[Yr7-10it] re : projects or games?

Mon Mar 10 02:18:08 EST 2008

rob:
meanwhile school maths seems a formulaic, excessively abstract thing;

there's an amazing critique of school maths circulating at the moment called
Lockhart's lament
http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html (pdf 25pp)

"This beautifully written lament takes some powerful swipes at school maths,
textbooks, our suppression of the drama of maths history, our collective
cultural ignorance of maths (we think we know but we don't) and supplies
some great examples of real maths teaching (the triangle in a box problem,
the sum and difference of two numbers problem)"
-
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-is-maths-paul-lockharts-simplicio.html

Computers are not mentioned in this critique but Rob's brilliant idea of
combining line rider with cartesian graphing would be another way of
addressing this issue

If a project can be a game as well so much the better - but some games have
game overhead issues that are not particularly educational. There is overlap
b/w projects and games but they are not the same thing. Scratch is about
projects but nevertheless the game tag is very large on the scratch site.
http://scratch.mit.edu/

One problem with gamemaker is that through its name and design the almost
irresistible agenda becomes "make a game" - well what if that is not what
the educational leader wants to do at that particular time?

btw I liked the comment from the girl who "seemed suspicious that maths was
generally useless and I was making this up" - it seems possible that she
might be in the process of changing her mind about the nature of maths

Scratch does not have text processing - there is a good summary of its
strengths and weaknesses here (along with some other  programming
languages):
http://livingcode.org/2008/the-importance-of-visual-programming

"It also has some pretty severe limitations: no user-defined blocks, no
return values, no file interaction (so no high scores), no network
interaction, no dynamic object creation, the program cannot draw on sprites
(only on the background), no string variables or any real string handling.
It is a great environment for learning to think creatively within its
constraints, but my kids also bump up against its limits pretty quickly."

-- 
Bill Kerr
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/

On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 1:20 PM, Costello, Rob R <
Costello.Rob.R at edumail.vic.gov.au> wrote:

> What of LineRider - game or project ?
>
> As experienced, looks like pure game, but written as project by a
> student
>
> "This is a project i did for illustration class.
> Its not a game, its a toy. What i mean is there are no goals to achive
> and there is no score."
> http://fsk.deviantart.com/art/Line-Rider-beta-40255643
>
>
> And the site it comes form is full of art experiments
> http://fsk.deviantart.com/
>
> how would you classify an equation visualiser being added in?
>  ( http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/thoughts/ )
>
> One student said, in year 8 impulsive manner, when he first saw it, it
> "spoilt the game"
>
> I said to students that the person who originally made LineRider was
> good at maths and I was trying to help them see that
>
> How do you know that? asked one girl (seemed suspicious that maths was
> generally useless and I was making this up)
>
> We opened up the flash files and we looked at some of the functions in
> LineRider- functions for calculating length of line segments etc - not
> far off what they're (meant to be) doing at yr 8
>
> re, the appeal of Art / programming - I'd like to decompile these
> http://www.levitated.net/gravityIndex.html  and show where the maths is
>
> the issues I see here are access and cross disciplinary approaches - not
> much  point doing this if we can't spend the time playing and
> experimenting - could teach a whole course this way I think
>
> meanwhile school maths seems a formulaic, excessively abstract thing;
> how did we get to the point where its not mixed with science or
> technology or ICT - (ie this sort of ICT) approach?
>
> Not saying Flash is the way - actionscript syntax might be a bit of an
> obstacle - but maybe ..... I think it needs something that allows
> program to can be language as well as concrete symbol/icon -
>
> can Scratch do language?
>
> Cheers
> Rob
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> I have to agree with you Bill. This year I am going to guide students
> towards projects with a broader perspective, ala "create something that
> will
> make the world a better place to live in".
>
> Last week I have some year 10 IT girls that are exploring the
> construction
> of a creative dance type solution using Scratch. (Starting from the
> handy
> worksheet that  you so kindly shared on this list! Thankyou :-)  Whilst
> some
> didn't like their work, perhaps because it lacked the gaming elements
> that
> others were building. A couple of us spotted the more creative, art
> installation that these girls were trying to program.
>
> Regards Roland
>
> On 18/02/2008, Bill Kerr <billkerr at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think it's better that we ask our students to create projects rather
> > than games
> >
> > This represents a trade off between motivation (games are more
> motivating
> > for some) and a curriculum based more on educational principles
> >
> > more ...
> > http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2008/02/projects-or-games.html
> >
> > --
> > Bill Kerr
> >
>
>
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