Let's Play Cards in Class! Microsoft Office Spoons downloadable! #busedu @MicrosoftEDU

My Advanced Computer Applications students, who learn Microsoft Office, are getting close to being finished for the year. We've covered all the content, they've finished final projects, nearly all are certified in at least one Microsoft application, and they are doing GMetrix review and trying to certify in another application this week. So, Monday and Tuesday I'm just not sure what to do with them! We are in school until Friday, we'll review on Wed/Thursday, but there's just extra time to fill.

I asked for feedback yesterday and, naturally, they wanted to watch a movie. Um, not really any good movies out there about spreadsheets or databases. Another student jokingly said, "Let's just play Spoons. That's fun."

Yeah, fun. But not related to curriculum.  Or is it?

So, I decided perhaps if I made some Microsoft Office playing cards, we could play Spoons. But, still, there needed to be some sort of "reason" for it. Got it!

I found this blog post from Jennifer Findley. She did this in her class as a review activity!

Then, I found a template at the Bright Hub for playing cards in Microsoft Word. Finally, I Googled some logos and took screenshots from various Microsoft applications--Word, Access, PowerPoint, Excel, and Edge (the browser) and pasted them in to create 52 cards. I printed on card stock and just sent my student aide down to cut them apart for me. We will make two sets of cards (I only have 11 students left in the class after seniors leave, so that will do). And, I found some little flag stickers so I can put a sticker on the back of each card in the set to keep them separated.

What did I create?

• 4 Word screenshots, 8 Excel screenshots, 4 Edge screenshots, 4 Access screenshots, and 8 PowerPoint screenshots. Students would just pass cards to find a matching number, like in "real Spoons" but will find the four Word screenshots or four of the Excel screenshots, etc. 
• 4 playing cards of the logos for Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Edge, and Office. Those cards will just be straight logos, so that should be pretty simple (of course, this might be deceptively easy as two people might both be holding on to the "easy" Word logos. That would just be a straight match like the other version of Spoons.
• They will play like normal, passing cards and trying to find the screenshot matches or logo matches.
• Whoever is "out" must first say "Prove it" to the person who "won" and went out first. They will put their cards down and everyone will collectively decide if they do indeed have a correct match (and I printed an extra copy of the cards originals pages and stapled them and marked W, E, P, etc., so they can double check it for the screenshots). If matches are incorrect, they are now "out" instead.
• Whoever is "out" and doesn't get a spoon will have to explain something from one of their cards in their hands. So, if you have the Print dialog box from PowerPoint, you would say something like, you can set this to print handouts 6 per page from this in PowerPoint. 
• Then, they shuffle, re-deal, and play again. You could keep score of winners or negative scores on the "loser" each round. Up to you.

Think this might work for your kiddos? Feel free to download my PDF from Google and create your own set. 

UPDATE: We played, they enjoyed, and we tried different versions (have to have one of Word/Excel/Access/PPT was one derivative). They wanted to play where the loser goes out, so that's how we did it. However, I think I need to just write on the back of the cards... the stickers kept falling off!