KAHOOOOOOOOOT!

I apologize to those who have been following the Discover Academy's Media Bytes journey. I have been stricken with this terrible cold that will just not go away. I've heard a lot of other people are battling it too this season. If you're one of them, I am so sorry!

Anyway, Media Bytes, bet you want to know what's going on with it, don't ya? Well.... we just wrapped our third (!) session up today! The first two weeks were a little chaotic, but amazing nonetheless. What else could I have expected with 17 little fourth and fifth graders with 1 third grader in a new environment, sat in front of shiny new computers with excited faces ready to learn? It was amazing! All they could say when they first walked in was "MINECRAFT!". Apparently, that's all the kids really want to do nowadays. They asked for it so much, that I put it on the schedule for the future.

We got the kids in and introduced ourselves, played Getting to Know you Bingo, gave them a brief overview of what the next 10 weeks will entail, and then we decided the class norms and expectations as a group. The school these students attend has a mantra of the 3 B's: Be Responsible, Be Respectful, and Be Safe. They came up with expectations, some may say rules, that were pretty in line with the 3 B's. I was impressed. We all signed the chart paper and took our seats. And then... the fun began! I gave them a short little quiz on what we had just covered in Kahoot. In case you've never used or heard of Kahoot, it is amazing! Kids of all ages go WILD for it! Basically, it is a quick formative assessment tool that plays like a game show and has music to boot!


Here's how you do it:
1. Get an account (it's FREE); follow the steps to set up questions OR look through the plethora of pre-created and public quizzes.
2. Select play and have your students join from any device (even a smartphone, it's web based).

3. Once the kids enter the pin, select a nickname and once you see all the participants in the waiting room, hit Start Now and BOOM You're on.

When you're done, you can view results or have them email to you to use as a quiz.

Back to Media Bytes, these kids had never seen this and they LOVED it! They came back the next week talking about it and saying they told their teachers about it. Pretty cool.

Well... that's all for today. I'll post more about the second session later, but I will say this... my high school volunteers are killing it in the assisting arena. Today they were left on their own to teach Illustrator (with an adult in the room) while I was out at the CUE Conference in Palm Springs, CA. Pretty sure it was awesome.

#CUE15