[IAEP] New activity: Arithmetic.

[Caroline Meeks]

On Sun, Oct 25, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Chris Ball <cjb at laptop.org> wrote:

> Hi Caroline,
>
>   > Hi Chris, I had a crazy idea for Arithmetic yesterday.  Its a
>   > wonderful game for the GPA. Its exactly the kind of practice the
>   > students at GPA need. Its collaborative and other people are a
>   > huge key to engagement.  But as you said it needs a little
>   > something more to make it fun.
>
> This sounds like a good way to make it more fun, although I suppose
> it's making the game longer by making the players wait for someone to
> place a piece in the Physics world before getting a new question;
> another way would be to replace the numeric scores with icons that
> race towards a finish line as their owners score points, perhaps.
>

My thinking was that you have to use your time (is is 10 seconds per
question?) to both answer the question and do your physics move.  Maybe
physics moves accumulate for a minute or two but you never wait for a
physics move. This is a high pressure timed adreline rush game.  The goal is
to get students to know their facts so well that they can answer math
questions while thinking about the physics game not the math.  We want to
drill the recall so, for example, when they do algebra and such it takes
very few neurons firing to do the arithmetic so they can focus their
thinking on the algebra.

I also think perhaps this game would not get boring, because you are not
thinking about the math facts, you are thinking about what you want to
create with Physics and thats interesting even the hundreth time.  I feel
like a lot of the flash animation games are interesting for a while, but
once you;ve seen all the cool animations a few times its boring again.

I also would love to not see an emphasis on points or winners or losers.
 Better performance gives you more physics moves so there is incentive, but
its not directly competitive.



> Unfortunately, I don't have any talent for the UI stuff -- the hope
> was that by getting the collaboration part of the activity out there,
> someone with UI skills will adopt making a fun UI for it (and better
> scoring, and better question generation logic, etc).  :)
>

We need a way to store project ideas and allow developers and teachers to
collaborate around them.

>
> Thanks,
>
> - Chris.
> --
> Chris Ball   <cjb at laptop.org>
> One Laptop Per Child
>



-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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