Trivia Lists

[SMcNeill]

At some time in the past, I was going to have fun and write a program that created a Jeopardy type game to play around with.  Towards that goal, I surfed the net and collected various trivia questions from all over the place.   Since I never got around to making that game, I thought I'd go ahead and share these lists here in case anyone else would be interested in them.

5 lists in the 7z archive here
  Trivia.7z (Size: 1.24 MB / Downloads: 20)

All in CSV format.   Feel free to use them as you wish; as far as I know, these are all common facts and public domain.  You might need to sort through them a bit to find exactly what you're looking for, but at least it's a place to start looking from, to perhaps get someone started on a nice triva app/game. 

[TerryRitchie]

And here is a ZIP file that contains jeopardy assets such as sounds, graphics, and a 95% complete jeopardy game I wrote in 2011 that you can modify and finish if you like.

I never finished it because new administration took over and basically outlawed games in the classroom.

After the intro Click on Start to start the game. Then click on any of the topic headers to show the topics. Then click on each square to bring up the questions. Press ESC to bring up the outro.

Copy the contents of the zip file to your QB64pe folder. There's one BAS file and two folders containing the assets.

[bplus]

95% done, curious why not finish being so close but confess I have of bunch of those too.

that last 5% means polishing up and there never seems to be an end to that...
one possible explaination for leaving things undone.

i considered a jeopardy game, and passed because the quality is in the questions and that is a never ending job to write new sets of questions.

[TerryRitchie]

95% done, curious why not finish being so close but confess I have of bunch of those too.

that last 5% means polishing up and there never seems to be an end to that...
one possible explaination for leaving things undone.

i considered a jeopardy game, and passed because the quality is in the questions and that is a never ending job to write new sets of questions.

I didn't finish it because I designed it for classroom use, hence the name Classroom Jeopardy. All of the title graphics would need to be redone and the way you interact with the game would need to be different.

I designed the game to be shot up on a large screen (projector or LCD screen) and a teacher would control the action of the teams in the classroom.

I used an elaborate Excel spreadsheet to play classroom jeopardy but it was buggy and hard to use. This is why I started this version. I actually started it in 2010 when I first discovered QB64 (that's why you'll see DECLARE SUB and DECLARE FUNCTION at the top of the code, I was still in a QuickBasic mode of thinking.)

[bplus]

Ah multiple human players problem, realized that with Wheel.

[TerryRitchie]

Ah multiple human players problem, realized that with Wheel.

Yep. At the time I was looking at some sort of Arduino solution so each student could have a box with a large button on it. When the box was plugged into the computer at their desk it would grab the log in name from the computer and then report that to the computer the game would be on and build a listing of controller IDs and student names associated with them.

This list would then be loaded by Classroom Jeopardy to know how many players and where/who they were.

I had a prototype working at the time but stopped work on this too unfortunately.

[bplus]

I never finished it because new administration took over and basically outlawed games in the classroom.

I see, plus this assoc memory to effort adds a big neg cloud around the whole project, eeh!

new admin doesn't know much about motivating students games engage far better than lectures.
i wonder how long they lasted.

[TerryRitchie]

I never finished it because new administration took over and basically outlawed games in the classroom.

I see, plus this assoc memory to effort adds a big neg cloud around the whole project, eeh!

new admin doesn't know much about motivating students
i wonder how long they lasted.

Oh they are still there but it's not entirely their fault. Common core and state testing standards starting really ramping up around then (that no child left behind bullshit). The push toward mandated state testing left very little time for anything except rote memorization of test answers. Administrators were under pressure to see test scores reach a certain level. If that level was not met funding would be affected. Their answer to this was do anything to get students to answer those tests correctly. Seeing things like games being used in the classroom meant the teachers would be evaluated lower for not using time wisely. It was (and still is) a real mess.

Couple this with the state now requiring students to get at least two industry certifications before graduation (like CompTIA A+/Network+, CISCO CCNA, etc..) and you get the final nail in the coffin. There is no real world experience in a high school classroom so these certifications, even if gotten by the student, meant nothing to the IT industry. But parents and students were told this was their ticket to the IT world. The ONLY way for a student to pass a certification like this in a high school setting is rote memorization. Never mind they don't understand what they are memorizing, all that matters was the school could report the certification testing to the state.

It's the reason I finally left teaching. I couldn't tell parents that their child was guaranteed a job in the IT industry even though I was supposed to and the school's literature made it sound like this as well. I even had tenure so I couldn't be fired if I bucked the system but I was so unhappy with everything that it was affecting my mental health.

[bplus]

i think you gave yourself a raise from teaching a classroom to teaching the world!

[GareBear]

And here is a ZIP file that contains jeopardy assets such as sounds, graphics, and a 95% complete jeopardy game I wrote in 2011 that you can modify and finish if you like.

I never finished it because new administration took over and basically outlawed games in the classroom.

After the intro Click on Start to start the game. Then click on any of the topic headers to show the topics. Then click on each square to bring up the questions. Press ESC to bring up the outro.

Copy the contents of the zip file to your QB64pe folder. There's one BAS file and two folders containing the assets.

I down loaded the .zip file it was the .bas and jep files and no folders. Was the download faulty? My answer is yes! It did not extract everything in the zip file.
Problem solved. Sorry for the trouble.