I spend Sunday afternoons putting together my lessons for the coming week. On Tuesday I had a lecture and class discussion on microblogging scheduled. About halfway through creating my PowerPoints I realized how incredibly boring a lecture on microblogging would be.

I scrapped the lecture idea and instead spent the next five hours developing Twepardy – a Jeopardy-like activity that forced my students to sort through the reams of data populating the Web to find information on microblogging. Lest my work go to waste, I uploaded Twepardy on to my favorite presentation sharing Web site, SlideShare. Please feel free to download to use and revise for whatever means fit your needs.

I had my students create Twitter accounts as homework, then at the start of class they signed in to a private chat group I created on TweetWorks. The students could then Tweet the answers to Twepardy questions without spamming their followers. One bag of mini-Snickers to pass out for correct answers, plus a ceramic, duck-shaped piggybank for the big winner, and we were off.

While using Jeopardy style games in education is certainly nothing new, I found the format extremely conducive to teaching the ins and outs of new technologies. It’s always difficult to teach new programs. My students have differing skill levels and preexisting knowledge of applications and I spend more time trouble-shooting than I do educating. Using techniques like online scavenger hunts, trivia contests, and research races makes the process of puzzling through new technologies much more enjoyable.

As you can see from the student Tweets below, Twepardy is sure to be the next big thing in ed tech.