Tag Archives: trivia

Virtual Program: Weird But True Trivia

Does anyone know why all of the Weird But True books have been checked out with long holds lists since the pandemic started? I know Disney+ expanded the National Geographic TV show, and these books have always been popular, but our books have been checked out for months, and nearby larger systems also have very high circulation rates. If you have an idea why, let me know in those comments–otherwise, read on for everything Weird But True Trivia!

My live audience was small for this one, though it slipped past me that this event didn’t have a Facebook event or any advertisement beyond our website. My handful of players definitely spanned all ages, so this had a different kind of appeal than some of our past trivia events.

Discover More Trivia Fun:

– Disney Trivia
– Dog Man Trivia
– Pokémon Trivia

Weird But True Trivia Content

I shared the questions via screensharing a PowerPoint on Facebook Live (details below under Logistics). Twenty questions, followed by going back through the twenty questions faster to review the answers.

As always, if you would like any editable files, please send us an email at bookcartqueens@gmail.com or comment below.

Watch the full video here:

View below and download the PowerPoint here. I used Century Gothic and Cartoonist fonts:

Download the full PowerPoint here.

More links:

Weird But True At Home Fun Printable Packet

Reserve Weird But True Books

Weird But True Printable Answer Sheet (Download here)

Weird But True Trivia Certificate (Download here)

Weird But True Trivia Logistics

Like many of our live school age programs, Weird But True Trivia took place on Facebook Live, though this could easily be translated to whatever platform your library is using for virtual events.

There are many great tools out there for trivia. Kahoot is a particularly popular tool that I’ve seen used frequently. That tool asks participants to play along on their phone or another device while watching the livestream, and the system times the questions and ranks participants. While I like that concept for an adult or maybe teen trivia, when there are no prizes involved, I don’t like that system for kids. Plus, it involves a second piece of technology, and for families playing along, it may be especially difficult to have each kid play individually.

I added the questions to PowerPoint, shared to Facebook using their livestreaming screenshare technology. Some detailed tips for those interested in trying a program this way:

  • Make your slides “widescreen” so they fill up the viewers full computer, phone, or TV screen. Do this by going to Design – Slide Size in Microsoft PowerPoint.
  • I don’t like the clunkiness of viewers seeing me open my powerpoint after going live. To always just have the powerpoint shared on your screen:
    • In PowerPoint, start the “Slide Show” mode, making your PowerPoint full screen.
    • Use the Windows key (not ESC) to exit the Slide Show presentation view. This key leaves the presentation open in the background.
    • Start your Facebook Livestream. Instead of sharing your entire screen, just share one application — the Slide Show view of PowerPoint.
    • Return to the Slide Show view to change slides for your participants. Always use the Windows key to exit. If you use the ESC key, you won’t be able to restart the slideshow without creating a new livestream.
  • Using the steps above, you cannot easily see the comments during the presentation without toggling back and forth (and creating the risk of you using the ESC key and having to start a new stream). I have my phone nearby with the livestream running, allowing me to see questions and comments as they come in. A coworker posts links and types responses to the comments, and I respond verbally as I can.

These are supposed to be 30 minutes, but I talk too much, and this, like previous similar programs was closer to 45 minutes. An easy way to shrink the length of the presentation would be to run through all of the answers immediately after the questions, instead of going back through them again later.

Virtual Program: Disney Trivia

I am a Disney fan. I worked at Disney for about a year though the Disney College Program, we grew up growing to the parks and watching the movies, in non-pandemic days I vacation there fairly regularly. So hosting Disney Trivia was a bit of its own dream come true.

We didn’t have a big audience for this – about 45 people (this was no Dog Man Trivia). I think the questions might have been a bit too hard for the intended age range (6-11), though for the players who stuck through to the end, everyone had near perfect scores.

Content

I shared the questions via screensharing a PowerPoint on Facebook Live (details below under Logistics). Twenty questions, followed by going back through the twenty questions faster to review the answers.

Watch the full video here:

*The video cuts off at the very end. I think the internet went out.

View below and download the PowerPoint here. The fonts I used (that didn’t seem to copy over) were Century Gothic and Grobold:

More links:

Disney At Home Fun Printable Packet

Disney Trivia Music Playlist

Reserve Disney Book

Disney Trivia Printable Answer Sheet (Download here)

Disney Trivia Master Certificate (Download here)

Disney Trivia Logistics

Like many of our school age programs, trivia took place on Facebook Live, though this could easily be translated to whatever platform your library is using for virtual events.

There are many great tools out there for trivia. Kahoot is a particularly popular tool that I’ve seen used frequently. That tool asks participants to play along on their phone or another device while watching the livestream, and the system times the questions and ranks participants. While I like that concept for an adult or maybe teen trivia, when there are no prizes involved, I don’t like that system for kids. Plus, it involves a second piece of technology, and for families playing along, it may be especially difficult to have each kid play individually.

I added the questions to PowerPoint, shared to Facebook using their livestreaming screenshare technology. Some detailed tips for those interested in trying a program this way:

  • Make your slides “widescreen” so they fill up the viewers full computer, phone, or TV screen. Do this by going to Design – Slide Size in Microsoft PowerPoint.
  • I don’t like the clunkiness of viewers seeing me open my powerpoint after going live. To always just have the powerpoint as the center of your screen:
    • In PowerPoint, start the “Slide Show” mode, making your PowerPoint full screen.
    • Use the Windows key (not ESC) to exit the Slide Show presentation view. This key leaves it open in the background.
    • Start your Facebook Livestream. Instead of sharing your entire screen, just share one application — the Slide Show view of PowerPoint.
    • Return to the Slide Show view to change slides for your participants. Always use the Windows key to exit. If you use the ESC key, you won’t be able to restart the slideshow without creating a new livestream.
  • Using the steps above, you cannot easily see the comments during the presentation. I have my phone nearby with the livestream running, allowing me to see questions and comments as they come in. A coworker posts links and types responses to the comments, and I respond verbally as I can.

These are supposed to be 30 minutes, but I talk too much, and this, like previous similar programs was closer to 45 minutes.

This is part of a weekly livestream “after school” series on Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in September. I’m not sure if our audience will stick around, but I sure hope we keep up a following with this style event at a consistent weekly time.

Virtual Program: Dog Man Trivia

Even though Dog Man won our last Book Tournament voting contest, and it is, without question, the most popular book series in our library, I underestimated its popularity going into virtual Dog Man Trivia. I expected a small crowd (Pokemon Trivia in June had around 55 attendees; surely Dog Man would be less). Nope. 101 people. 345+ comments. Even with technology issues during the livestream, people attended, participated, and were engaged with the questions and each other.

Looking For More Dog Man Fun?

Have more Dog Man fun with virtual Dog Man BINGO and our in-person Dog Man to the Rescue! party.

Dog Man Trivia Content

My questions were shared via screensharing a PowerPoint on Facebook Live (details below under Logistics). Twenty questions, followed by going back through the twenty questions faster to review the answers.

Watch the video here:

View and Download the PowerPoint below. The fonts I used (that didn’t seem to copy over) were Century Gothic, ObelixPro, and Grobold:

More links:

Dog Man Trivia Logistics

Like many of our school age programs, trivia was hosted on Facebook Live, though this could easily be translated to whatever platform your library is using for virtual events.

There are many great tools out there for trivia. Kahoot is a particularly popular tool that I’ve seen used frequently. That tool asks participants to play along on their phone or another device while watching the livestream, and the system times the questions and ranks participants. While I like that concept for an adult or maybe teen trivia, when there are no prizes involved, I don’t like that system for kids. Plus, it involves a second piece of technology, and for families playing along, it may be especially difficult to have each kid play individually.

My questions were added to a PowerPoint, shared to Facebook using their livestreaming screenshare technology.

How To Run a Trivia Program Using Facebook Live:

  • Make your slides “widescreen” so they fill up the viewers full computer, phone, or TV screen. Do this by going to Design – Slide Size in Microsoft PowerPoint.
  • I don’t like the clunkiness of viewers seeing me open my powerpoint after going live. To always just have the powerpoint as the center of your screen:
    • In PowerPoint, start the “Slide Show” mode, making your PowerPoint full screen.
    • Use the Windows key (not ESC) to exit the Slide Show presentation view. This key leaves it open in the background.
    • Start your Facebook Livestream. Instead of sharing your entire screen, just share one application — the Slide Show view of PowerPoint.
    • Return to the Slide Show view to change slides for your participants. Always use the Windows key to exit. If you use the ESC key, you won’t be able to restart the slideshow without creating a new livestream.
  • Using the steps above, you cannot easily see the comments during the presentation. I have my phone nearby with the livestream running, allowing me to see questions and comments as they come in. A coworker posts links and types responses to the comments, and I respond verbally as I can.

My program was supposed to last 30 minutes (I knew I was closer to 35 on practice). Between a solid 10+ minutes of technical issues in the middle, and participants asking me to slow down, the program went closer to 50 minutes, but participants stayed with me.

Dog Man passion is huge here, and I’m going to host a Dog Man BINGO in August to continue that online camaraderie around this fandom. What virtual programs have worked well for you? Let us know in the comments!

Virtual Program: Pokemon Week

Last week was an extra layer of busy for me. Each summer for the last three years we have had a Pokémon event. Typically, our Pokemon Party lasts about two hours, has about 200 attendees, and includes trivia, BINGO, crafts, tech, snacks, card trading, and more. The 2020 Pokémon Party was on the calendar…and then COVID happened. Even though this event typically relies heavily on in-library activities and the shared love of a few hundred Pokémon fans in one space, I knew this was one of my must-make-virtual activities.

Pokémon Party turned into virtual Pokémon Week, mostly hosted through Facebook Live. This platform creates some limitations, but it has been our go-to location for most of our virtual programming (and we do still see a lot of familiar faces on there). I created off-Facebook versions of these programs to allow for non-social-media users to also join in on the fun.

Attendance was strong at these events, with 60 active participants in both Trivia and Guess that Pokémon, and about 40 active participants at BINGO.

In addition to all of the shared content below, I also had these three links available for each event:

Day One: Pokemon Trivia

Very similar to our in-person trivia (except no prizes and easier), our virtual Pokemon Trivia included 20 questions. This was created in PowerPoint and presented using Facebook Live’s screen share tool. Due to the setup, my computer screen was the PowerPoint file, so I had a coworker typing answers to comments, and I verbally responded to some comments after seeing them through the livestream on my phone. Audio and video quality are a big deal as we move farther down the path of virtual programming, and I will never doubt the value of my lovely Yeti microphone (I actually like my voice when I listen back to a recording. I didn’t think that was possible.).

Video of Facebook Live Event:

Same Event on YouTube: The same trivia content can be found in the YouTube video, though this was created for this platform so the extra content is a little different:

Certificate: At the end of the trivia event, we provided a link in the comments to a printable Trivia Master certificate:

Additional Links:

Day Two: Guess that Pokemon

During our in-person event, this is a passive station with images on the wall that attendee’s identify, self-score, and then pick-up a small prize (like a button or bookmark). I made this another trivia-style event.

Certificate:

Additional Links:

To Make Your Own Character Shadows: I used Microsoft PowerPoint, though this should work in any Microsoft tool (and most image editing software):

  • I found most of my Pokemon images here, though any image without a background can be edited this way.
  • In PowerPoint:
    • I pasted the image.
    • Right clicked on the image and selected “Format Picture.”
    • In the new options to the right, I selected the fourth image in the new toolbar, “Picture.”
    • Changed the “brightness” to zero. The image is now solid black.

Day Three: Pokemon BINGO

Pokemon BINGO was a different virtual adjustment–attendees were able to see me this time! There was an extra “step” here–attendees needed to download Pokemon BINGO cards ahead of time and either print them out or play virtually (like in a paint style program).

Video of Facevook Event:

Downloadable BINGO Cards: 100 unique downloadable Pokemon BINGO cards, plus instructions to play at home.

Certificate:

Additional Links:

Day Four: How to Draw Pokemon

We wrapped up our Pokemon week with our first virtual presenter for the summer, cartoonist Steve Harpster. He taught kids how to draw cartoon-style versions of a variety of Pokemon!