Kahoot! Culture

Most of us haven’t considered learning awesome since kindergarten, when all we were learning were addition and spelling words. To the rescue came Kahoot!, promising to make learning fun. First launched in August 2013 in Norway, Kahoot!, a game-based learning platform that uses competitive trivia to teach students, had already amassed 50 million monthly users just four years later. Known for its quirky music and leaderboard features, the website has become a sort of cultural phenomenon, with one game played over livestream in May 2017 having more than 10,000 players.

Despite only being around for a few years, many of Stuyvesant’s teachers prefer using Kahoot! as a way of reviewing material before an exam to conventional methods, such as handing out review packets. Freshman geometry teacher Anthony Del Latto said, “It's something that's really good for review sessions because that's what I use it for, and I've found a lot of success with that. And the kids really love it.”

He first learned about Kahoot! from multiple students in his double period geometry class. After listening to the suggestions of his students and using it in his classroom, Del Latto admitted, “For multiple choice questions, it is a legitimate form of assessment.” However, as Kahoot! does not include a short response setting, Del Latto does not use it frequently.

Despite this shortcoming, Del Latto enjoys the fact that he can see results in real time within minutes. He explained that Kahoot! allows his students to see which multiple choice questions were particularly difficult and the common mistakes made by students. He stated, “When the percentages pop up on the smartboard, [students] can see that a certain number of students got [a question] correct or incorrect. We can talk about what errors they might have made in the multiple choice questions. It helps students recognize where they might have gone wrong.”

As Kahoot! is easy to use and has quick results, Del Latto recommends using Kahoot! to other teachers. He clarified, “It's good to use in a review session, but I don’t think it's something you should use every single day.”

Though Kahoot! may particularly lend itself to math questions due to the time limit ensuring quick thinking on the part of the students, chemistry teacher Kenneth Kan has found that its format is also helpful for teaching his students chemistry. Kan is no stranger to the world of creative review methods. Prior to using Kahoot! for review, he used Jeopardy!, which is similar to Kahoot! in that it is a competitive trivia question game. However, the similarities stop there.

“Jeopardy! is much more difficult to monitor because Kahoot! is a computer-based program. I used to play Jeopardy!, and I put the kids in groups to answer the questions. The problem with Jeopardy! is that if one person knows all of the answers, then the other people on their team can just leech off of them. That’s what I like about Kahoot!; it measures what one person knows,” Kan said. “I also used to do turn-based Jeopardy!, where there was no ringing in of the answers, but the kids didn’t like that.”

Kan first learned about Kahoot! two years ago from another teacher. After trying Kahoot! once, he realized that it was the superior way of reviewing with students and began to use it all the time, getting other teachers to use the website.

“Kahoot! gives them an idea of the types of questions that are going to be on the exam. Practice questions teach students about the language of the questions, and they need to get used to the language of the questions [in order to do well]. One thing I like about Kahoot! is that you can review the questions that you got wrong at home, since I can send out the link to the Kahoot! to the entire class,” Kan said.

However, Kahoot! itself is only part of what makes the system so useful for Kan. “I give extra credit to students who make the leaderboard, so the top five students from the Kahoot!. It really makes everyone take the game more seriously,” Kan laughed.

Sophomore Nicole Zheng enjoys using Kahoot! in class in order to review for exams. She explained, “I do learn more when using Kahoot! because it provides me with a better understanding of what I know and don't know about the topic. The mistakes I make help me focus more on my weak points so that I can improve and do well on the test.”

Freshman Vicky Shiu agreed with Zheng. “It allows students to learn more effectively when used in the classroom, at least for me in my biology class where some topics are so difficult to comprehend. Kahoot! is an interactive activity that encourages a competitive environment. The competition only gives motivation for students to understand the topic better in order to beat their friends,” she said.

Zheng revealed, “It's exciting because of the competition that comes with it. This helps me stimulate my brain to think faster and prepare better for my tests.”

Not everyone adores Kahoot! to the extent that Zheng does. Sophomore Joseph Yu thinks that Kahoot! is effective, but he dislikes the competitive nature. He pointed out, “Kahoot! is taken too seriously by some people. But overall, it’s a fun learning experience that does a good job at reinforcing what we learn in class. Everyone looks forward to it.”

Yu has also noticed a disparity in the teachers that use Kahoot! in their classrooms. He said, “Generally, the teachers in easier classes tend to use Kahoot! while the teachers in the more difficult classes don’t, which annoys me sometimes.”

Students do not just use Kahoot! in the classroom. Sophomore Caroline Magoc has put herself in the role of the teacher and uses Kahoot!. As the co-president of Stuyvesant Geography Club, she works to tutor freshmen taking AP Human Geography. In fact, she first learned about it herself from Kan’s class.

“[When] using it for a teaching club, it’s more for confirming that students understand something than preparing for a test. Also, since we tend not to make our own Kahoot!’s, sometimes the information can be wrong or misleading, and we have to step in and correct it, so Kahoot! isn't the most accurate source for learning but can be very useful nonetheless,” Magoc explained. Kahoot! lets all users create their own games, so it’s important to fact check any quizzes, just like Wikipedia.

“I prefer it over other tools because it’s quick, easy to set up, and usually covers most of the information needed,” Magoc concluded. She believes that by using Kahoot!, she has been able to become a much more effective teacher.

Kahoot! is already working on creating new ways to continue educating children, including a homework app launched last year. While the beta version of this app is currently only available in Norway, Kahoot! plans to expand this service to educators outside of its country within the next two years, letting them assign homework consisting of Kahoot! quizzes. Partnering with Kaplan to provide test prep services, having more and more teachers become aware of the system, and seeing the success of Del Latto and Kan’s students, Kahoot! is going to become even more prominent in education. Hopefully, they’ll be able to convince more teachers to use the program so that we can all spend as much time as possible listening to the sweet jams of the question music.