Kahoot - making them fast, easy, and fun -

Thanks to Kristen from Teaching Trio for the Link-Up. I actually wrote this blog over Christmas break, but forgot to get it posted on the first day. Oh well, hopefully I’m not too late to the party. Maybe I will set up some reminders on my phone as suggested by Mary at 4th Works to remind me when to blog!

I wanted to share a few tips for creating quick & easy, customized and fun Kahoot games.

First of all, if you haven’t heard about Kahoot yet, then please go here to create a free account so you can check it out. Basically, Kahoot allows you to create your own online review game, survey, or discussion. I have primarily used it for the purposes of review so that’s what I’ll focus on here. My students were loving these so much that I made a Christmas trivia Kahoot to play as one of our class party games before break.

Quick & Easy
Need to prepare a Kahoot in a hurry? First, look at the public Kahoots. There are thousands of them already created and many more being created each day. You might find one that fits your needs perfectly. There’s nothing faster than using one that’s already been created. Word of caution though – always preview the entire thing first. From my experience, mistakes are common in them. Like me, many teachers are probably creating these late at night to use with their class the next day. Also, you never know what images (inaapropriate or otherwise) someone may have added to the questions. Better safe, than sorry. If you like most of a Kahoot that has been made but find mistakes or questions you don’t like, click “duplicate” and then edit it to your liking. Questions can be edited or deleted entirely and new questions can be added as well.

Here are few public Kahoots that I made that you could try out if you teach any of these topics:

Customized
Kahoot has a wonderful feature of allowing images to be dropped into the question. They add a lot of interest to your Kahoot so I always try add something if I have time. I’d recommend pulling together your images you want to use first. It saves a lot of jumping back and forth. If the images I want to use could be found on the internet somewhere, then I usually just use a google search, click images, and then just click “Save As” on the images I want to use.

Now, if I want to create my own modified images to use in Kahoot (see below) then I use Apple’s keynote presentation software. (I’m sure Powerpoint can do the same features but I can’t say for sure.)

Watch the short video below to see how I do this.

Fun
Want to make your Kahoot’s even more fun?

Try these ideas.

Have students work in partners or in teams instead of individually.
Before starting the game, go to “Advanced options” and choose it to”Automatically move through questions.” Then play along with your students! They love to try to beat the teacher!
I like to add themes with things my students like to my Kahoots. So far I’ve done cartoon characters, super heroes, villains, cute puppies, cute kitties, and sports stars. Here’s a few example images I have used.
I recently discovered that you could add animated gifs to your Kahoots. (see examples below) The kids love these. Here’s how to find them easily.
Do a google search for a topic. Go to “Images” then “Search tools” then “Type” then choose “Animated.”