Technology Bingo

As a teacher it can be difficult enough to keep a class in order, especially if you teach younger kids, keeping them focused can be a stressful task. Now after the pandemic, and I don’t know how many lockdowns, teachers and various other professions have had to quickly get used to all sorts of new technologies to be able to continue working from home. Of course this technology has been created to help us and make it as easy as possible to do whatever job it is you’re doing, but with any technology you will always find errors or faults, as well as the expected human errors particularly when using something new.

If you’re a fan of bingo then I recommend you head over to WhichBingo UK, but we also have a fun way of turning these day to day strains into something that should help keep your students focused and hopefully bring something productive from these technical issues.

What is Technology Bingo?

Basically, technology bingo is bingo but you replace the numbers with some of your regular problems you face when teaching your students. We have prepared this with teaching online through a conferencing application in mind but with a bit of imagination you could easily use these ideas for other professions or even when you’re in the classroom or office.

So all you need to do is create a bingo card with your usual technological issues on it and simply mark them off as they happen.

Typically, bingo cards are made up of 5 by 5 squares but you can customise this to your liking, rectangular grids of 5 by 3 or 9 by 3 have been used before. You can find various sites online that have these bingo card templates for you and will even help randomise these cards for you. It could also be a fun bit of homework for your kids to create their own or even do this in groups.

Ideally, you would want your cards to last a term or even the year to keep your students engaged with it for as long as possible.

An extra follow up to the bingo could also be to have the students brainstorm solutions to each of the problems and to create a step by step guide on how to deal with each problem once it arises.

If you want to come up with your own ideas and want some inspiration then reading a beginners guide to online bingo could be a good way of learning how developers have converted this classic game into an online sensation.

Here we have come up with some problems that might happen during your lessons and that you could use for your bingo cards. However, this might not be the same for everyone so feel free to customise where you like and taking suggestions from your students could also be helpful.

. Internet disconnects

. Screen freezes

. Lagging audio (you can use this one more than once on the premise that it seems to happen pretty consistently)

. Error message ‘Unstable Connection’

. “Could you repeat that? you’re breaking up”

. Students forgetting to unmute

. Sending your private message to wrong group

. Device turning off suddenly

. Students filling chat bar with unrelated talk or emoticons

. Students appearing in wrong breakout room

. Background noise or interference from unmuted microphone

. Students are cut off and vanish

. Sharing the wrong screen or website with student

. Camera turned off

. Student changes name without you knowing

. Teaching in class while having students online too

. “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

. Student frequently unmutes themselves

. Feedback from microphone

. Students unable to upload homework

. Complete system crash

. Attempting to coordinate students that are late

. Requiring various devices to teach

. “Can you turn you camera on for me please”

. Confusion of left and right when screen mirroring

. “I only have 3% battery left”

Hopefully this has given you enough help for you to be able to create your own game of technology bingo. This form of bingo is a great way to relieve some pressure and have a giggle about some of the continual issues that we face with technology every day. It could also be a fun way for you and your colleagues to have a friendly wager at work for some added entertainment.

If you are partial to a bit of bingo and wasn’t aware of its huge rise over the last few years, notably online, then you should catch up with all the latest news and maybe enjoy a game or two.