Oslo Innovation Week called for something innovative

Oslo Innovation Week for the uninitiated is a dreamland of electric creativity, ambition, and (entrepreneurial) energy that puts Norway’s rocket-fuel coffee to shame. With such high standards set, and a bit of mischievous thinking of our own … we thought it was time to do something that lived up to the name of the event. Something great.. something innovative!

Oslo Innovation Week 2015

Turning up the volume

To the drawing board we went (as a hyper creative team, it got full pretty quickly!), and soon a clear winner appeared. With all of the love our Kahoot! music gets from our community, wasn’t it about time we put it on stage and turned up the volume outside of the classroom?

Cue Klang, a brilliant Norwegian band who were up for the challenge. These guys love the thrill of improving a beat, and their own take on the Kahoot! music on OIW’s EdTech Day absolutely brought down the house!

Right smack in the middle of the buzz of the conference – Klang took to the stage with the signature Kahoot! gong sound and beat-boxed their way through the countdown timer as a packed audience of educators, students and entrepreneurs played Kahoot!

And then things got even more interesting with a little help from our very own (innovative!) Kahoot! CEO, Johan Brand. If you know Johan at all, you’ll know that he’ll never miss a chance to play a game of Kahoot! – and that’s exactly what he did when he led a survey kahoot for the audience who chose Klang’s next song, the genre they would play it in, and the artist they would interpret — all in live time!

And if you thought the challenge was creative – get ready for the audience’s responses. With lightning speed, Taylor Swift’s “Shake it off” was requested in the style of an 80’s ballad sang in the voice of The Bee Gees – The Beatles’ “She Loves You” played in punk(!) mode to the sound of Michael Jackson. Phew! An award for Klang’s great sportsmanship is definitely, definitely deserved.

Johan Brand at Oslo Innovation Week

Blended Learning Extraordinaire

The most incredible part of the event wasn’t just the entertainment – but the impact! Amongst all the fun, we were so grateful to have the opportunity to combine online learning with offline activity – and see how they can harmoniously complement each other by giving the power of the activity over to the audience. It was the most rock n’ roll blended learning exercise we’ve ever been a part of – and seeing everyone have so much fun made it gold record status in our books.

And for our next surprise …

Keep an eye out for us on Twitter, @GetKahoot! To give you a clue, it might be best to get out your nightvision goggles: we’ve teamed up with online learning platform NightZookeeper to bring you something extra special blending online learning with Kahoot!, and awesomely creative offline activities. We’ve already said too much – but we can barely tame ourselves!

Photo credit: Gorm K. Gaare/Oslo Innovation Week