BINGO!

Everyone loves a good game of old-fashioned Bingo, right? But those chips all over the floor at the end of the day -- not so good. Enter the iPad and BingoBaker!

This is a great activity to use when you have quick-to-solve problems, not long multi-step problems. We were working on simplifying expressions with square roots, so this was a perfect skill to practice with a bingo game.

Setting the game board up is easy -- go to www.bingobaker.com. You can use the site even if you don't sign up for an account, but if you do, you can save your games and, if needed, print more than 8 paper copies. The cost for an account is a one-time fee of only $9.95. 

Enter what you want to show up in your 24 boxes and click Generate at the bottom. The next screen will give you a link to play your bingo game online. I create a QR code for the link so my students just need to scan the code to get to their bingo board. The great thing about this is every student's board will be different! BingoBaker randomizes the board every time someone else accesses it. (If you print the boards, it will do the same thing.) Instead of placing a chip on a box, they simply tap on it and it changes to a yellowy-orange color. (The first time you play this with your class, let them "play" with the board first, making patterns, etc, to get it out of their system!) If they tap on a box by mistake, simply tap it again and it goes back to white.

Almost forgot to mention -- even if you don't have a class set of iPads, this also works great on smart phones. This is actually how I did it the very first time I used BingoBaker. I told the class to bring their own devices, but for those who did not have any to bring, I was able to print out the bingo boards on paper for them.

Although I use BingoBaker for math problems, I can see it being used for practice with vocabulary in any content area, learning capitals, chemistry symbols, foreign language, or just about anything. I put the problems up on the SmartBoard so it's easy to flip through the slides quickly. You could also have some type of photograph up on the SmartBoard that they have to identify it and find the name of it on their bingo board. The possibilities are endless!

The class loved this fast-paced game (they don't even realize they're doing all those math problems!) We were running out of time at the end of class and they all begged me for just one more problem!!