QuizBoxes 5.0 Released!

Yes I know, it was a long time coming.  For now, the big new feature in QuizBoxes is “Images or Photos on the Answer screens”!

If your question has an image file called J3-4.jpg, then you can now also have an ANSWER image file called J3-4A.jpg – basically, make sure your answers are identically named to your question files, but with a A before the .jpg.  If you have a QuizBoxes Breaker question (at the end) and have a JFJ.jpg question image, you can have an answer image for that final question as well, just call it JFJA.jpg.  It will all appear as your question images do.  Same limitations on image size as for questions.  See that article in the Instructions section for more info on using images in QuizBoxes.

Download the latest version on the DOWNLOAD page.  NOTE that the link to Download.com’s site will take a few days to get the latest version, so it’s best to use the second (blue) download link.

Hope you like it.

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Quiz: A Christmas Quiz

Title:	A Christmas Quiz
Author:	Bernadette Bennett, Newcastle, NSW Australia
Description:	A quiz about Christmas to end the year with a bit of fun
Suitable For:	Primary School age children (8-11 years)
Instructions:	All downloadable quizzes are ZIP files. Click the Download link below to access this quiz (2MB in size) then save to your Desktop or another folder on your computer. You must then open the downloaded ZIP file and copy (extract) the entire MP3 Music Quiz folder into your QuizBoxes\Quizzes folder. Then open the quiz file with Stu’s QuizBoxes! PLEASE NOTE: If MediaFire is blocked at your school, you will need to download this quiz using a computer outside school.

[Download]

QuizBoxes v4.1 Released!

Hot on the heels of v4.0 comes the release of v4.1.0.0 which contains a number of improvements and new features:

1. Minor bug-fix – With the changeover to QuizBoxes and the removal of dollar values from the board, a stray dollar sign was left behind on the Super Quiz Box and Quiz Box Breaker screens. This has now been removed. (as suggested by Guy via email)

2. Clarification of the process for Changing Skins – Previously, when you wanted to change skins, you’d click on Skins in the menu at the top, and unless you knew, you’d click once on the skin you wanted, and you’d wait…. and nothing would happen, because to change skins, you actually have to DOUBLE-click on the skin name.  Now when you go to choose a new skin and you point to a skin, it tells you to DOUBLE-click it. (as suggested by Larry on the FAQ page)

3. Enlarging of the Category name when hovering over a QuizBox – Previously, you could only enlarge the name of the category by pointing at the name above the quiz boxes.  Now whenever you point to a still available quiz box, the Category Name will be enlarged at the top of the screen. (as suggested by Guy via email)

4. Introducing the DOUBLE-VALUE QuizBox – Normally, by prefacing any question in the QuizBoxes Question Editor with two asterisks (**), you turn that question into a SUPER Quiz Box, and the player/team that selected it gets exclusive access to the question and they can choose to risk any proportion of their current score in answering the question.  Now, you can also choose to preface any question with THREE asterisks (***), which will turn the question into a DOUBLE-VALUE QuizBox.  There is no risking involved, the question suddenly becomes worth double its normal value.  Again, you would play it as being exclusively for the player/team that selected it, but answering incorrectly or not answering at all can be twice as expensive a mistake.  Use sparingly!! (as suggested by Guy via email)

What are you waiting for? Go and get v4.1.0.0 from the Downloads page right away!  Yes, it’s still completely free.

Skin: WWE – Wrestlemania

Title:	WWE – Wrestlemania
Created by:	Stu
Description:	WWE’s Wrestlemania is one of the biggest sports entertainment spectacles on Earth. This colorful skin for Jeopardy is the perfect complement to your next WWE quiz.
Suitable For:	Quizzes about WWE Wrestling
Instructions:	All skins are self-extracting installers. Click the Download link below and you will be taken to MediaFire from where you can download the file and save to your Desktop or another folder on your computer. Then run the downloaded installer file and tell it to install into your Jeopardy\Skins folder.

[Download]

Quiz: WWE Wrestlemania

Title:	WWE – Wrestlemania
Author:	Nick Perez – Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.A.
Description:	A quiz all about World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and its showpiece, Wrestlemania.
Suitable For:	Wrestling fans all over the world! Make sure you also get the WWE Jeopardy Skin to go with it!
Instructions:	All downloadable quizzes are ZIP files. Right-click the Download link below and choose Save Target As…, and save to your Desktop or another folder on your computer. You must then open the downloaded ZIP file and copy (extract) the quiz files into your Jeopardy\Quizzes folder.

 [Download]

Video – Jeopardy VC Tournament Grand Final

The Sydney Region of the New South Wales Department of Education and Training in Australia has been running another fantastic Jeopardy Tournament comprising 32 schools across the entire state via Video Conference! A recent State Government initiative to install a “Connected Classroom” into every school by the end of 2010 is making possible exciting opportunities that would otherwise simply not be imaginable.

This 33 minute video is the complete Jeopardy VC Grand Final held on July 3, 2009

The “Connected Classroom” consists of an Interactive Whiteboard, Ultra Short-Throw Projector, a PC, Tandberg Video Conferencing unit with front and rear cameras and overhead microphones and a large flat-panel LCD TV. With this equipment already installed in 1,000 schools, an opportunity was presented to try something highly innovative – a game show competition between schools.

The high schoool tournament was advertised via one email sent to around to 120 schools that had their Connected Classroom installed and finalised. Within a few days, all 32 available slots had been snapped up and many other schools that missed out added their name to a standby list.  The tournament started two weeks later with two heats played each week.  Each heat comprised four schools pitted against each other. The presenter was at a fifth site and all were connected simultaneously via the video conference network. Stu’s Double Jeopardy was loaded onto the presenter’s PC and IWB and that image was shared using SMART’s Bridgit conferencing software, which is also part of the Connected Classrooms setup.  This allowed each of the remote four school sites to see the presenter’s screen on their own IWB.

Five stage 4 students (years 7 and 8) represented each school in the tournament. As questions were displayed, each school was able to buzz-in using my new jBuzzer add-on for Stu’s Double Jeopardy.  This lockout buzzer proved to be extremely effective and provided all schools with a fair mechanism for alerting the presenter to which school got in first.

Every heat played was very exciting and the feedback for each school has been overwhelmingly positive. Today we arrived at the pinnacle of the Tournament, the Grand Final where the top four schools competed for the right to be crowned Jeopardy State Champions!  Sydney Girls High, St Ives High, Riverside Girls High and Albury High performed admirably and the above video really shows the tension and excitement that was in the air across five different sites simultaneously.  I won’t spoil it for you by telling you who won – you’ll just have to watch the video – there really is nothing like it.

You can also relive all the happenings of this incredible tournament at the Jeopardy Tournament website, including photos and match reports from each event.

Just another example showing how Stu’s Double Jeopardy is making a difference.

Jeopardy in the Newspaper!

The High School Sydney Region Jeopardy Tournament via Video Conference kicked off two weeks ago and already it’s making headlines!  Heat 4 of the Tournament brought together four schools, two from Sydney and two from regional centres in New South Wales – one over 600km away. One of the schools, Colyton High Trade School had a reporter and a photographer from the Penrith Star newspaper there for the whole match. And to make a great story even better, they actually won their heat!

DESPITE never having watched an episode of the game show Jeopardy, year 8 Colyton High School Trade School students won their first game, uniquely via video conferencing. As in the TV show, the student game consisted of a series of questions with money attached.

Questions were specified to test students on history, spelling skills, geography and all things Australian.

Facilitator Stuart Hasic, as well as teams from Murray, Randwick Girls and Bathurst high schools, could see each other on a plasma TV screen, using microphones and audio systems to communicate with each other.

The space bar on a keyboard was used as a buzzer and students watched a projector screen to see the questions, calling out to the microphone with their answers.

Colyton High School Trade School computer co-ordinator Paul Kerr said students love the interactive classes because they don’t have to travel but are still able to communicate with students interstate.

The Star asked if they missed face-to-face interaction and all students shook their heads. “It’s really fun to see other schools far away”, Isabella said. “This system is a lot better it’s a thrill but you feel safe in your own environment.”

See the full article here.  Follow the Tournament here.

Stu’s Jeopardy: A Teacher’s Review

Froggieflo is a high school French Teacher from New Zealand who has recently started using Stu’s Double Jeopardy. Over on her blog, she’s written this great article about how she found my Jeopardy and what her thoughts are about it. It’s a good read, but pardon the French.  🙂

Oh mon Dieu!!!! 

Alors I know that Richard Vandijk has already spoken about it in his blog, but I feel I have to write something about it as well as a French teacher. Richard spoke to me about Stu’s Jeopardy on Twitter. I thought it was really strange because he knows I already have some Jeopardy games, I use Powerpoint for that. But well, Richard is really clever ( he is Dutch) and if he recommended me a site I should have a look . Well, merci mon Dieu I did!!!! This version of Jeopardy has been made for me ( and for you as well it is why I have the urge of speaking about it!!!). it is free (Yes!! free, gratuit, gratos, donné, offert..), I love that word!!!, the only condition is that you have to send the creator a quiz that you created. Speaking about creation, it is so easy it is incredible!!! Usually when I use the Powerpoint template it takes a million years to create a game ( I grow a beard every time!!!) but with this one it is fast, easy, clear (don’t need to have a PHd to understand how it works or being a geek who has not seen day’s light in a decade) and if you make a mistake ( it never happens to me!!!) dead easy to fix it.

So I jump onto the programme and created a game for that afternoon for my year 13. I thought why not making a whole Jeopardy on conjugation revision?? So I did exactly that. A few minutes later my afternoon lesson was ready. The students came in and I told them what will happen during the lesson. They were not that excited as we play heaps of games and they already Jeopardy as I said earlier. We played. They used their brains. And at the end they asked if I created the game myself ( I wish I was smart enough!!!) and begged me ( yes I used Begged!!!) to create more quizzes. 16/17 year old teenagers thought the game was really good and when I asked them if I was doing more quizzes would they want to play they said “of course, it is cool!!! 

Voilà!! I just wanted to share my excitement about this game because it is a really good game.

Three of Flo’s quizzes can be found on the Quizzes page.

Quiz: French Language – Le Petit Prince

Title:	French Language – Le Petit Prince
Author:	Froggieflo – Matamata, New Zealand
Description:	A quiz about a book called Le Petit Prince, for senior classes. This quiz was inspired by Ruth Bourchier’s resource about the book (she is the French national advisor).
Suitable For:	Intermediate to Advanced French students
Instructions:	All downloadable quizzes are ZIP files. Right-click the Download link below and choose Save Target As…, and save to your Desktop or another folder on your computer. You must then open the downloaded ZIP file and copy (extract) the quiz files into your Jeopardy\Quizzes folder.

 [Download]

Quiz: Consumer Arithmetic

Title:	Consumer Arithmetic
Author:	Meagan Rodda – Deniliquin NSW Australia
Description:	A quiz based on general or day-to-day use of mathematics
Suitable For:	Junior to Senior High School Mathematics students
Instructions:	All downloadable quizzes are ZIP files. Right-click the Download link below and choose Save Target As…, and save to your Desktop or another folder on your computer. You must then open the downloaded ZIP file and copy (extract) the quiz files into your Jeopardy\Quizzes folder.

 [Download]

Quiz: Mathematics – Index Laws

Title:	Mathematics – Index Laws
Author:	Meagan Rodda – Deniliquin NSW Australia
Description:	Simplifying and solving algebraic and numeric equations involving indices
Suitable For:	High School Mathematics students
Instructions:	All downloadable quizzes are ZIP files. Click the Download link below to access this quiz from MediaFire (379KB in size) then save to your Desktop or another folder on your computer. You must then open the downloaded ZIP file and copy (extract) both Quiz folders into your Jeopardy\Quizzes folder. Then open the quiz file with Stu’s Double Jeopardy! PLEASE NOTE: If MediaFire is blocked at your site, you will need to download this quiz using a computer at an alternative site.

[Download from MediaFire]

Quiz: French Language – Descriptions

Title:	French Language – Descriptions
Author:	Froggieflo – Matamata, New Zealand
Description:	This quiz is to revise French translations from English, specifically in the area of describing people
Suitable For:	Beginner to Intermediate French students
Instructions:	All downloadable quizzes are ZIP files. Right-click the Download link below and choose Save Target As…, and save to your Desktop or another folder on your computer. You must then open the downloaded ZIP file and copy (extract) the quiz files into your Jeopardy\Quizzes folder.

 [Download]

Quiz: French Grammar Revision

Title:	French Grammar Revision
Author:	Froggieflo – Matamata, New Zealand
Description:	This quiz is about conjugation revision, after a few years of French (it all depends when the students start to learn French)
Suitable For:	Intermediate French students
Instructions:	All downloadable quizzes are ZIP files. Right-click the Download link below and choose Save Target As…, and save to your Desktop or another folder on your computer. You must then open the downloaded ZIP file and copy (extract) the quiz files into your Jeopardy\Quizzes folder.

 [Download]

Quiz: Space and the Solar System (Junior)

Title:	Space and the Solar System (Junior)
Author:	S.F., St John’s – Newfoundland, Canada
Description:	A review of some of the material covered in the Grade 6 Space Unit in Science (Canada)
Suitable For:	Children aged 10+
Instructions:	All downloadable quizzes are ZIP files. Right-click the Download link below and choose Save Target As…, and save to your Desktop or another folder on your computer. You must then open the downloaded ZIP file and copy (extract) the quiz files into your Jeopardy\Quizzes folder.

 [Download]

Quiz: Early Algebra – Pronumerals

Title:	Early Algebra – Pronumerals
Author:	Chris McLean, Frenchs Forest, Sydney – Australia
Description:	An Algebra quiz aimed at early high school students
Suitable For:	Children aged 12+
Instructions:	All downloadable quizzes are ZIP files. Right-click the Download link below and choose Save Target As…, and save to your Desktop or another folder on your computer. You must then open the downloaded ZIP file and copy (extract) the quiz files into your Jeopardy\Quizzes folder.

 

[Download]