Building Student Excitement With a Big Reveal (and Music)
Let's say you've designed a fun competition for your students.
When it comes time to reveal the leaderboard or final results, make a show of it.
It's fun to witness student emotions as they watch their results revealed using visuals. Emotions quickly swing from anticipation to anxiety to joy and then back to anxiety then back to joy and — you get the picture.
It's much like being at a horse race — a wide range of emotions over a few short minutes. Warning — You may not get the same effect when revealing the results of a quiz or exam 😊
I'll show you one example of a big reveal method in this video — and keep reading below to discover my favorite music to play.
The music playing in the video is O Fortuna — one of my favorite musical pieces to use for dramatic effect when revealing the leaderboard results in a head-to-head multiplayer simulation. You may know O Fortuna from the 1981 movie Excalibur.
My second favorite reveal music is The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, from the classic spaghetti western by Client Eastwood and Sergio Leone. Check out this amazing live version by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra —
Another interesting one is theJames Bond theme, but it doesn't have a crescendo like O Fortuna. I do use it as my ringtone though 📳
Of course, there are many contemporary songs you can choose that can be just as fun — I use a lot of music in our businessXP curriculum to energize students at key points in the curriculum.
What's your favorite music for a big reveal?
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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com