February 19, 2012 Weekend link galore: send your favorite games! Go easier on the Scratch task!

[Maria Droujkova]

Please reply to this email with a link to the description of one of your favorite math games. Something you think is cool and new, or tried and true. It can be a computer, mobile, board, clapping, paper, mental or any other game. 

My link: the newest app Shuttle Mission Math from Colleen King of The Math Playground  http://www.mathplayground.com/shuttle_mission_math.html 

It's an example of an early algebra game, about aliens called Zoggs that must not overload their shuttle. It uses the metaphor of balance for equations.

When I posted the Scratch task, I thought people would poke around a bit and maybe make very simple demos, like "Scratch the cat walks around a rectangle to show the idea of the perimeter." But participants interpreted the task as designing multi-level math games - a much, much bigger challenge! For example, what Sandra proposed would take about 20-30 hours to make, I estimate, if you were fully experienced with Scratch when you started. 

This is a typical game designer problem. I have been designing math games and interactives since 1997, and every single time I had to scale my initial visions and dreams down - way down - for implementation. When I run game development classes and workshops with kids, we spend some time dreaming about games we'd like to design. Then kids start working with a platform like Scratch and it takes them, say, half an hour to solve the problem "Make the cat walk in a square." That's when they see how many hours go into MAKING games. Collen, a very experienced programmer, has been working on the app I linked above for half a year - not full time, since she leads a math center, but many hours every week. 

This realization can be either scary or encouraging - depending on debriefing. With kids, I usually talk about methods people use to afford their imaginations. When kids feel how slow programming is, they appreciate big, professionally made games they play on a whole new level, because they realize how much human effort and how many hours games represent. And making even tiny animations and games is very satisfying, so the whole experience is usually encouraging for kids, rather than scary. I point out applets in the Math gallery on Scratch site: http://scratch.mit.edu/galleries/view/6423 Some have only a few lines of code in each sprite, like this symmetry applet: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/dapontes/2320630

Here are two Scratch applets shared so far at http://p2pu.org/en/groups/ed218-developing-mathematics-the-early-years/content/week-5-scratch-from-mit-february-13-19/

SandyG http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/sjgarret/2335341

"I have worked for hours every night since reading this assignment."

Carolyn Lesser http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/clesser/2335925

"I also spent quite a few hours during my nights just playing around with Scratch."

Please make something simple and casual - a shape Scratch the cat draws as it walks, a one-step animation, or maybe a picture where a piece changes size or position as you click a button. Something young kids could reasonably make in about half an hour. Math is everywhere, and making even a simple animation is meaningful.

You can open them in Scratch to see the code - click on the applet's name on its page (see attachment).

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova
919-388-1721

Make math your own, to make your own math

 

[Garrett, Sandra]

The website coolmath-games has a lot of really fun games.  I particularly like the multiplication game called Crazy Taxi.  I think kids will find it fun to crash into the other cars which I think is a realistic approach as that is definitely what my son would have preferred to do-- crash!

http://www.coolmath-games.com/0-crazy-taxi-m12/index.html

 

Regarding the Scratch assignment:  I think my issue with this assignment was my interpretation of "Make a small Scratch applet you think relates to math".  Without any examples to judge the scope of the assignment, and no experience with Scratch or teaching math, I really had no idea what you were looking for so I tried to envision something that I might actually be able to use in my classroom.    I felt the Scratch directions were lacking, and the majority of my time was spent experimenting with the blocks to see what each one would do and trying to figure out the switching of the backgrounds. The first night I worked, I did not have the hide and show blocks for some reason, and I took the most time on the second night simply trying to find them!  If the directions provided by the Snatch website were more complete, or perhaps just written differently, I don't know that I would have had so much trouble.  Once I found the show and hide, I was able to quickly get the two screens together without any trouble.  Adding the third screen would have taken time, but I think once I found the one key to doing that, which I was obviously not understanding, I could have easily gone from 2 screens to 9 simply by copying my blocks with directions and changing the values. 

 

However, when I first went to Scratch, I was able to get three balls to bounce all over the screen while another went in a straight line back and forth within 2 minutes. I could have related that to math if I had been more sure of the assignment.  

 

 

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[Maria Droujkova]

On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 9:45 AM, Garrett, Sandra <sgar...@arcadia.edu> wrote:

The website coolmath-games has a lot of really fun games.  I particularly like the multiplication game called Crazy Taxi.  I think kids will find it fun to crash into the other cars which I think is a realistic approach as that is definitely what my son would have preferred to do-- crash!

http://www.coolmath-games.com/0-crazy-taxi-m12/index.html

 

Regarding the Scratch assignment:  I think my issue with this assignment was my interpretation of "Make a small Scratch applet you think relates to math".  Without any examples to judge the scope of the assignment, and no experience with Scratch or teaching math, I really had no idea what you were looking for so I tried to envision something that I might actually be able to use in my classroom.

Yes, this assignment was wrong, for this reason. While explorations you describe are valuable and can be fun, and now you have that applet beginning that people will probably want to build on, imposing such amount of work on people in the middle of a busy week isn't something I would knowingly do!

We will include this in the story we write for the Scratch site, and I will invite Scratch developers to comment on it. Just letting kids play with Scratch freely works well when we have face-to-face workshops - maybe because help is immediately available when they get stuck, like you describe about the show/hide issue. Without such help, it's easy to spend an hour looking for a button...

So, what I think would help are some simple examples of Scratch applets, like your bouncy balls, that other teachers made - and that are doable in an hour or so. With comments about their code. What do you think? Anything else?

Were there any tutorials among those you watched that you thought were particularly helpful?

MariaD

[Garrett, Sandra]

Yes, I agree completely! Showing or pointing to specific examples that meet your expectations would really be great.  I also think making the expectation clear that this is something that you would want children to be able to replicate vs. as a teaching tool would also make a difference.

 

The tutorials are funny.  There's a series of 10 tutorials on YouTube made by a very precocious, what I assume to be about a 10-year-old boy, and it made me feel so old! He made a lot of assumptions-- one of which was that he wasn't talking to a 40+ year-old woman with no idea what he was talking about!  He made me laugh, and I really enjoyed him, and some of what he offered was helpful.  Overall, though, I think the assumption was that we already had some basis to understanding what this was all about, and the truth is, its very different from any program I've ever seen in that there aren't different slides or fields but it all builds in the one script.  Despite it being difficult, I really enjoyed this assignment.  I like trying new programs, and I even spent some time with my district's tech coach sharing the site with him and the little applet that I created.

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[Louis, Keisha]

There's this game I love to play on my phone called Math Attack. I think kids will love this game because you get to compete against yourself and it really challenges you in a fun way. http://www.appbrain.com/app/math-attack/com.chilisapps.android.mathAttack

 

-Keisha

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[S. Ali Ghasempouri]

I used NXT LEGO robotics kit and made math game with students. Math in Motion, or Geometry in Action.

Full of excitement for students!

Cheers,

Ali.

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[Maria Droujkova]

Wow, Ali - do you have any screenshots or games online? Or maybe you can just email some to this list? I'd love to peek!

[S. Ali Ghasempouri]

I'm glad, you liked. I don't have games online! This is my weak point!

I try to send you email.

Cheers,

Ali.

 

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[S. Ali Ghasempouri]

Maria,

I can refer to some works which have inspired me.

http://www.vt.edu/spotlight/impact/2009-05-18-skelton/2009-05-18_skelton.html 

http://www.mathobotix.com/

http://www.robofest.net/

I also attached a paper.

What do you think about math with NXT for Moebius Noodles?

Cheers,

Ali.

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