDeleteI think that the resources you provided are a great way to easily incorporate gamification in your classroom at an entry level. I have had experience with Kahoot, but Booklet is new to me and I would like to do some further digging into how it works. I mainly like using these platforms for end of the unit reviews to keep it fun and interesting for my students. Thank you for the insight into the resources! I will be following up with learning more about booklet and trying to implement it in my class!