REAL OR FAKE?

They've found a city beneath the Giza pyramid, did you hear?!

With the army of ‘content creators’ eagerly generating various types of AI-generated content online under the motto ‘the more words, the higher the traffic’, April Fool’s Day might soon become obsolete. I mean, why have a special day for it when every day already feels like Fool’s Day?

I wasn’t planning anything special for Tuesday, thinking I’d stick to my good old but gold Spaghetti Harvest activity. That was until I came across a video that was too good not to bring into the classroom.

Actually, I first came across the story on social media. A team of researchers had made an extraordinary claim – the discovery of an underground city beneath Egypt’s Giza pyramids. The Indiana Jones fan in me stirred for a moment and thought, hmm…but quickly moved on – my lifespan of focus on social media rarely exceeds 20 seconds. And then I saw the video.

www.tiktok.com/@glintgaze/video/7487756930916551982

No words.

What could be a better wordless video to play on April Fool’s Day in 2025?

Like every other wordless video in my collection (Wordless Videos for ELT -1 and Wordless Videos for ELT-2), it can be used as a warm-up activity or tied to the lesson topic, while also offering a brilliant opportunity to: a) celebrate April Fool’s Day, and b) guide students through a critical thinking routine to determine whether the video is real or fake – a key survival skill in our era where nothing should be taken at face value.

How to use in the class:

The process is pretty straightforward. Start by breaking the news – They’ve found a city beneath the Giza pyramid, did you hear?! To prevent the immediate ‘Aaaah, Fool’s Day!’, have your students google it themselves. It’s a hot topic right now.

Then, show the video of researchers exploring the discovered city.

Walk through the critical thinking framework, following the Happy Fool’s Day, people!

The framework is based on a multimodal approach, similar to the creative thinking framework, but specifically designed with videos in mind.

Happy exploring, and happy Fool’s Day!

For AI skeptics, here are solid, authentic videos of spaghetti harvests and marshmallow fields…all made before they started fooling us all with AI.