Kahoots, Need I Say More?

[Renee Smith]

There have been quite a few different moments in my tutoring experience that will definitely stick with me for a while, like the isolation of the neurodivergent student from my last blog (yeah I will definitely not be getting over that for a decent while) or how one student told me she was “one with the spiders” since she sat in the corner of the classroom (ninth-graders are weird, what can I say, figuring out your identity takes some weird turns). But nothing will come close to a specific image from the day Mr. Wiebe had the eleventh-graders play a Kahoot.

As many of us probably remember, Kahoots were always THE thing to get a class hyped up (if your teachers never used Kahoots, I’m sorry). Between the music (always a bop), getting to choose a funny yet not outright inappropriate nickname for the times when you didn’t have to use your real names (always a disappointment when you have to be yourself and not pretend to be a classmate), and the thrill of choosing an answer faster than your friends and getting enough points to get on the leaderboard, Kahoot days were the best. You could be reviewing the most boring topic possible, and a Kahoot would still cause everyone to be excited about it. In my high school, students in earlier periods of classes even went so far as to post on the Afterschool app when a certain class had a Kahoot so everyone in the later hours could get excited. Moving past my nostalgia, it was incredible to see the class the day they had a Kahoot. The eleventh-grade class is usually the most mellow high school class I’ve ever seen, since it’s sixth hour and everyone already sort of knows chemistry from ninth grade so there’s a lot of students who seem to zone out. On Kahoot day though? Absolutely everyone was paying attention the moment Mr. Wiebe said the word Kahoot. These students, many of whom I’ve never seen in class without their iPads, ALL were putting their iPads away before Mr. Wiebe had even finished talking. I’m not just talking about closing the cover and setting it down on the desk, oh no, this was full on in the backpack put away. When Mr. Wiebe opened the Kahoot waiting room and said that they could use whatever nickname they wanted (appropriate ones only of course), some of them even smiled! Or so I think since their eyes got all squinched up (I couldn’t see their mouths through the masks). Usually these kids look like they’re in physical pain as they walk into that classroom, which morphs into a blank look once a lecture starts. But they were (maybe) smiling! The frenzy of choosing nicknames was so fun to watch since it literally took several minutes of the kids putting one nickname up and then rethinking and putting a new name up and the participant count fluctuating wildly for Mr. Wiebe to finally just close the waiting room the next time the participant count was at twenty-five. When the actual Kahoot started, everyone seemed to lean forward, fingers posed over their phone screens, staring intently at the projector screen. It was insanely cool to watch how into it every single student got, choosing answers as fast as they could and either lighting up if they got it right or looking crestfallen if they had been wrong. The best moment (by which I mean the funniest) definitely was when this really quiet kid, who had been on the leaderboard the whole time, got a question wrong and yelled the f-word quite loudly as his nickname dropped off the leaderboard. The kid immediately blushed and looked at Mr. Wiebe to see if he’d noticed. Of course Mr. Wiebe had and very kindly said (while trying to hold back laughter) that while he knew the game was exciting, they still weren’t supposed to swear in class. The game quickly continued due to the urging of other students and every student left that day with a smile, or again what I assumed to be a smile based on the eye scrunching.

I think what was so memorable about this day was the utter and total engagement from the students. While it kinda followed the pattern of more active student engagement with hands on activities that I had seen in the class previously, I’d never really seen such obvious student enjoyment. It really drove home the idea of appealing to students’ intrinsic motivation by connecting the learning to something they like, though in this case it was less that topic was something the students liked and more that the method was something they enjoyed. So instead of teaching about history by connecting it to historical romances to appeal to middle schoolers, it was more making the action of learning more fun, just like when the students learned about elements by making elemental plaques for a giant periodic table. It also showed how students seemed to be able to relax and enjoy the activity more when they weren’t worried about being graded, since the implication of not using real names is that Mr. Wiebe could not possibly have any idea who was who and therefore wouldn’t be able to grade them. Students were literally only able to see their own knowledge measurement since they knew their nickname and were shown their own score on their phone after every question. Basically, this moment with the Kahoot was the best exemplification of many of the arguments of how to engage students that I’d seen in class. The conclusion it led me to however is in a way my own shaping of the arguments we’ve seen in class until they actually accurately represent what I’ve observed during my tutoring, so it doesn’t perfectly line up with any of the original arguments we saw in class, but it led me to the idea that simply not grading students isn’t enough to fully engage them in a topic, but the topic must also be connected to something that appeals to them. While we don’t fully see this conclusion within the Kahoot example (probably because Kahoots are so amazing and fun that they are an exception to this conclusion), I think this conclusion more accurately represents the overarching patterns I’ve seen within my tutoring experience.

[Shaw Qin]

Hi Renee,

I enjoy reading your post about how helpful Kahoot can be! I can feel the energy from your enthusiastic descriptions. However, from my experience observing students playing Kahoot, I think it could sometimes get a little out of hand when students get too competitive. I saw students so disappointed that they dropped out of the leaderboard or yelling “It’s unfair!” if whatever happened that they accidentally picked the wrong answer. Also, the leaderboard and top-three ranking features of Kahoot inherently promote comparison and competition. So instead of pure intrinsic motivation toward the game, part of students’ enjoyment of playing Kahoot may stem from the extrinsic reward of seeing their name on the leaderboard, getting in the top three, or receiving a prize from the teacher when they get in the top three. Therefore, I think it would be the teacher’s job to make sure that students don’t become overly competitive while still enjoying the format of Kahoot.

On a side note, my somewhat adverse reaction toward Kahoot may also relate to my aversion from the overt competition as personality and/or cultural upbringing, so it doesn’t mean that the competitiveness of Kahoot definitely harms the students.

Shaw

[Paul Fairchild]

Ahh, I remember when my teachers started using Kahoot back in 8th grade. We all thought it was the coolest thing. Of course, as we grew up and it became more and more popular to use, the novelty wore off and it became a timewaster. Of course, no one minded the break- it just became an excuse to mess around. However, used effectively, there’s no doubt in my mind that when used correctly,  Kahoot can be used as an excellent tool to engage students, especially in the context of reviewing for a test, perhaps. I appreciate you recalling this memory and I recall moments from my own tutoring where the students were totally engaged.

[Author]

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