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Summaries of presentations from a symposium at Florida International University in 2012

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Abstract: "How can smartphones apps enrich the learning of mathematics in vocational education? This article examines how mathematics teaching can be enriched by apps using smartphone sensors such as gyroscope, compass, camera, and touch screen in a gaming context. An iterative and participatory design process involving two classes of carpentry students from different vocational colleges resulted in two highly successful and course-relevant games based on trigonometry. Each game consists of quests and missions whose successful completion unlocks more theoretical multiple-choice exercises for the classroom. The combination of competition to unlock exercises, competition for placing on the high-score list, and physical activity proved very motivating for the students and was also approved by their teachers. In this article we describe our design principles, the overall game architecture and the games themselves. We talk about our experience in implementing our design process and subsequently summarize the pros and cons of the application and the smartphone platform and how the app developed contributes to vocational mathematics teaching"

Abstract: "This research seeks to look into the design process that promotes the development of an educational computer game that supports teaching and learning processes. The research specifically looks at the design of an educational computer game for teaching and learning of the topic of functions. The topic is essential in the teaching and learning of Mathematics courses such as Discrete Mathematics, Real Analysis and Calculus among others at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) Kenya. The computer game was developed using the Basic Unified process (BUP) which is a streamlined version of the rational unified process (RUP). This is an object oriented methodology mostly used for small projects with few end users. Due to the few numbers of end users we used interview method of data collection to gather requirements for the computer game. A paper prototype was used to validate the requirements. Use cases were used for both analysis and design of the game while Class diagrams and activity diagrams were purely used for the design of the game. Owens' six top level design anatomy aided in the design of the computer game. The overall computer game design was based on Crawfords' computer game design sequence model. The well designed and developed game met all its user requirements and was able to facilitate the teaching and learning of functions to Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science students who were taking Discrete mathematics in their first year of study at JKUATs' Taita/Taveta campus. Development of heuristics for measuring interest, fun and motivation are recommendations given to aid in the evaluation of user satisfaction of educational computer games."

Easy mental math tricks that improve our mental math speed. Usually kids love to learn these tricks. It makes them more motivated to learn maths.

"As a medium for learning, digital games provide promising possibilities to motivate and engage students in subject learning. In this study, a game-based learning system, My-Pet- My-Quest, is developed to support pupils' math learning. This is due to the fact that most students in Taiwan have relatively lower positive attitude towards math learning, even though their math performance is prominent. To this end, a three-tire framework is proposed to guide the design of the My-Pet-My-Quest system. A quasi-experiment was conducted to examine the influence of game quests on pupils' enjoyment and goalpursuing in math learning. The results revealed that game quests were favored by students in terms of enjoyment, goal orientation, and goal intensity. Possible reasons for these results and a discussion of related issues are presented in this paper."

"The Motion Math game follows a star trying to return to its home in a far-away galaxy. Moving up through different levels motivates a player to keep playing and keep learning, while bonus levels practice an important variation on the number line theme - is one fraction more or less than another?"

Concludes from research studies involving five-year-old school children in Dubai that iPads help improve numeracy learning in young children as well as increase motivation through "kinaesthetic and play-based learning":"