Teaching has always been a challenging job. From the original one-room schoolhouse to today’s modern classrooms, success depends on a key ingredient – a teacher who gets students inspired, engaged, and makes learning fun. A teacher like you!
But how much time and energy it takes to be that magic ingredient? The challenge of keeping students’ focus in the classroom, orchestrating field trips, sparking enthusiasm on PD days, and even engaging your school community during vacation breaks. Then doing it all again the following year in ways that feel fresh and unique.
What if there was a fun and collaborative way to add extra excitement to all corners of school life? Get your students and school community actively involved through interactive experiences.
What is an interactive experience?
Interactive experiences are experiences that encourage your students to feel involved by actively engaging with their senses, surroundings, and other people. These experiences are engaging, participatory, and often a lot of fun, transforming passive observers into active, passionate participants. As a participant, students can affect the outcome through their actions, rather than just passively observing.
Think of it as a conversation rather than a monologue. Instead of just listening to a story or watching a scene unfold, you’re a part of it. As a participant, you can make decisions, solve puzzles, create content, and engage in a wide range of activities. In the classroom, rather than just sitting and listening to a lesson, students actively participate in their own learning.
What is an interactive experience platform?
Software that enables people to build and run interactive experiences for their classrooms, communities or organizations.
Here are 6 easy ways to bring your students and school to life with interactive experiences:
1. In-Class Learning
Picture Biology students racing to take photos of plant cells under a microscope, English students collaborating on a sonnet they then recite, or History students role-playing historic events. These “show what you know” activities can be the norm.
Transform your usual lesson plan into an interactive experience with a platform like Goosechase! Goosechase lets you create challenges (called “Missions”) for students to complete. Each successful text, photo, video, or even GPS check-in submission can earn points if you wanted to encourage friendly competition.
The active participation increases retention, while the competitive aspect keeps students engaged and excited about learning.
See how Goosechase gives two teachers superpowers.
2. Leadership Training
Boost training and team-building for student leaders with interactive challenges that promote team-building, collaboration, and critical thinking. They can work on real-life problems, brainstorm solutions, and demonstrate leadership skills in a lively, creative, hands-on environment.
More good news? When you create an interactive experience on Goosechase, you’ll have a database of everyone’s submissions and you’ll be able to share the experience with other teachers or reuse them the following year.
See an example of how one school structured its student leadership training at a Disney park.
3. Field Trips
Ah, field trips. Everyone’s favorite day of the year, right? Make field trips better by turning them into an interactive adventure. Forget the boring guided tour – opt for a scavenger hunt! Whether you’re exploring a museum, park, or hopping on a plane (fancy!), make the most of your students’ mileage by immersing them in their new surroundings, taking photos of their findings and relating them back to your in-class material.
A bonus? This is a great way to collect photos and videos to share with their families after the trip.
Here are fun field trip ideas to keep in mind the next time you’re playing Miss Frizzle.
4. Professional Development
Shake up PD days by getting fellow teachers involved in interactive experiences that highlight new teaching methods or educational tools. Working solo or in teams, teachers can learn from each other in a relaxed, engaging, and playful setting – a refreshing change from traditional workshops!
Here are some fun questions to ask at your next PD Day:
Have teachers answer with photos or videos and encourage them to get creative. The best part is that you’ll have a whole album of resources to look back on.
- What is your favorite edtech tool you’ve tried this year?
- What is the best compliment you’ve received from a student?
- Who is a teacher – real or fictional – that you look up to?
“Have you ever seen High School teachers run down the hall during a PD day? I have – they were playing a Goosechase Experience!”
— Jessie Erickson, District Assessment Coordinator
5. Extracurricular Activities
From crowdsourcing yearbook content to fostering team spirit among clubs and sports teams, interactive experiences can do wonders to get the wider school community involved.
Picture your track and field team running (literally) an interactive fundraiser, or the yearbook committee collecting unique content through creative Missions on Goosechase (“Snap a selfie with our beloved librarian!”). The possibilities are endless and really puts power into your students’ hands.
6. School Community
Keep families connected even during breaks by designing interactive experiences they can join from home. Organize a virtual “Home for the Holidays” Goosechase Experience with a series of fun Missions that everyone can participate in, inviting families to share more about their festive traditions. Or a digital scavenger hunt for Spring Break that gets students out and enjoying nature. They’re a unique way to build community spirit and keep everyone feeling connected, getting them even more excited to get back to school.
Here’s to transforming the way we teach and learn, one interactive experience at a time.
About Goosechase
At Goosechase, experience is everything. Originally inspired by scavenger hunts, Goosechase is an online platform that enables organizations and schools to engage, activate, and educate their communities through delightful interactive experiences. Hatched in Canada, Goosechase has been powering hundreds of thousands of global team building, training, fundraising, education, tours, and recreational games since 2011.
