Dr. Agon's Pasapalabra

At the request of a local Spanish teacher, I created this customizable version of the popular game show "Pasapalabra" (which in turn was based on the British game show "The Alphabet Game").

To play this game, the first thing you'll want to do is download and install the game.

You can find instructions for how to download and install one of my custom unity games here.

Once everything is on your computer, simply run the app.

On the first screen you'll be allowed to choose whether to set up a new game (provide it's name here!) or open a saved game.



When setting up a new game, the first thing you do is enter the answers. Be sure that each answer contains the letter associated with it! (If you don't want to use all the letters, no problem! Any letters you leave alone will be omitted from the game.)



Next, you'll enter in the prompts. These should give the clues necessary to guess the target word.



Now your game is ready to play! If you aren't going to play now, just close the app and open it when you are ready. Here is what the main game interface looks like:



 A player clicks on a letter, and is provided with a prompt, they then need to type what they think the answer is in the box in the middle and click submit. (They can use the buttons on the left to help with special characters.)



When a player gets an answer right, the button for that letter turns green, and the countdown number in the top right drops by one. Once all the boxes are green and the countdown reaches 0 the game is over!



Note that the game is only saved directly to your computer. So you won't be able to play it on another one.

I'd love to hear suggestions on how to improve this game, and also hear any comments on how well this game has worked in your class! Have fun teaching!

See sample content ideas here.

Please post any suggestions for more shared content ideas in the comments section below.

Here you can see the slideshow about Pasapalabras presented at UAFS in the fall of 2018.

This link is for the UAFS 2018 presentation activity.

Self-grading Spreadsheets

One of the disadvantages of many digital teaching tools (such as tests on Learning Management Systems) is a delay between the time that a student enters an answer and when they receive the feedback. Usually a student must complete an entire activity before they can get any feedback. This means that if they got something wrong, they may continue thinking that they got it right, and by the time they know better, they've already forgotten their train of thought for that question.

Self-grading spreadsheets overcome this problem by instantly providing feedback after each question is answered. By providing this instant feedback, self-grading spreadsheets allow learners to stay focused on one question at a time, until they learn it and get it right.

I have prepared a freely available downloadable self-grading spreadsheet template here. This template is for Microsoft Excel.*

Instructions for how to use the spreadsheet are included within the template itself.

This template allows you to create open-ended questions and multiple choice questions (which require a little bit more work for the instructor, but are very much preferred by the students!)

As always, if you have any comments, questions, etc. I'd love to hear from you!

*I don't recommend you use a Google Sheet for this particular activity type because the way Google locks cells is different (and messier), and you would also need to create a separate copy of the Google sheet for each student (unless, of course, you want them to collaborate.)