Kahoot!

At Surrey Centre Elementary, I participated in a 4 classroom battle (Ms. Williams, Ms. Booth, and Ms. Hern) with over 100 students, 26 teams and 26 devices (mostly iPads). It was a hoot! (I know I had to say it once.) It was definitely the most students I've been a part of (but not the most devices). In the beginning it was extremely loud with ear-piercing screaming, so we told them they could shout and yell but no screaming. It improved after that. 

We played in the gym with my A/V cart and it worked out much more smoothly than I thought. Even my 30-watt speaker with a subwoofer seemed to be loud enough for the music to carry through the large space. Basically it was a plug-and-play setup, where I simply plugged in the cart to the outlet and we were ready to go with the projector, MacBook and speakers, while signed into kahoot (https://getkahoot.com/). Then students went onto  kahoot.it, entered the game PIN and were signing in their team. 

We kept the management simple: students would use the first letter of their teacher's last name plus a 1- or 2-word team name. Then they would add their real first names only. 

I found the questions from my Brain Quest cards and chose a variety of questions from a variety of subject areas and interest at the grade level (4 and 5). 

Some minor issues are that a few teams had difficulty logging in or staying logged in. Also, when we tried a second round, we encountered buffering or connectivity issues. 

Overall, the kids had a great time working in groups among individual classes, but also being able to compete with fellow classmates in a much larger and competitive environment. We will most definitely be playing again. Maybe more classes next time?