Socrative vs. Kahoot!

My endless resource of new ideas for the last five years has been Twitter. There are so many brilliant teachers, principals, other school administratives and companys sharing their best links, ideas, blog posts etc. And because Twitter is global, it goes on 24/7. Every morning I wake up I check my Twitter feed. Many times it gives me something new to try out at school.

Last week I found a new, interesting site called GetKahoot.com. Kahoot is a student response system much like the Socrative is. Teacher can make quizzes, start web discussions or make surveys. This far these two are almost identical.

The main difference between these two platforms is that the gamification element of Kahoot is much stronger. The solution is really simple. They've added points to the game. After each question you'll get the scoreboard on the whiteboard and you'll also recieve personal feedback like: "Congratulations Joe! You have 5230 points. You're at the 5th place right after Jill at the 4th place." So simple and yet so clever!

It's incredible how the pupils' engagement grows 200% when there is this competition element included. I didn't believe my eyes when there was this sports-like celebration after every question "Yes", "Wohooo", "Ooooh my my". The kids where having a PlayStation-moment during a normal history lesson. They actually wanted to play the game THREE times. I've never seen this happen in a classroom.

This class of 5th graders is really good in history. We are doing a project on ancient Greece history at the moment. They are doing it in groups. Each group has to produce some kind of media production. Some groups use Prezi, some do Padlet and some do a quiz with Socrative. I like Socrative too. It's great. But just like the children I'm a little sorry I found Kahoot only a week ago and didn't introduce it to the class before today.

In every good game there are three basic elements that make the game so engaging that you don't want to quit playing. First, there has to be a goal to achieve, something to go for. Second, the game usually gives you instant positive feedback. And finally third, it has to give you enough of a challenge to keep the motivation strong.

Kahoot pretty much has these all. The goal is to be the winner of your class. Kahoot gives you instant feedback after every single question. It even gives you personal instant feedback. It was so funny to look at these children smile when they saw their name and points on the screen of their own mobile device or school laptop.

Kahoot doesn't give the price for free for teacher. Teachers are still needed to produce the right questions for the class... or are they? Why can't you just let your pupils log in and start producing their own Kahoots. Because "great learning starts by asking great questions".

ps. I have to say that I don't get any profit from Kahoot for this blog or myself but I suggest you try it yourself and you'll understand why am I so enthusiastic about it. And I'm not saying that a simple quiz machine solves the problems of learning. No! It's just that every now and then you'll have to have some fun in the classroom. Today we definately had lots of fun. I'm really sorry that I can't publish the great video of the class today. I want to respect the will of the parents of these children and not to show their faces on a public internet site, like my blog is. But I promise you'll get the exact same results if you just give Kahoot a shot. It was amazingly easy to do the quiz.

ps2. If you want to play my first Kahoot, you'll find it here. Unfortunately it's in Finnish.

Why build a personal learning environment

Social networks are changing the world more rapidly than it has changed probably ever before. Is the school changing as fast too? Probably not, but we still have hope. More and more educators are building their own personal learning environments in the internet. These, so to say, "connected educators" are sharing, collaborating, coaching and consulting eachother over the net.

Just today I found the most amazing visualization of the things I tried to describe above. Check it out and see:



The whole thing above is not a dream or a fairytale. I know dozens of educators who work just like that. In our school we are taking steps to that direction too.

At the moment we have the FinnABLE 2020 -project that is trying to re-invent the classroom. The project is all about the new learning environment, sharing and collaboration. The other project that helps to build the learning in a new direction is KuumaTVT -project. This project is trying to give tools for the teachers for the 21st century teaching. KuumaTVT project provides further education in the ICT skills for the teachers.

But no project or further education can change the attitude more than your own experience. That is why a 21st century teacher should take the first step into the social networks and start to learn, share and collaborate with other educators. One of the greatest tools for building your own personal learning environment is Twitter. While Facebook tends to be more focused on people's personal life Twitter is more professional.

A few ideas to get started, you'll find in this presentation I did a while ago. See if it helps and start SHARING:

Twitter how i use it from Esa Kukkasniemi

FinnABLE 2020 -a meet with a Greek

Last March the municipality of Kirkkonummi enrolled in FinnABLE 2020 - a project that aims to create new methods and tools for sharing knowledge and experiences using new technology and advancing 21st century skills, especially problem solving and creativity. I personally took part in the kick off -meeting two months ago at the University of Helsinki. The athmosphere was inspiring.

The project is managed by professor Hannele Niemi and director Jari Multisilta from the Cicero Learning Center. The project is funded by Tekes together with universities (University of Helsinki and the Tampere University of Technology) companies and municipalities. Kirkkonummi is one of those municipalities. There are 12 schools involved with the project from Finland and many partner schools also from around the world.

Today we had a meeting at the Upper Secondary School of Kirkkonummi with two researchers (Jari Honkala / Helsinki and Marianna Vivitsou from Greece)one business partner and the principal of the school Mr. Matti Autero. The Upper Secondary School of Kirkkonummi is going to be one of the schools that will take part in this project. The Vuorenmäki School will also be involved.

Finn able 2020 5.6.2012

View more PowerPoint from Esa Kukkasniemi

I presented our plan for the project for the researchers. The plan is what I call version 1.0. Hopefully we still have time to work with the details in August. Anyway, we got good feedback. Our plan supports sharing, collaboration and problem solving. They are all important issues at the project. The researchers encouraged us to stick with a simple plan. The whole FinnABLE -project consists of many small projects and it's not necessary that the projects are very big. The idea is also that these projects would not end after FinnABLE 2020 but would last and change the school culture for good.

I thank you, Jari, Heikki, Matti and Marianna. It was a good meeting today! I'm especially thankful to Marianna who promised to organize a partner school for us from Greece. So, maybe in the near future also the pupils and the teachers of the Vuorenmäki School will have A MEET WITH A GREEK!