Holla holla, my dudes! Welcome to my reflections on yesterday’s group presentations, where all my wonderfully talented classmates shared their resources and research with us. Over the course of the class, we saw a lot of really cool material; the virtual conductor one looked like a lot of fun and a great way to integrate and movement into the classroom, and Mentimeter is a resource I would absolutely see myself using in my own classroom to get student feedback and assess their comprehension. The other presentations were likewise fantastic; the one I want to reflect on today, however, was Goosechase. This app immediately captured my heart with its potential for fun and team building activities. It augments the typical scavenger hunt model by incorporating the use of video, photo and textual answers, and the points system gives a clear and exciting incentive for your group to work hard to complete challenges. I liked the variety of questions that were possible, and the fact that it would only accept correct answers on the textual questions was useful in that it actually forced us to sit down and verify our information before continuing on to other questions.

I’ve actually seen this app once before at Royal Bay Secondary School, where their library had students undergo a scavenger hunt using the app. From what I heard, the scavenger hunt was meant to familiarize them with the library, introducing them to its resources and rules. Now that I’ve seen this app in action, I think this was a brilliant choice, as it introduces students to this critical resource in an informative and exciting way. I likewise had to complete a scavenger hunt in high school to learn how to use the library, but it was all pen and paper and mostly seemed like a hassle because there was nobody monitoring our progress, no way to check the accuracy of our answers, and ultimately little incentive to complete the challenges. 

 It’s really too bad the only three teams can be included in one challenge with a free account, but as the group said, there is a potential to work around this by using multiple free accounts. Sd62 might also have a larger account for its schools, so everyone be sure to check with your school about what resources they already have available for teachers to draw upon! Overall, I really loved this app. I already have several scavenger hunt ideas for future units in my English and French classes, so I’m excited to reimagine them using this wonderful learning tool.

Photo by Denise Karis on Unsplash