In many ways American culture is World culture. Our movies and holidays bleed into other countries and stain their cultural fabric. Every child here can name the current US president and 3 former presidents. I’m not even sure who the Canadian PM is…

Sometimes I forget how far American culture DOESN’T spread.

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Yesterday was the conclusion of finals week here in Taiwan. One of the classes I teach is purely extra-curricular. So, in lieu of exams we planned a day of fun and games. Which presents a challenge to do over Zoom.

The moment I decided to make Jeopardy.ppt, I started to get a little hyped up. Friends, I’m a .ppt master: 6 years college, 10 years military officer. I expertly and lovingly crafted the HYPE-train, I am the conductor and tickets are free.

I worked my BUTT off. Transitions. Jeopardy theme colors. Jeopardy music. Embedded gifs. I even made hyperlinks between slides so I could click on each category value and transition directly to the question then return to the main board. AND I made it so the “followed hyperlinks” would match the background color (Jeopardy-blue) effectively disappearing after they’ve been chosen (Vanna White not included). Students would use the zoom chat features to “buzz-in”. The slides were simultaneously open on my laptop so I could update the score without breaking presentation mode(cloud editing).

All aboard the HYPE-train, next stop: SPACE!

Class starts… I play the music and introduce everything in my best Alex Trebek voice. The HYPE-train has loaded passengers and is ready to embark on a one-way journey to learning and fun!!

“Before we begin, any questions?” A girl raises her hand. “Yes, Nikki?”

She unmutes her mic, “Teacher Chris, what is Jeopardy?”.

The train has derailed at the station…

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Epilogue:

None of them knew the rules. No one understood how to respond in the form of a question. None of them even knew the theme song. I spent 10 minutes explaining but ultimately had to enlist the Taiwanese teacher to help explain the rules.

Pictured here: me conducting the kiddie train.