Videoconferencing Out on a Lim

Yesterday and today we’ve had 5 sessions of HistoryQuest8: Civil War. Students are giving clues about people, events, inventions, documents, etc. from the Civil War, and trying to guess what everyone else has presented.

We’re using the new short MysteryQuest format that works GREAT for middle school classes. We’ve had 4-5 classes in each 45 minute session. You can read more about the agenda and preparation for HistoryQuest8 online here.

Today we had some neat clues and visuals.

This class did their clues in the form of a court skit. They began with “Welcome to Clueless Court, where we don’t know anything at all about law.” The skit was actually a trial of their mystery person.

Another class gave several clues about a detective, with detective-like clues.

Here’s an example of a visual that doesn’t work! Between the background picture, the red font, and the glare of the document camera, it was pretty hard to get any information from this visual.

Nice big clear font on these posters. Easy to read and write down.

Note this creative way to give a clue for “Greek architecture”.

Music is always fun for giving clues! The song played was “Taps”.

Another class gave these creative clues for the invention of the telegraph.

This is just a sample of the presentations from these HistoryQuest Civil War sessions. If you haven’t done a HistoryQuest or MysteryQuest, you may want to watch the video here.

Still Openings

Also, Paul Hieronymus is running a few more HistoryQuest8 sessions during the week of May 3, and needs some more participating classes. Details here. Hope you can join him! Your class could prep their presentation in a couple class periods if you keep it simple. So it IS doable! Great learning experience for students!!

In addition, we still have room in HistoryQuest5 (5th grade colonial times and revolutionary war) and MysteryQuest USA (US geography for 4th or 5th grade. These are all open to everyone!

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Yesterday and today we’ve had several HistoryQuest8: Revolutionary War sessions. These ones have been nicely full with 3-5 classes in each session. The clues have been challenging, so the students have had to work hard. In face in one session, with 10 minutes to research, none of the classes guessed any of the answers! Still, I heard from those classes that they enjoyed it and learned more about the Revolutionary War in the process. I’ve been able to collect some great footage to make a HistoryQuest movie sometime soon as well.

Here are some examples of the clues:

An amazing drawing!

A clue for a person, can you figure out their position/job title from this clue?

From the same presentation… I liked the poetry!

Notice the nice bold writing! Easy to read & record.

Another poster example.

Yikes, what a math problem!! How would you have taken a shortcut in writing down this clue?

Love this clue: “No one sinks ‘em better”. Can you think of what revolutionary war ship this would be about?

In the last session, we had a scheduling glitch so I had five classes in a 45 minute session. Believe it or not, it worked!! We ended right on time. This is good to know that it is possible. We’re not doing any clues repeated. I ask the school to repeat a clue during the presentation if it doesn’t seem clear; otherwise I let it go. And there are no clarifying questions either. But the classes are giving really good feedback, so it’s good to know this format will work in a middle school short class period. I’ll be running MysteryQuest World Geography in February this same way (registration will open in CAPspace next week.) Hope you can join us for a Quest in the future!

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Today was my first ever attempt at an 8th grade version of MysteryQuest – HistoryQuest8: 1754-1898. An 8th grade historyquest has been on my “wish list” for a few years now.

Timing
We made it an hour and thirty minutes to try to meet middle school schedules better. An hour would be even better for that goal. Still enough classes were able to work it out that we had 4 schools interacting.

We were able to do all the clues in 30 minutes, and only after one extra creative presentation did the students need clues repeated.

Difficulty
Amazingly, these 8th graders seriously challenged each other! I was worried about the clues being too easy, since Google has made researching much easier. One class gave a latitude and longitude so everyone got that. But the other 3 classes clues were so hard that not everyone figured it out. We used 20 min to research, then another 5 minutes, then clarifying questions, then another 10 minutes to research.

Creativity
8th graders certainly weren’t old and boring with their presentations! We had singing clues, math problems, two trombones, rebus clues, clues with visuals only, and skits. One class sang the reveal of their clue, which all the other classes really enjoyed.

All in all, I think it went well. I would like to crunch it to an hour to make it easier for 8th grade to participate. I’m also thinking of narrowing it to just the Civil War. Any thoughts or comments?

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