My fourth graders ended the year learning about thirty people that contributed to Texas in one way or another. I attempted this project two years ago and became frustrated with the results because of time constraints.  This year I built in extra time so students could actually “play” with the information they created.  First, I put students in groups randomly by using Classtools.net roulette wheel.  I LOVE this tool!  I use it often because it is so easy to customize.  To group students, I created a wheel with five sections of six colors: red, blue, yellow, green, orange and purple.  Students would spin the wheel to get their color, then I would remove that section from the wheel. To determine what famous person that group would research, I created another wheel with the names of the 30 famous people.  One person from each group would spin.  I would then remove that name from the wheel until all the groups had chosen.  Students would then meet in their groups to designate jobs: researcher, script writer, actor/actress, videographer, qr code maker, and poster maker.  The researcher would print off the data collection sheet and fill it in.  The script writer would take the filled in data collection sheet and write a four to six sentence script in first person.  The actor/actress would practice the script and then have someone record just their mouth using an ipod touch.  Once recorded, the student would get the completed video uploaded to my Youtube channel.  The qr code maker would print out the qr code to the youtube video. The poster maker would make a 2×2 poster of the face of the famous person.  The posters were taped to the wall outside the computer lab, and the qr code was taped to the bottom of the poster.  Then the real fun began.

Students were handed a 3×3 grid where they chose eight of the famous people from the list projected on the screen.  One name was already filled in on their card, so that almost all of the names were covered.  Students would take the ipod touch (I have 13 of them) and scan the code for the person pre-written on their bingo card.  Once all students had scanned their one code, we played bingo.  You can access the document here. I would read off the information of a famous person and then take 3 guesses to who it might be.  If they had the person written on their card, they covered that spot with a marker.

All of the information students needed to complete their jobs were placed on a webmix in Symbaloo.  The webmix is embedded below along with pictures of students involved in the activity.