Powerpoint Jeopardy

Most of us are familiar with the popular television game, Jeopardy. I have designed this
game for use in my TEFL classes with a computer and display capability running
Microsoft PowerPoint. I use PowerPoint as a basis for most of my TEFL lessons in order
to highlight learning points, display pictures and graphics, add audio, etc. I had played
Jeopardy with my classes before and subsequently found that PowerPoint lent itself well
to the game. It is then easily customized with different categories and clues. This
particular version is customized for Peace Corps Romania with topics suited to middle
school students. I’ve done it with high school as well. Here’s how it works:

The screen (slide #3) after the “Welcome to Jeopardy” screen displays five categories and
their respective values ranging from 10 to 50 (Lei, Dollars, Euros, points, whatever you
like). When a student selects a category and point value you simply use the category as
the first digit and the value as the second digit to enter a slide number. For example,
selecting the first category and the 10-point value would result in slide #11. Likewise,
selecting the third category and the 50-point value would result in slide #35. After the
student makes a selection, simply type the number and press the enter key. You will
immediately advance to that slide. The clue will be displayed. Give the student
(contestant) time to say their question for that clue and then press the enter key to see the
correct question. Then simply type in the number 3 again (to go back to slide #3, the
categories screen) and press enter.

Some comments. One capability we don’t have in using PowerPoint is the ability to
mark off or in some way change the individual categories/values to indicate which ones
contestants have already selected. It would be a great feature to have if it could be done
in PowerPoint (it could be done if the game were developed using Flash or something
similar), but I simply do this by noting the clues already chosen on the blackboard or flip
chart.

There are a number of blank slides. This, obviously, is because the numbering scheme
for Jeopardy needs slides 11-15, 21-25, etc. for the respective categories/values but does
not require numbers in between those ranges. Blank slides must be there as fillers,
however, to get the required Jeopardy screens at the proper slide numbers. Clear as mud?
It may be a bit confusing at first and not all that elegant, but it’s really quite simple and
effective to make the game work.

Also, when a category and value is selected, I could have the clue automatically
displayed. However, I chose to have that not displayed until a mouse click or enter key
so that an inadvertent extra click after entering the slide number would not accidentally
show the correct question immediately after displaying the clue. This can, of course, be
easily modified if you prefer to have the clue automatically displayed when advancing to
a chosen slide.
Finally, there are no “Daily Doubles” or “Final Jeopardy” in here in order to keep the
game and its rules simple, though either of these would be easy to add, if you should
desire.