New Math Game for ActivInspire - Factor Duel

I am trying something new with this fun math class presentation game for ActivInspire.  I made the game using Stencyl and embedded the Flash file in the flipchart.  The flash version is below too.

Also, be sure to check out my Quadratic Formula Video!

You can download the flipchart from here on Promethean Planet.

It was created with interactive whiteboards in mind, but two people can compete at one computer if they pass the mouse back and forth.  You can find it on the Stencyl Arcade here.

If you're just interested in seeing the Flash file, it's here:  Factor Duel

It is based on the game Juniper Green.  I actually never played that one with my students, but I was introduced to it early in my career by another teacher who claimed it was very popular in his classes.  I always wanted to create a more lively computer version that checked the students' moves.  I think this one accomplishes that well, but I noticed it can be sluggish on older systems.

In the way of credits, I created all the graphics, music and the game logic.  Some sounds were built from files I found at FreeSound.org.

http://www.freesound.org/people/Benboncan/sounds/66951/
http://www.freesound.org/people/scarfield/sounds/52004/
http://www.freesound.org/people/Mr%20Sensible/sounds/15000/
http://www.freesound.org/people/Mr%20Sensible/sounds/14742/

Creativity Game for Back to School - Another Say Anything flipchart

I created a back-to-school version of my popular Say Anything flipchart that I posted earlier in the summer.

This fun, new edition can be downloaded here.  It is a flipchart file for Promethean's ActivInspire software.

Say Anything is a great game from North Star Games that lets students think outside of the box.  In this adaptation for the classroom I picked some questions that would be good to talk about when returning to school after summer break.

For my flipcharts based on published games I try to stick with questions or content from the boxed games.  In this case, the questions work well, but you can easily modify them to better fit your school or students.  Additional questions are included on the second to last slide.

Remember that the Say Anything activities are simple exercises for creativity that provide an excellent introduction to the other creativity games I have featured on this site.  Consider starting the year off with this one, then continuing each week or so with another activity.

Some flipcharts are still being recovered after the move from Promethean Planet, so just contact me if you're looking for something you can't easily find.

Note about my interactive games on Promethean Planet

I submitted a request this week to remove most of my game flipcharts from Promethean Planet.  There was a problem with the terms of use and it was my fault for not looking into it fully before posting them.  The folks at Promethean Planet were helpful, so I appreciate that.

I will continue to use their site to host my own flipchart games (those not based on games from other publishers) and to announce any new flipcharts.

For now, most of my flipcharts can be found on the new Games page I added to this blog.


I will be updating links throughout this blog so that they direct to the correct locations, but for now most links in other posts will be broken.

At the moment it looks like they actually removed all my resources from Promethean Planet.  That complicates things further, but I'm hoping they restore the other ones soon.  I don't know how long it will take them to clear that up, but if at any point you can't find a resource you are looking for, just contact me at mpetty39@gmail.com.

Say Anything Game - Creativity exercise for the classroom

Say Anything is a great party game from North Star Games.  The company was founded by my friend Dominic Crapuchettes.  Dominic is a game design genius, seriously.  He tells stories about how a game he made in junior high was so popular among students that teachers had to ban it.

But years later, I am thrilled that he gave me permission to create this flipchart adapted for the classroom based on Say Anything.  It makes a very fun exercise for creativity.  It's simple, imaginative and the students will have a lot of laughs.  

Like my other flipcharts and games based on creativity exercises, it is easily adapted to different needs including any content area.  One advantage of this one, though, is that it is so easy to play even younger students can enjoy it.

I have the rules, with clarifications and possible variations below.  A video explanation is at the end of the post.  Here are some related links of interest though:

• Say Anything at the North Star Games website
• I added a Back to School Edition to the site too.
• Two flipchart activities based on other games from North Star:  A Life Science activity and one for U.S. History

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Donations are definitely accepted!
These flipcharts from North Star Games have been popular. If you find them (or any other resources on the blog) useful, please consider donating $1 to $3.  Any money I receive this way will be used in my district to purchase resources for technology integration. I and my students greatly appreciate your support!  I would love to hear how you use the resources too.

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How to play the game in class:  (Most of this information is in the flipchart, but additional notes are in bold.)

In the actual party game, one player is the judge each round and a "good" answer is determined by this judge.  In the classroom game the class votes for the best answer.  Three to five students compete as contestants much like a game show setting.

1)  Choose three to five students to be the contestants.  They should sit at the front of the classroom.  Each will need a pencil and sheet of paper.  Each contestant must put his or her name on the paper.  All the other students need an Expressions or Votes device.  Those students can also use a sheet of paper to write possible answers or to keep their points.

2)  Reveal the current question slide and give the contestants a minute or two to write their answers to it. They should try to give an answer that the most students will like.  Answers are turned into the teacher.

• You can decide how rigid you want to be on a time limit for answers.  
• Sometimes it takes a round or two for some students to feel comfortable just taking a chance with an answer.  You might want to read a couple questions ahead of time and have everyone practice.
• Students who aren't contestants can still write down answers.  You might even require this to be turned in after the game just to keep them involved. 

3)  In random order, read each answer from the contestants.  A summary of the answer can be written on the cards slide (accessed by clicking Next on the question slide.)  The class should not know who wrote which answer.  You might want to have a couple students from the class read their answers as well, if they think they have a particularly clever or funny one.

4)  Have the class vote on their favorite answer using Expressions or Votes.  When finished, determine each contestant's score.  Points are given based on the percent of the class that picked their answer.  Round to the nearest 10th, so a percent of 16.6 would earn 20 points.  Record the score on the students' papers first, then click the Score button.  Record scores on that slide so the class can see who is winning.  The non-contestants can keep points as well.  Any student who voted for the answer that received the most or second most votes scores one point.  This score is done on their honor and is mostly for fun.  It can help encourage everyone to vote for answers they really think are best.

5)  Click the button at the bottom of the Score page to access the next question.  Repeat steps 2 - 3 above until four questions have been completed.  The player with the most points wins!  In case of a tie, all tied players win.

Additional Notes:

• I chose to limit this game to only four rounds because that seemed to be best for how long it worked in my classes.  You can play again immediately if students are up for it.  I prefer to stop too soon rather than too late.
• This activity can be used in other ways besides the game show format. 1)  A question can be given at the end of class and the next day all students can submit answers.  When the teacher has a chance, he or she can narrow the pool down to five good answers and the class can vote on the best.    2)  Likewise in the game show format, a teacher might choose to just do one question at the end of class and carry the game out over a period of time.
• Note that near the end of the flipchart I included several other questions from the family edition of Say Anything.  You can substitute any of the four questions from those I listed or you can use those to create appropriate questions for your class.  Let the students help!
• Of course, this game will be best if adapted to the unique needs of your content and school.  Think of questions that fit the subject area or include references to people and places in the school or community.

Here's a video explanation of how to play.  This was my first attempt at using Explain Everything and serves as a demo for that iPad app:

Mythology Edition of Why Did the Chicken...? - Fun exercise for creativity in the classroom

After all the fun we had last month with the classroom games and exercises for creativity, I am turning my attention toward more flipcharts in that style.  This Mythology edition is the same as my previous Why Did the Chicken...? game, but it adds Pandora's Box, filled with several nouns from Greek mythology.

Now your students can compete to give the best answer to great riddles such as, "Why is Zeus afraid of a teddy bear?"

I end up with mythology resources on the blog because each year the mythology teacher in our district likes to try a technology project just before summer.  Even if that subject is not of use to you, the flipchart serves as an example of how easily any content area such as social studies, literature or even science could be tied into the activity.

Be sure to check out the full rules for these games and look over the many resources for creativity exercises such as this one.

Fraction Estimator - Visualizing Conversion

When I was in the math classroom I was continually aware that students' problem solving skills were hindered by their inability to visualize concepts.  Proportions and multiple representations of values were simply steps the students tried to remember for a quiz rather than a concept that would come in handy (and often was absolutely necessary) for solving a variety of real world problems.

Approaching problem solving with steps instead of a conceptual understanding is like trying to get from my home in Michigan to my in-laws' house in Florida by memorizing every turn.  Even if I can remember the list, let's hope there's no unexpected construction along the way.  A conceptual understanding would be like having a map.  It's the big picture and it comes in handy even when the unexpected comes along.

When our district purchased Promethean Boards and I started experimenting with ActivInspire I realized I finally had a tool that would let me show students some of the ways I visualized concepts.  One such tool I created is a fraction estimator.

With all the multiplying and dividing going on in a typical conversion problem, most students never stop to consider we are always talking about the same value.  One-fourth is exactly the same amount as 0.25 or 25%.  This fraction estimator provides a good visual for explaining this.  When I used it with students they picked up on the concept quickly.  While it does not provide exact answers in conversions, it gives students the conceptual tool that will help them make connections when solving problems that require such understanding.

The flipchart version for ActivInspire is here.  I also have a single slide in Google Docs that can be used if you don't want to download ActivInspire*.

This video shows how to use it:



*The Google Docs version is limited in a few ways.

• You can't write the numbers on the slide without using other software.
• You won't be able to fill the sections of the bars with another color.
• It's not as easy to line up the bar with the scale because the bar is not displayed as you move it.
• If it's too small, go to the View menu and pick Full Screen.

Why Did the Chicken...? - Exercise for Creativity for the Classroom

My recent posts about creativity games have drawn a good amount of attention, so I contacted Kory Heath about the game that sort of started it all.  He gave his hearty approval of a classroom version of Why Did the Chicken...?, the hilarious game of answering random riddles.  Two versions of the game are available for download from Promethean Planet:

• The original Why Did the Chicken...? flipchart
• Mythology version of Why Did the Chicken...?

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Donations are definitely accepted!
These flipcharts (especially the Mythology edition) have been popular this summer. If you find them or any other resources on the blog useful, please consider donating $1 to $3.  Any money I receive this way will be used in my district to purchase resources for technology integration. I and my students greatly appreciate your support!  I would love to hear how you use the resources too.

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Here are the rules as they appear in the flipchart, along with additional clarification and suggestions.  The couple changes or considerations for the mythology version are addressed below as well.

How to Play the Why Did the Chicken...? Classroom Game

Pick 3 - 5 "contestants" who will compete to write the funniest riddles.  They should sit at the front of the classroom.  Each contestant needs a piece of paper with his or her name on top.


To start a round, draw 1 Question prompt from the Question cards and 2 Nouns from the box of Noun cards.  (For the mythology edition, pick 1 of these Nouns from the Questions card and the other from Pandora's box.  The mythology words come from Pandora's box and it's best to have a real world noun combined with the mythology words.)  Put these items on the cards at the top of the screen.  Here's an example of how this might look:

So in the example, we get the riddle "Why is a tiger afraid of a rockstar?"

Note:  When it makes a difference, the teacher (with input from the class) may choose to change the order of the nouns to make the most interesting riddle.  As the example above illustrates, if "tiger" and "rockstar" are reversed the riddle lends itself to dull answers.

The contestants get 2 minutes to write a funny answer to the random riddle.  When finished, they hand their papers to the teacher.  Note that you can be as flexible as you want on this time limit.

Note:  Contestants might choose to write several answers in those two minutes, then pick one or possibly the teacher can just pick one.  It all depends on how much time the teacher wants to take in reading them.

The teacher reads the answers in a random order and writes them (possibly summarized) on the
board, one per sticky note.  Since the answers might be wordy, the key words can be written on the sticky notes just so the class can remember which is which.  If some answers are the same or similar, the teacher can have them submit another response.

The class should not know who wrote which answer.  In other words, don't always have the same student's answer end up on the same letter.

Using the Expressions (if available) have the class vote for their favorite answer.  After the vote, the contestants or teacher can indicate who wrote which response.  The player whose answer received the most votes gets 2 points for the round.  The player whose answer received the second most votes gets 1 point.

Keep score on the Score page.  Repeat for 5 - 7 rounds.  At the end, the contestant with the most points wins.

Students in the class (non-contestants) can play for points just for fun.  Any student who votes for the most popular answer gets a point.  These are tracked by the students themselves based on their honor.  They can compare points at the end of the game just to see who picked the winning answers the most.

Other details and suggestions:

• Before you play, have the class submit names of people, places or other familiar nouns that will make the game personal.  This lends itself to hilarious inside jokes, but some students will need to be reminded to keep it appropriate for school!
• In this version of the game there are five question formats, each repeated twice.  You might prefer to just choose them rather than randomly draw them, as some make easier riddles than others.
• If students are having a hard time coming up with answers encourage them to brainstorm more than one and just pick the one they like best for the official submission.  The game is an exercise in creativity and they need to feel comfortable failing.  Anonymity in answers is sometimes necessary to encourage continued participation.
• See this post about how I use creativity exercises before we play.
• Nouns from any content area can be substituted to make the game fit the course subject.  See the mythology edition as an example.  
• Instead of playing as a game, this can be used as an ongoing activity.  Riddles can be assigned to the entire class at the end of the hour.  All students would turn in answers the next day.  At an appropriate time the teacher could post five for a vote.  

Interactive Game Assignment 2 - Career Quizzes

Last winter I worked on an interactive game project with high school students where they created Christmas games using ActivInspire.  We modified the assignment for the second semester and based the quiz games on careers.

Here's a list of the parts of the assignment with links to my sample resources.

• Intro to ActivInspire - I didn't create a file for this.  I just showed the class how to make some basic art.
• Title and Template Pages - Students were required to create more art and make some pages in ActivInspire.
• Career Questions - They were required to write10 questions related to their career or career planning in general.
• Final Game Flipchart - They put everything together into an interactive flipchart for the final step.

The flipcharts are being added here as we upload them.  You'll find examples from the Christmas games there too.

In other flipchart news, my own games are posted on this page at Promethean Planet.  Here are some points to note:

• My most downloaded game is This or That? and it will likely pass 2,000 downloads this week.  It's a personal milestone. 
• My Oh, Really! flipcharts have been downloaded over 3,000 times in all.  The original will probably pass 1,000 downloads this week.  Again, the numbers are not as high as many other flipcharts on Promethean Planet, but it is great to know the games have reached many teachers and students.
• And I posted a Jeopardy flipchart a few weeks back that a friend made.  It contains 17 trivia questions based on Romeo and Juliet.  I helped with some of the technical aspects of setting it up. 

And I was experimenting with Animoto and the pictures I took for this project...

The Holiday Games on Promethean Planet

They finally approved the first few games from the project I have been writing about. You can visit the author page here. I really think the students did a nice job with this first round of flipcharts. I will add more from the class in the days ahead.

I am working on a variation on this project for middle school students. We will create PowerPoint quiz games instead of ActivInspire flipcharts. Details to follow!

Holiday Interactive Game Assignment - Part 3

The final stage of this project is to create a Christmas or holiday game playable with ActivExpressions or AcdtiVotes. The directions are available here.

Two of the three sample games referred to in that document are available on Promethean Planet. I haven't finalized the third one yet.

• Wits & Wagers - U.S. History Edition
• This or That?

Most students had little trouble transitioning from the second assignment to this final project. Many of them just did a quiz game with multiple choice questions. A few went with very creative games based on random draws and personal preferences. It has been encouraging watching some of them go well above the minimum requirements of the assignment.

I worked with students most days while they finished this project. Additional tips I taught to some students who wanted to use them were:

• Using the Camera tool to take pictures of graphics created in other programs
• Adding the Another Page action to link pages
• Adding the Hidden action to make objects disappear to reveal other objects

I posted some of the best examples of the students' work here at Promethean Planet. 

Holiday Interactive Game Assignment - Part 2

For the next step in this assignment we required students to make a short, simple quiz game with three questions. Two could be multiple choice and the third had to be a number question. The directions we posted for this assignment are here.

Since students were at various points in this lesson on the day that some were ready to start part, I did nothing in the way of introduction other than tell them were to find the directions. I made myself available for questions and I helped them progress through the assignment that way.

We shared the best flipcharts from this part of the project with the elementary teachers. Since we kept them in the district, I allowed students to copy and paste from the internet as long as they cited their sources.

A half dozen good examples resulted from this, but we found students were confused about the differences between putting the questions and answers on the screen versus putting them in the Question Manager. It would have been simpler if the Question Manager worked like I think it is supposed to. As it is, we had questions and choices on the flipchart and we just set the number of options and the right answer in the Question Manager.

One thing I struggle with when making directions is that if I put an example early in the document, students will look at it and just forge ahead without reading the directions. If I don't put a detailed example there, though, they can't always get their brains around what the directions are telling them! I suspect the solution is to grade mercilessly with a clear rubric on all projects until they learn to read directions.

Holiday Interactive Game Assignment

I have been working with the computer teacher at our high school to take students through a unit on creating interactive holiday games. Here is the page at Promethean Planet where we posted some results.

We started out by showing students how to use basic shapes in ActivInspire to create holiday graphics. This document shows the first images that we used.

After they practiced that for one class period, I showed them how to set the background color, how to use the Text tool and how to copy their graphics with the Camera

Then the next stage was to have them create some holiday slides. Here are the directions that we posted in Blackboard for that part of the assignment. It requires students to create a couple more graphics and then the slides in a flipchart.

I'll post the directions to the first round of simple games and I'll provide some samples in a day or two.