Smack Down
FIRST: Select someone in your group to read the information below.
What is it?
Get your learners up and sharing in a game-like format. Share a lot of ideas in a short amount of time and draw on the collective genius.
Time: Usually runs about 50 - 180 minutes
People: This would be ideal for about 10 - 30 people
What Do you need?
Laptop or iPad
Projector
Polling Tools (Poll Everywhere, Google Forms)
Presentation Tools (Google Slides, PowerPoint, Keynote)
about smackdowns
Each year at the New York State Association for Computers And Technology in Education (NYSCATE) some friends and I participate in an "iPad App Smackdown."
We choose three of our favorite time and present how we use to the app to engage our students. At the end of our presentations, the audience votes on who they felt presented the best apps and strategies to crown the iPad App Smackdown Champion.
The more l participated in this event, the more I thought how great it would be to use a Smackdown in other professional learning situations.
Though Smackdowns require previous content knowledge, it is a fun way to get your audience engaged and sharing. The best part of Smackdowns is the amount of content that can be shared in a short amount of time. If you have groups of three people who are each sharing three ideas or strategies, that's 9 strategies in a very short time.
Whether it's the team that is presenting or the audience members that are voting, all participants are active in a Smackdown.
setting up a smackdown
- Set up the stage with a computer and projector.
- Divide your audience into groups of three or four.
- Pick a topic.
- Have the members of each group build a set of slides for their ideas on the topic. Ideally two or three slides.
- Create a series of polls to place at the end of each group presentation. Your polls should include the names and the content of the participants.
- Collect the slides in one presentation. The final slide should be the poll.
- Have the teams present their tech tool, teaching tip, book recommendation, or anything else they'd like to share about the topic.
- Crown the champion. Think about a prize, trophy or badge.
9 Share a document with all the collected information.
TIP: Give participants a time limit for their presentations and set a timer.
organization
