C/O @macworldrecord, Instagram. Right: Chainwit, Wikimedia Commons.
Join other McMaster students to break a world record and fundraise for World Forest Day!
On April 13, McMaster students can join @macworldrecord in an online gathering to break the world record for largest Kahoot game.
According to a video posted on Instagram by McMaster World Record, Kahoot was the format chosen for this world record attempt to acknowledge the fact that the past two years of school have been at least partially online.
“I think it would be nice for McMaster to have some sort of presence in some record book somewhere. Recently, having had to explain the relevance of my university to people who don't live in Canada, it would be cool if we had a gimmick,” said McMaster student Navya Sheth.
Jennifer Zhu, another McMaster student, observed that the Kahoot could be a good way for McMaster students to identify with the institution after having a significant portion of their degree take place virtually.
“It seems to be something kind of goofy that McMaster students can rally around and form community around,” said Zhu.
Adam El-Kadi, co-president of Lorax at McMaster and organizer of the Kahoot event, explained that the community-building element is especially important coming out of online school.
“The idea here is that we just want to finish up online school with a bang and just leave it there. We don’t want to come back to online school,” said El-Kadi.
Along with being an event that McMaster students can identify with, the event is also being held in support of World Forest Day, which occurred on March 21. The event was originally scheduled to take place on this day, but has since been moved to April 13.
According to the video, there are ten different student groups at McMaster associated with organizing this event, including the McMaster Sustainability Development Goals Student Hub.
The SDG Student Hub reposted the video on March 8, explaining the fundraising side of this initiative in their Instagram caption. According to the caption, each Kahoot participant will earn the initiative a dollar from their sponsors and each dollar raised will translate to one tree planted by Team Trees.
“The need for climate change action and sustainability is long overdue. It's something we should have done yesterday, rather than now. . .[This initiative] takes the focus out of armchair advocacy, which is the idea that we're just sort of passively sharing [environmental activism] on social media or telling friends about it. [Instead, we’re] stepping up, bringing everyone together, and bringing the whole community together for a single cause,” said El-Kadi.
The event is scheduled to take place at 5 p.m. on April 13 and students can sign up here to participate in the Kahoot.