The tour guide with all the answers
1) As preparation for this activity, it's a good idea to ask the students to come to the session ready with a virtual background of an interesting building or landmark. It's better if the image shows a place which isn't well known to everyone.
2) Everyone should turn off their cameras apart from you. The setting should be on hide non-video participants. Demonstrate how the activity works by activating your own virtual background image (see example below) You are now the tour guide. Tell them that you know absolutely everything there is to know about the place behind you.
Introduce everyone to where you are by saying a few words. This can be totally invented. For example:-
Welcome to Hunterford Castle. As you can see it's very old and not much remains of the original building. It's been the site of so many battles over the centuries and lots of famous people have lived here. Does anyone have any questions about it?
Accept any question they ask and tell them the answer in much detail as you can. You don't really know the answers to their questions of course and need to use all your powers of creativity to come up with something to say.
The questions could be simple things to answer like 'When was it built?' or 'How many people lived in it?' but they could also be questions which lead to stories such as "I heard that there's a ghost who lives there. Is that right?" or "Someone told me they used to hide something in this castle. What was it?" The point is that you know the answer to everything they ask, and you can talk about it at length if necessary. I would suggest beginning some of your answers with "Good question! I was really hoping you were going to ask me that..."
3) Now invite the students to take it in turns to turn on their webcams, to activate their own virtual background images and take on the role of tour guide themselves. Everyone else can ask questions.
Notes
This activity works best with images that aren't of well-known places because it frees up the tour guide to say whatever their imaginations can come up with without being expected to know the right answer. Nick first learnt the face-to-face version of it in a drama workshop with Ken Wilson at SOAS in London in 2009. Ken included it in his excellent book "Drama and Improvisation' (OUP 2008). Nick introduced it to teachers in Gaza in 2018 and Hanaa Mansour, a teacher of English in an UNRWA school there, developed her own version of it for younger learners, using imaginary worlds drawn by the students. See Hanaa's version of the activity below.
