If you are a teacher that has had to quickly get used to the new technologies that have been brought about to help you continue teaching during the pandemic and many lockdowns, then you will know how this technology can affect your day to day business. Some days your classes will run smoothly and without any problems but other days you will find connection issues, videos freezing or any of the many other things that can go wrong with this technology. After all it’s not just our own technology that we have to deal with, it’s all the other children or people in your class, and then we have the human error side of it. The list goes on.
What if you could put a fun spin on all these different errors or faults that regularly go wrong? How about playing technology bingo?
For a real game of online bingo you can head over to https://www.whichbingo.co.uk/ but here I have some ideas and tips to help take some of the stress out of your daily issues with technology bingo.
What is Technology Bingo?
Simply put technology bingo is bingo without the numbers, but instead using day to day tech issues you might come across. So basically you need to create a bingo card with a mixture of the technological problems that you have faced in your classes and then when one materialises, you mark it off.
Extras for Bingo
You could then combine your game of bingo with a problem solving activity where you and your students could brainstorm how to work around each problem when it arises. Following this you could use the solutions your students come up with to create a document with guidelines on how to continue when an issue occurs.
Read about some interesting findings in the bingo for some other ideas.
Problems That Could Arise
- ‘Connection is unstable’ error message
- Video freezes
- Audio lag (you can utilize this one more than once on the basis that it appears to happen pretty regularly)
- Internet stops
- “I forgot to unmute” or “I believe you’re on mute”
- Sending a private message to the wrong chat
- Breakout rooms are muddled
- Chat filled with unrelated talk or emoji’s
- Showing the wrong site while sharing your screen
- Students cut off and disappear
- Camera accidently turned off
- Background noise from students microphone that should be muted
- Student changes username to something you do not recognise
- Teaching in class whilst teaching online also
- Feedback from microphone
- Trouble uploading work
- Student continually unmutes themselves
- Attempting to integrate students that are late
- Requiring multiple gadgets to teach your lesson
- Having to ask a student to turn their camera on
- Students not understanding their left and rights during screen mirroring
- Having a student need to turn their device off and back on again
- “My battery is nearly dead”
- System crash
- “Sorry you’re breaking up, could you repeat that?”
- Device switching off unexpectedly
Of course, these are just some of the problems that I know of when using technology for teaching. You can add anything that might come up for you on a regular basis too, as we all experience different issues.
There are various websites you can find online that offer bingo card templates and also even randomise your bingo cards for you.
Technology bingo is a nice way of keeping your students focused when things might happen that distract them from your class but if you’d like to take your mind off the stresses of your own technology, why not learn about the advances in technology for online bingo.
