Posted on January 29, 2009 - by admin

The Extended Uses of Bingo

Gambling is gambling, the puritans would say, and would strive to keep it under wraps and away from the pure and innocent minds of children. But innovative minds have seen the ‘good’ in the ‘bad’ and in the nineteenth century, bingo was widely used in Germany for educational purposes to teach children spelling, animal names and multiplication tables.

Apparently, teachers in America also use bingo in the classroom. It would be more than an adequate replacement for flash cards. The 5*5 matrix can better represent a network of associations. It seems an ideal method for teaching meanings of related words, especially for those who are learning English as a second language. The matrix might also make a better mind map than those in existence. Teachers of language can really exploit the format to help students generate their own personal thesaurus. And if it can be electronically generated, ‘Bingo’! The colors and bright pictures, not to mention the ease of manufacture, would reinforce the lesson, for sure.

Bingo has actually touched the everyday lives of even non-gamblers. The “bingo logic” of chance numbers is used on the now-popular scratch cards. Each card has a pre-drawn number that is hidden until the card is scratched. When the consumer scratches the card, he ‘matches’ the number against the winning number, and if he is lucky, gets a car or a refrigerator or a free trip or whatever. Even a puritan would not refuse a free trip, would he?