Lesson sketch: Online Bearings Game gets 360 times better!

Here it is:

Here is the address for the pupils and to go fullscreen (recommended): http://globalracing.overthefence.heliohost.org

Features:

• Warm-up level, which aims to give pupils a basic idea of bearings (including bearings above 180 degrees). <--Btw. I had to remove features from this section to make it less fun (so pupils would want to progress).
• Three main levels, which progress by getting fewer instructions, requiring more accurate measurements AND increasing the complexity of the scale used. 
• Ability to race whole classes against each other (more on this later).
• 'Extension' level where reverse bearings are practiced (with high score board).
• New 8-bit graphics style.

Racing:

1. To set up a class to race go here: http://globalracing.overthefence.heliohost.org/admin and enter the details on the 'Create a class' form. 
2. Have all the pupils play the game on a different computer. Whenever they complete one of the main three levels they will be asked to type in their 'team name' and 'class code'.
3. They can choose the team name, but make sure they type in the exact class code you created in step one.
4. On a computer with a projector, go back to: http://globalracing.overthefence.heliohost.org/admin and enter the details on the 'Race an existing class' form.
5. On the next page, you are given a list of students to include/take out (this feature is mainly to avoid having somebody choose an inappropriate team name). Choose the teams to race and click 'Race'.
6. Wait for it to load, put it on the big screen, click 'Go'.
7. Watch the magic.

(Btw. If you want to try out adding teams and watching races you can use 'ras' as the school code, and choose races made 'All time')

Why remake this:

I attempted this previously but stopped, a little frustrated, as my knowledge of programming ran out. Learning PHP allowed me to add the data-sharing between computers.

More than that though, I wanted this to be a proof-of-potential; that Maths based computer games don't have to be awful.

My reasons for disliking most games is documented here, and I thought it might be nice to see how I did against my own list:

• Multiple maths skills used in inceasingly difficult combination - Skills involved: bearings, angle measurement, map scales, reflexes, knowledge of shortest route techniques, reverse bearings. Definitie progression between levels.
• Intrinsic reasons that the skills are necessary - Not entirely clear in the main levels unless you know that bearings are still used by boats. The reason is more obvious on the 'extension' level.
• Maths skills are not painful to implement; that game mechanics/input methods do not get in the way, there is flow - I don't like how awkward the protractor is to move around and it does slow things down quite a bit. However, it is an essential part of understanding bearings, and the rest of the game flows fairly well.
• Rewards; feelings of mastery, leader boards, progression of story, new, fun in-game abilities - Different levels have you using the same knowledge of bearings in different and interesting ways, there is competition and feeling of mastery/progression. No real story, but there is a certain satisfaction in saving more people than last time.
• Any additional difficulties or constraints to the maths problems are introduced in a way that feels natural and unvontrived - Only having ten moves is a meaningless constraint. I included the constraint to gently encourage pupils to move away from guessing angles and in to measuring them. This and the other constraints, however, are standards seen in many popular computer games and my hope is that they are pervasive enough to be accepted by pupils.
• The maths problems involved are at least interesting, if not also fun -
  The game is to use and understand bearings correctly. Take away the bearings element and the game is no longer interesting.

 

Please let me know if you find any bugs or have any ideas how the game could be bettered.

Lesson Sketch: mathematics of a cake sale

Intro:

There is a cake sale coming up and you plan to sell these flapjacks:

How much should you charge for one? Why? Will that make me a profit? How do you know? How much profit would I make? How could I work it out?

Main:

Give pupils the recipe: http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/3846/apricot-oat-flapjacks.aspx and either a table of prices or access to a supermarket website, such as http://www.tesco.com/
Pupils work out how much it costs to make a batch of 8 flapjacks and the profit they could make on each one sold.

Extension:

What are the most expensive parts of these flapjacks? Try to replace some things in the recipe with something similar in order to make the total cost lower. How much profit would you make now? How cheap could you make them?
Can you find a different cake recipe that would be cheaper to make?

Further Discussions:

This cake is slightly cheaper to make than the flapjacks:

Should I make these instead of the flapjacks? Why? Why not? What other considerations should I be making apart from price? (Time, effort, equipment needed, etc.)

You may discuss how some people factor time as money using a basic wage.

Lesson Sketch: Bearings - Yacht Race Along the Thames

I've just made this game on bearings:

Update: Now including multiple levels, video instructions and a Link to the file.

This is the secondary reason that I have been reading about gamification. I'm not really sure, though, how well I managed to stick to the guides I set for myself last week.

Notes on it's use:

• The idea of the game is that different groups of students will come on to the computer at different times.
• Each group has about ten minutes to create a winning track.
• If they finish early they can make more tracks and should be encouraged to think about strategies for minimising the total distance.
• If they are unsure, they should click the 'Hints' button at the top of the screen.
• Once each group has at least one track saved, click the 'Race' button on the bottom right of the screen.
• Race will let you see who had the shortest track.

Other comments

• An alternative way to do this would be to have each group on a different computer. On the race screen each group can click on 'View data' and copy the data for the track they have saved on to your computer to view the race at the end.
• The main learning objectives for this game are to understand bearing notation and be able to measure bearings.
• Secondary objectives are to be able to use map scales and to consider strategies for achieving the shortest possible distance.

Please let me know if you find any bugs or have any suggestions.

Lesson Sketch: Land speed

Hopefully I'll get back into blogging soon, but for now here's a quick puzzle about converting units:

Have a guess: which of these animals is fastest/second fastest/slowest?
Using the measurements given, put the animals in order from fastest to slowest.

Cheetah - 70 miles per hour

Snake - 9 metres per second

Human - 751 metres per minute

Grizzly Bear - 1159 kilometres per day

Reindeer - 52 kilometres per hour

Elephant - Can travel 1 kilometre in 89 seconds

How much faster than Ussain Bolt could a cheetah run the 100m?

Answer:

Lesson Sketch: Using Biometrics to Run like Usain Bolt

http://www.fotopedia.com/items/josegoulao-TbuZScZeYnM

Intro:
Students get into pairs with a stop-watch each. The pairs time each other running 100m, getting split times for every 10m (you will need to have marked the track for this in advance.

Main:
Say we will now try to improve those times by learning from the best: Usain Bolt. Show the pupils graphs of Usain Bolt's 200m World Record run:

 



Students draw a distance/time (and speed/time if pupils have learned about tangents) of their own split times.

1. How is your graph different to Usain's (apart from his being a 200m run)?
2. Using Usain's speed/time graph, describe his actions in a much detail as possible. Give times for each action. Give distances for each action.
3. Why do you think Usain slows down towards the end?
4. Compare Usain's acceleration at the start to yours. What other differences are there between Usain's graphs and yours?

Hopefully from that, students will see that Usain accelerated extremely quickly in the first 10 meters, but continued to accelerate until about the 50 meter mark. From there he tried to maintain his top speed, but slowed down gradually.

(Optional): Show a video of this run. Note techniques: Arms rigid with fast pumping movement, shortish steps, leaning forward at start but upright after a few seconds.

End:
Write down a checklist of what Usain did in the run. Pupils go back to the running track in their pairs and try to do everything on the checklist to improve their previous time.