PowerPoint Karaoke, Bingo, and My Pet Giraffe

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DATE : Wed, 03 Jan 2007 10:44:00 -0600
Entered in Database : 2007-01-03 16:44:00
length : 166400
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Weird fun with PowerPoint...when Joi Ito blogs about the rules of engagement for PowerPoint Karaoke, a commenter counters with the game of "PowerPoint Bingo".

Akin to PowerPoint Bingo, I like PowerPoint "My Pet Giraffe".

Rules of the game: tell the audience you will be saying three secret words in your short presentation. Afterwards, ask the audience to guess which three words were the "secret" ones.

Prizes for correctly guessing the three secret words are optional!

Why it is called "My Pet Giraffe?" It's based on a game we often play on long road trips -- we carry a deck of cards with three unrelated words on it. Whoever draws the card has to tell a 30 second story that always begins "I was taking my Pet Giraffe for a walk." During the narrative, the storyteller must use the three words. After time is up, the players have to guess the three words.

The idea is to tell creative, impromptu stories with so much rich, vivid, or absurd detail that the players have difficulty guessing which words are the secret ones. It also teaches you to work on your poker face and not grin too much when you use your "secret" words.

The Business Twist. But in business presentations, you can make the "secret" words obvious, to encourage the audience to pick out the key points of the presentation. This not only makes the presentation more interactive, it gives you an opportunity to re-iterate your main points at the end.

Anyway, you can go and download my PowerPoint version of the My Pet Giraffe game, if you like. Teachers tell me they use it as a classroom vocabularly activity, as well. Have fun with it!