Smarter than a 5th Grader?

[LisaD]

Hello,

You may have heard of the TV show called "Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?" My son's school is having a fall festival (fund raiser) this weekend and they have asked me to "host" a game show using the Activboard and Activotes. (Raising money for more Activclassrooms!)

So I have created a flipchart that can serve as a template for a game show like this using Activotes.

Basically, there is a grid with 25 questions. 1st grade through 5th along the left and subject areas across the top. Each square contains a link to a question page. (You can of course, edit the questions if you like!)

There are several "action objects" throughout the flipchart to hide and show things or to change the tool to a fill tool or to start/stop voting.

An individual or small group is the contestant but the "audience" gets to participate as well using Activotes.

You will see that the question's answers are not set as we want to poll the audience when the contestant either answers or uses one of their "cheats." (The answers are on the page notes, though!)

Anyway, if you've seen the show, you'll get it!

I will post it here first so you guys can get a crack at it. If you don't see any errors, I'll go ahead and make it available through the Planet on-line resources!

Let me know what you think!

P.S. There is a fun on-line version of this game if you go to:
http://fox.com/areyousmarter/features/

Lisa

[LisaD]

Oops, I already found two errors myself. I needed to move all of the X's on the top left of the scoring page to the "top" level and a question had a spelling error!

Lisa

[LisaD]

Hello,

I received a private message from someone who is still using 2.5 and wants to use this flipchart. She wrote "Your 5th grade flipchart is 3.0 and when I open it in 2.5 it has the HTML -- do you have a quick fix for that? and/or what do you suggest."

Anyone know what she can do to make this work correctly with her computer with 2.5? (I assume this means that she is getting errors with the text being garbled.)


Lisa

[bolandlm]

Lisa,
Love the flipchart. Can you tell me what font you used on page 3? Mine is coming up crazy. The same thing happened on the classroom management resources.
Thanks for sharing!
Laura

[LisaD]

I used the Chalkboard font. However, on the title page, it is a screenshot of text so that should be good. Same with the Score page. It's the question pages that could have the issues- those I left as editable fields. (Are the page notes readible?)

Which version of Activstudio are you using? I am trying to see if it is truly a font issue or a Mac/PC issue or a 2.5/3.0 issue (or a combination of many things!)

Lisa

[bolandlm]

I'm using a 3.0 version with WINDOWS 2007 laptop. The page notes are fine. The HeartlandRegular font is what shows up. I'll try to find the "chalkboard font" and maybe that will take care of it. I love your flipcharts. Thanks for sharing.
Laura

[davidlloyd]

The problem may be that you don't have the same font on your computer. It's often safer to use a standard font in flipcharts like Arial or Comic Sans rather than a more esoteric one if the flipchart is going to be shared.

[LisaD]

So you think that if I change all of my texts to something like Ariel, this will be fixed?

I will do so before re-posting.

What about the issue with text conversion between versions. I don't remember what this was called multi-language or something like that.

Just trying to mimimize potential issues.

Lisa

[davidlloyd]

Hi Lisa it might work although after posting my last message, I opened your flipchart on my machine which doesn't have chalkboard font and it worked fine:o

[LisaD]

Could it be an issue with "unicode?"

I don't understand how that works. I took the flip over to my "true" PC (I run parallels on my Mac) and the text field looked blocky but readible so I have edited all of the fields to be Arial.

But when I double click and get the Text edit toolbox, it reads in the window header. Text Edit toolbox (Unicode). Could this be the issue causing the garble with the folks opening the flipchart with version 2.5?

Lisa

[jepatton]

I think so. This is the same problem I have when opening flipcharts in V2.5 that I created in V3.

[davidlloyd]

It does seem Unicode causes problems. There's a discussion about it in this thread: http://www.prometheanplanet.com/common/html/vb_forum/showthread.php?t=2961&highlight=unicode where Peter Lambert recommends switching it off unless you're using a language with a non Roman script e.g. Arabic, Chinese and Japanese.

[jepatton]

I don't think there's any way to switch off Unicode in V3 on the Mac. I sure wish there was, as it makes it hard to share flipcharts with people who are still on V2.5.

[LisaD]

OK, thanks. Does anyone know if I develop a flipchart using Mac 3.0 but then transport it over to my PC and then save, it will fix this issue?

I have several flipcharts in progress that I've started on my Mac and I want 2.5 users to be able to read them.

ilsa

[bolandlm]

I don't know what "unicode" is either.
I'm using the 3.0 version.
When I stretch the textbox just a little the font changes to Ariel.
So this is very workable for me after I stretch each box. :-/

Laura

[LisaD]

Thanks, Laura!

I'll be using the flipchart tomorrow at the Fall Festival. If all goes well, I'll post the new edition after that. (I've made a few changes!)

Lisa

[LisaD]

Well, I wanted to quickly report on how the "Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader?" flipchart went yesterday at the Fall Festival! It was so much fun! Both students and parents participated in the sessions and, other than the weather being so beautiful that some folks didn't even go inside, the event was great. All the parents want Activotes in their children's class now that they could see it in action!

A side note: We did several flipcharts and activities in addition to the "5th grade" flipchart. One that was particularly interesting was the Hot Seat flipchart. We had a father/son contest where fathers and sons would team up and that fathers had give out one word clues to their son so they would say the "secret word." It was a very serious session and very competitive! It was so great seeing the fathers and sons working together like that! Talk about fun parental involvement!

Here is my information about that flipchart if you want to use it!

Hot Seat
Description: This a simple game based on the board game "Taboo." You can use it for learning vocabulary. It can be used with any subject area and age (even adults!)
Grade Level: 6-8
Subject Area: ESL

A video explaining how to use this flipchart (and the flipchart itself) can be found in the Curriculum Corner (Middle School Section)
http://www.Prometheanplanet.com/us/server/show/nav.1793

Lisa

[caryn]

That sounds like great fun Lisa. Hope the parent power gets you more votes{}
What changes did you make to the "Smarter than a fifth grader"?

[sdreyer]

Visit the Planet Resources (http://www.Prometheanplanet.com/us/server/show/ConResource.9801) to download a Smarter than a 5th Grader flipchart we used last year in Texas during our family math night. Parents were surprised at the math their child was required to know.