Group items tagged

"The Middle School Stream aims to motivate and engage middle school students (grades 5 through 8) in STEM learning, 21st Century Literacy Skills and Systems Thinking by challenging them to design original video games. The High School Stream aims to motivate and engage high school students (grades 9 through 12) in STEM learning, 21st Century Literacy Skills and Systems Thinking by challenging them to design original video games. The Collegiate Stream challenges emerging game developers at the graduate and undergraduate levels to design video games for children (grades pre-K through 8) that teach key STEM concepts and foster an interest in STEM subject areas. The Educator Stream challenges educators to design video games for children (grades pre-K through 12) that teach key STEM concepts and foster an interest in STEM subject areas."

"This paper describes a research project on Year 3 primary school students in Malaysia in their use of computer-based video game to enhance learning of multiplication facts (tables) in the Mathematics subject. This study attempts to investigate whether video games could actually contribute to positive effect on children's learning or otherwise. In conducting this study, the researchers assume a neutral stand in the investigation as an unbiased outcome of the study would render reliable response to the impact of video games in education which would contribute to the literature of technology-based education as well as impact to the pedagogical aspect of formal education. In order to conduct the study, a subject (Mathematics) with a specific topic area in the subject (multiplication facts) is chosen. The study adopts a causal-comparative research to investigate the impact of the inclusion of a computer-based video game designed to teach multiplication facts to primary level students. Sample size is 100 students divided into two i.e., A: conventional group and B conventional group aided by video games. The conventional group (A) would be taught multiplication facts (timetables) and skills conventionally. The other group (B) underwent the same lessons but with supplementary activity: a computer-based video game on multiplication which is called Timez-Attack. Analysis of marks accrued from pre-test will be compared to post- test using comparisons of means, t tests, and ANOVA tests to investigate the impact of computer games as an added learning activity. The findings revealed that video games as a supplementary activity to classroom learning brings significant and positive effect on students' retention and mastery of multiplication tables as compared to students who rely only upon formal classroom instructions."

Lure of the Labyrinth is today's innovative catch Lure of the Labyrinth is a game for middle school pre-algebra students designed to improve math and literacy skills. It includes intriguing math-based puzzles embedded in a narrative game in which students work to find their lost pet and save the world from monsters. Linked to mathematics standards, the game gives students a chance to think like mathematicians. Lure of the Labyrinth Home Page In Lure of the Labyrinth, students progress through three sections, or wings each related to a different math strand that is part of a the typical pre-algebra curriculum: * Proportions (including fractions and ratios) * Variables and Equations * Number and Operations (including geometry, order of operations and modular arithmetic) Each of the three wings includes three puzzles, and each of the puzzles has three levels progressing from easy to hard. Students have to successfully solve each puzzle three times before they can advance through the game. Lure of the Labyrinth Library Page A professional development video specifically designed for pre-algebra teachers takes them step-by-step through the things they need to do to make this engaging game the focal point of great classroom learning experiences. Planning resources include links to standards, directions for working with specific puzzles, lesson plans, explanations of the background math, and graphic organizers. Video - Lure of the Labyrinth Lure of the Labyrinth was created by Maryland Public Television and MIT Education Arcade in cooperation with FableVision.

For prealgebra students.

From the abstract: :The first aim of this discussion is to suggest a framework for designing serious games based on game features in commercial games, opinions of fourth graders and their teachers, literary studies, contemporary learning theories, as well as successful and unsuccessful similar endeavours. The second part of this paper describes a concrete example of a maths game based on the proposed framework that implicitly tests math and collaboration skills. The game is made of three components: the game itself, a social network, and a teacher reporting tool. Despite a growing interest in GBL, some teachers are reluctant to use serious games in school. To increase usage of serious games as resource, it is important to equip teachers with information and address their concerns. The paper concludes with the idea that serious games need to be designed well in order to provide the immersion and collaborative active learning that most learning theories recommend."

Abstract: "n this study we explored the impact of performing mathematical tasks presented in the context of an "adventure challenge" or a "mathematical challenge" in a videogame. This videogame - "Matemáquina do Tempo" - is being developed to facilitate learning of mathematical skills like counting, grouping, and relating numbers. The videogame consists in various movement control tasks with dynamic (e.g., running) and static (e.g., pointing) interactions. Our goal was to test the impact of the integration of a direct mathematical task versus an indirect mathematical task. A group of 18 five year-old children performed the game in two conditions: a) adventure challenge , which implied movements such as running or climbing trees to perform mathematical tasks of counting and grouping; and b) mathematical challenge , which included swimming after selecting the correct path through counting, followed by a direct mathematical task of pointing to organize numbers in a line. Our assumptions were evaluated according to questionnaires and video analysis of the children playing the game. Results confirmed our hypothesis, showing that players performing the mathematical challenge generally considered that they were learning with the game, and most agreeing that the game was fun. Participants in the adventure challenge condition on the other hand, showed a tendency to evaluate the game as very amusing and were more distributed in the learning evaluation. In conclusion, we suggest that the inclusion of direct mathematical tasks in the videogame might lead to increased perception of learning, although they also seem to result in lower amusement ratings."

"Monkey Tales Games is a series of 3D video games to support the learning of maths, created in 2011 by die Keure Educatief and Larian Studios from Belgium. The series is made up of five exciting and fun video games with age-specific themes where the player has to solve 3D puzzles." ...

The University of Kansas has a wonderful math website designed for middle school students called Matrix Learning. In their words, Matrix Learning "provides resources to improve middle school reading and mathematics achievement through the development of interactive educational games." There are several interactive games/activities that are not only educational and engaging, but fun! There also are videos and mulitplayer games. Many of the activities would present well on the SB and some such as Definition Training- similar to hang man- would work well on the SB. I also would encourage you to check out the videos from the University of New Mexico that are on bottom left of the page. So if you are a middle school math teacher I would highly recommend that you take time to scope out this very worthwhile site. ENJOY!

According to Nancy Kimberly of HASTAC, this set of video games won the 1st National STEM Video Game Challenge: "Numbaland!, produced by graduate students Derek Lomas of Carnegie Mellon University, Dixie Ching of New York University and Jeanine Sun of the University of California at San Diego, was the winner of the Collegiate and Impact Prizes and will receive $50,000 in total. The collection of four games allows children in kindergarten to grade 4 to construct a set of skills that helps develop their sense of number concepts"

Abstract:"Prime Climb is an educational game that provides individual support for learning number factorization skills in the form of hints based on a model of student learning. Previous studies with Prime Climb indicated that students may not always be paying attention to the hints, even when they are justified (i.e. based on a student model's assessment). In this thesis we will discuss the test-bed game, Prime Climb, and our re-implementation of the game which allowed us to modify the game dynamically and will allow for more rapid prototyping in the future. To assist students as they play the game, Prime Climb includes a pedagogical agent which provides individualized support by providing user-adaptive hints. We then move into our work with the eye-tracker to better understand if and how students process the agent's personalized hints. We will conclude with a user study in which we use eyetracking data to capture user attention patterns as impacted by factors related to existing user knowledge, hint types, and attitude towards getting help in general. We plan to leverage these results in the future to make hint delivery more effective."

(abstract only, full text requires subscription or purchase) "We analyze the logs of an online mathematics game tournament, played simultaneously by thousands of students. Nearly 10,000 students, coming from 356 schools from all regions in Chile, registered to the fourth tournament instance. The children play in teams of 12 students from the same class, and send their personal bets to a central server every 2 minutes. Each competition lasts about one clock hour and takes place within school hours. Students are pre-registered and trained by their school teacher. The teacher is responsible for reviewing curriculum contents useful for improving performance at the game and coaches students participating in trial tournaments taking place a few weeks before the national tournament. All bets are recorded in a database that enables us to analyze later the sequence of bets made by each student. Using cluster analysis with this information, we have identified three types of players, each with a well-defined strategy. "

Video games are hard, and that's official Super Mario, Donkey Kong and other classic games belong to class of hard mathematical puzzles, and could be used to solve real-world problems IF YOU have ever struggled to complete classic Nintendo games, don't feel bad?- they are officially difficult.

"This engaging book presents the essential mathematics needed to describe, simulate, and render a 3D world. Reflecting both academic and in-the-trenches practical experience, the authors teach you how to describe objects and their positions, orientations, and trajectories in 3D using mathematics. The text provides an introduction to mathematics for game designers, including the fundamentals of coordinate spaces, vectors, and matrices. It also covers orientation in three dimensions, calculus and dynamics, graphics, and parametric curves. "Visit the book's companion web site, gamemath.com, to download the example code and access other resources.

by Penta, Michael K., M.S., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LOWELL, 2011, 83 pages; 1507796 Abstract record for a thesis completed in December 2011, fulltext requires subscription or purchase. A news story on the departmental blog http://blog.uml.edu/cs/2011/12/penta_ms_video_games_for_math_learning.html describes the kinds of games involved, the participants and the results.

Abstract: "In spite of the efficacy of Operations Research (OR), its tools are still underused, due to the difficulties that people experience when describing a problem through a mathematical model. For this reason, teaching how to approach and model complex problems is still an open issue. A strong relation exists between (video) games and learning: for this reason we explore to which extent (real time) simulation video games could be envisaged to be an innovative, stimulating and compelling approach to teach OR techniques."

Using games to illustrate concepts in statistics

Girls who play video games are three times more likely to choose physical science, technology, engineering or maths (PSTEM) degrees compared to their non-gaming counterparts, according to new research from the University of Surrey

A great maths interactive videos and game about how to convert fractions to decimals. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

A great interactive Maths video and games from the BBC. Solve the puzzles by using your knowledge of money. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

"Video games that provide good mathematics learning should look to the piano as a model"