Sunday, July 13, 2014

Letter Quiz OD

One of the requirements for me as a teacher at Peak to Peak Charter School is to conduct a 'club' that is held once a week for 90 minutes. The club is meant to be something that the students will find as a break from their rigorous studies, yet still challenging and worthy. Clubs range from athletic activities (whiffleball, petonque, ultimate frisbee) to film viewing (film as literature, French film) to games (Euchre, Minecraft, blackjack strategies). My club falls in to the last category, where I conduct a quiz. A trivia quiz. I have 4 rounds of 5 questions each where I challenge the students on various topics that are both exciting and unpredictable. I've covered topics ranging from literary characters to Super Bowl ads. And we always have a music round, where they need to identify a song by artist and title. I myself am a huge trivia fan, as my wife and I make 2 or 3 trips a week to a local establishment to play Geeks Who Drink trivia (look them up! They're great!), and we've even traveled to Austin (I live near Denver) to participate in a nationwide trivia contest. I love it, and I love passing it on to student, as we have had several students over the years become trivia aficionados themselves.
That is what my podcast is, a quiz. Not gonna lie, I modeled it after an existing podcast that I've listened to many times, James Carter's "Podquiz" available online here for listening pleasure. I like the format he follows, and that it is meant to be a quiz where you are effectively challenging yourself to see what you can get with no external aid. My students (hopefully) will do the same for my quiz, and I'll keep a running tally that is 'posted' in some fashion for the students to see how everyone is doing. I love the idea of this being a podcast, and it'll open the door for more quiz! If this is successful for me, than I'll have a separate quiz during that weekly meeting with immediate prizes instead of a running tally like I've been doing in it.
The podcast quiz itself (the first one if you will) has an intro that details what we'll be doing, followed by the rules for the quiz. This will be repeated once, maybe twice, but only as needed afterwards. Hopefully I'll be able to jump right into the quiz thereafter shortening the length of the podcast to about 12 minutes. After the rules and standards, it is the quiz itself. Four rounds, five questions each. The first is and always will be music identification. The next 2 will be somewhat academic. The final round will have more of a audio identification that is not music (books being read, news stories being detailed, etc...).
I really like this project for the classroom, and I see further uses in AP Statistics lesson extensions. Making this podcast had A LOT of learning involved. I couldn't get an mp3 in for some reason, had a few moments of overlap, and timing the breaks was tough. It really is critical to pay careful attention to the seconds at the bottom of the Audacity page.

Here is the quiz! Enjoy!

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