SKILLS
Practice asking questions
Review cultural knowledge

RULES

Students assigned to or form group.  One student takes role of secret personality (related to cultural topics you have covered in class or perhaps characters from works of literature). The other students ask questions (yes/no or perhaps one-word answer) of the secret personality.  The secret personality should only answer yes or no and not reveal any other information.  When the students have discovered the identity of their classmate, one of the other students in the group becomes the secret personality and the questions begin again.  The first group to guess all the personalities wins.

ADAPTATIONS: name the animal??? place???

PREPARE FOR CLASS ( a few days before game)

• Instructor provides worksheet with an outline of the various informational categories to be covered.
• Students submit their secret personality to the instructor and become knowledgeable about their secret personality (fill out worksheet).
• Instructor creates list of all personalities in the class (plus a few distractors as well)

• AOL Instant Messanger is a free chat tool we have used successfully.  You can download the software to your computer or use a web version (longer load time, less reliable, but great when you don't have permission to download software to a computer).
• Free download application available at http://www.aol.com/aim/homenew.adp
• International versions of download available for Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish at http://www.aol.com/aim/international.html
• AIM Express web-based chat available at http://www.aol.com/aim/aimexpress.html   (no local downloaded software needed, cannot save chat logs).
• Users must register  http://aim.aol.com/ .
• Works by inviting yourself to a room whose name you determine in advance. (no spAdvantage for contacts with students abroad (who wouldn't have access to CommonSpace, for example).
• Users can hold private conversation (whisper) with someone in the chat room.

TOOLS: COMMONSPACE CONFERENCING

• CommonSpace writing environment has a conferencing component.
• Application must be downloaded to computer.
• No student registration required.  Allows for anonymity.
• Disadvantage is that not all computer labs have CommonSpace installed.

GAME DAY

• Instructor creates chat rooms (3-4 students per room)
• Instructor distributes the general personality list to each student.  By knowing the possible identities, students can craft questions utilizing the knowledge they have gained about each personality.
• Each student in the class logs into the chat room s/he has been assigned (3-4 students to room)
• Determine who will be the first secret personality (alphabetical order by first name visible in the chat log)
• Remaining students in the group begin to ask questions of the personality and the personality anwwers "yes or no".  Depending on the chat tool the answers may be threaded (in which case students do not have to wait their turn) or linear non-threaded (in which students should take turns (alpha) asking questions and wait for the answer before sending the next question.  Given that the answers are simply yes/no, if they become separated from the question there is no way to follow the conversation.
• First group to guess all the secret identities wins prize.
 
Thanks to Julianne Walters (U Michigan) for the pre-game organization ideas!

STUDENT WORKSHEET
Fill out this worksheet with information about your secret personality.  Below you will find a list of web resources to use as starting points.

NAME:
MALE / FEMALE:
BORN:
DIED:
NATIONALITY:
OCCUPATION:
GENRE:
MOVEMENT:
THEMES / CONTENT:
MAJOR LIFE EVENTS:
OTHER IMPORTANT INFO:
 
 

WWW SOURCES OF ARTIST  INFO

Art History Resources on the Web (C Whitcombe)
Other Art Links on the World Wide Web ( J Howe, Boston College)
WWW Virtual Library: Art History
 

Encyclopédie Encarta French
Yahoo! Encyclopédie French:  Hachette Multimedia / Hachette Livre
Club-Internet - Encyclopédie Hachette Multimédia En Ligne
Enciclopedia Encarta  Spanish
Enciclopedia Encarta  Italian
Enzyklopädie Encarta German

SECRET PERSONALITIES

Braque
Bosch
Salvador Dali
Albrecht Durer
Leonardo Da Vinci
El Greco
Kandinsky
Frida Khalo
Toulouse Lautrec
Michelangelo
Joan Miro
Claude Monet
Georgia O'Keefe
Pablo Picasso
Renoir
Diego Rivera
Rodin
Tintoretto
Vincent Van Gogh
Byun Shi Ji
Katshushika Hokusai