As we prepare for the biggest tournament of the college sports season, I wanted to create a game that focused on the content rather than strategy or results but also captured students attention as the games played out. The Tournament of Technology was my answer!

Tournament Game

I have seen this method used before – specifically with books and always kept it in the back of my mind. Games are an awesome way to get students excited about a subject or to review a mass of information but sometimes the strategy or the rules or the results get in the way of the content.

This tournament style game highlights the content and students are forced to focus exclusively on the information for each prompt. There is no strategy since no one can foresee what will win each mini-contest and my favorite part is that this game can be played throughout the year because the results will be different every single time you play.

Tournament of Technology

This was my original idea and I am very proud of how it turned out. My husband and I have played it a few times (true story) and someday I am positive my children will join us.

Tournament of Technology has 30 prompts that spans all of human history. Technology prompts include the wheel, the printing press, and the internet.

The tournament will begin with 16 prompts. Despite my husbands protests I chose to stick to 16 prompts because I fear that you wouldn’t be able to finish in one class period and students may get bored. You do have the option of completing one segment of the tournament a day. For example, on day one, you would only complete the first 16 prompts. Day two would focus on the next eight prompts. Day three would focus on the four remaining prompts. Day four would be the championship round and a winner would be chosen. This would allow you to spend day five discussing and debating with each other over choices that were controversial or maybe have the students write about it.

You could also let different class periods discuss/debate the different winning segments. First period decides the winners among the first 16 prompts. Second period decides the winners among the second segment and so on.

Some examples of prompts would be to debate which was more important: the development of writing systems or the development of vaccines. Both had major impacts on humans changed the world and generally are not debated against each other. This particular pairing can yield some of the most interesting discussions. Yet, in the end, students have to make a decision.

If you’re ready to purchase, click here.

Looking for a Google Classroom™ version? This was modified slightly from the in-classroom version. Click here to see it.

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