A Fun, New Way to Review: Blooket
When asked about virtual (or blended) learning, one of the most challenging obstacles teachers cite is capturing and sustaining student engagement. Even in face to face environments, sometimes this can be a challenge but one that continually inspires us to switch up our routines, get to know our students better, and provide options. No one means of engagement is optimal for all of our students, as all students differ in how they can be excited, motivated, and interested to learn. According to Universal Design for Learning (CAST, 2018), we can boost engagement by minimizing threats, supporting authenticity and relevance, and fostering collaboration, amongst others. Many of our students enjoy video games and gamified learning activities; they seek out these options during their free time. Why not bring in a gamified learning tool, with lots of gaming options available within its platform, to provide learners with choices, flexibility, and an exciting way to learn?
Blooket is a new review game tool that can help with just that! The tool supports many types of gaming styles and might be the new, fresh option students need during virtual learning.
What?
Blooket is a free (paid version also available) review game tool that supports multiple choice questions and matching style games. Blooket does not entirely support free-response and higher-order thinking questions, per se, but could be a helpful tool for helping students as they learn new vocabulary and fundamental concepts before moving into higher order Bloom's taxonomy tasks. Blooket allows the teacher to create "sets," or review questions, with text and pictures that can be turned into several review games. Interestingly, Blooket supports review game styles that can be individually played or played as a team and synchronous (host mode) and asynchronous (HW mode) options to suit live instruction or student-paced games ideal for virtual learning. Teachers can create their free account using Google and begin creating! Students do not need to have an account to play, but it does help if you plan to use the tool often and want to provide students with the ability to track their progress over time. Students must be age 13 to create their free account (or parent approval needed). Plus, if you do play the game often, one of the fun, unique features in Blooket is that students can accumulate "cash" within the platform through correct answers and playing games that they can use to buy a variety of Blooket characters and level-up features.
Why?
As mentioned, providing students with options in the learning environment can help capture and sustain student engagement. The collaborative aspect of some Blooket review games can support students in reviewing content. Plus, the tool's review game nature is helpful for also supporting multiple means of comprehension in the UDL guidelines (representation) before moving on to tasks with more complex tasks and thinking.
How?
Check out the tutorial video or the written guide to get started with Blooket! Blooket has released many new game formats and continues to do so weekly. We recommend checking emails from Blooket to learn about new game releases as they are made available.
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