Frank Schickor offered a great workshop yesterday (March 12) demonstrating how he is using Smartboard and powerpoint to engage his students. The games, which resemble well-known game shows like Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, are used to review materials in the class, and for extra credit. Frank generates identification games using photos of fauna and handing out a sheet with class/phylum information; students match the photos to the proper classification. In other games, students generate questions and quiz each other based on course material. Sometimes students are split into teams and accumulate points. He also offers a “stump the professor” game, where students attempt to find fauna that Frank cannot identify. The Internet offers a vast storehouse of imagery and students gain tech skills as well as knowledge through this process. Some comments on the workshop from participants were:

“This workshop wowed me!”

“Can’t wait to get started writing games”

“Very engaging”

“Opened up a whole new world for me”