Kahoot - Fun for All (and Data for Teachers)

All of my classes (except Year 11, for some reason) LOVE Kahoot. Even the Year 13's love Kahoot and regularly ask for it. 9KLe plays it every Friday afternoon, as a reward for working well and also for me to collect data and see who has understood what and where I need to go next. 

In case you don't know, Kahoot is a revision tool where teachers can easily and quickly set up multi-choice questions. Then during class time the questions and options can be projected up onto the board for students to answer on their devices. This comes complete with music and a constantly updating leaderboard.  I like to just ask 10 questions, and a review can be done in under 5 minutes, but that's just me. 

An important note: If you want to use the data from the game, students must log in with a username you can recognise. Just their name, for instance. I concede to modifications of their name; for example Robin in KLe likes to be Echo Robin, while Pili in Y13 likes to cleverly merge his name with the topic being quizzed, e.g. Pilikinesis

Link for teachers: getkahoot.com

Link for students to log in and play during class: kahoot.it 

Once all the fun and games are over, you can log back in and look at the full data set from the game. This is how:

Step 1: Sign in

Step 2: Look on the bottom-right hand side of the next webpage that you're taken to, and click on the little blue, green and yellow Drive button for the quiz's data you want to download to Google Drive, or the purple one if you want to download another way.

Step 3: Click save.

Step 4: Choose where to save your results to. I have a folder for Year 9 Kahoot data in my drive. Hit change to choose your save destination.

Step 5: When happy with the destination, click save.

Step 6: Open it by clicking the Kahoot Results link and have a look.

Step 7:  Quickly see which student got the most correct, or scroll sideways across to see which question/s stumped students the most (in red). 

Research and Soapbox

This morning I am in at Epsom Campus at the Faculty of Education, observing Dawn Garbett teaching her 614 course to fledgling science teachers. My job this morning is to observe in the "video camera" style - recording what I see, hear, notice and think during her lesson. 

My particular focus is on pedagogical underpinnings, on and off task behaviour with devices, proficiency with devices, when students are most and least engaged, and anything that interests me. 

This is part of a research project aimed to help all of us in the research group reflect on and improve our practice, particularly around the use of devices in class. 

The main digital tool utilised in Dawn's very practical, excellent, investigatory (which chips are the crunchiest, which are the oiliest, design an investigation, GO!) lesson was gosoapbox.com; a site that I will investigate further later today as it has the fascinating feature of a confusion-meter for people to anonymously confess their confusion online!

Gosoapbox.com also has quiz, poll and discussion features, although the thread on the discussion board doesn't appear to allow people to respond to others' comments, unlike a blog or Google+, or numerous other tools. 

As I sit here and make "critical friend" comments on my notes of Dawn's lesson I wonder how I can be more purposeful in my selection and use of tools, and the benefits they provide for my students.