David’s ICT in Schools

WebLink: Kahootz

Kahootz is a program that allows students to create 3D animations. It is possible to create a wide variety of story lines, interactive games and projects relating to all areas of the curriculum. There are a variety of backgrounds and objects that can be used as presented, or altered/combined to create their own variations. Kahootz can be easily used as a basis for story writing – either by creating the animation and then completing the writing, or by choosing a story/writing their own and then animating it.
It is an excellent program for encouraging reluctant writers and for non English-speaking background students.

Students learn to firstly navigate around the worlds before learning to change them. They then add objects and learn to resize and recolour them. Animation comes next – firstly, animating an object and then moving it around the world. After that, moving between scenes/worlds is taught.

Advanced skills have the students joining objects together to create a new object. It is also possible to add movie clips in the form of ‘green screen’ effects to have the students themselves placed into the animation.

There are many possibilities that can be created that will be a challenge for both the student and the teacher. Once the basics have been learned, students will, as always, find new and creative ways to develop interesting results.A new version of Kahootz is due in April 2008.