math

Registration is now open for Parts II and III of our three-part webinar series, Using The Radix Endeavor, a Multiplayer Online Game, to Support Secondary Math and Science Instruction
 
Part II: Formal and Informal Assessment in the Game Environment
Wednesday, April 9, 2014 3:30 – 4:30 PM EDT
Using examples from The Radix Endeavor, MIT researchers will discuss how online games can be used to as formative assessment to gauge student understanding. The team will demonstrate the teacher dashboard and reporting mechanisms that allow teachers to view and monitor student progress and potentially identified gaps in understanding. The team will also review the research objectives of the current research and respond to questions about teacher and student participation in the pilot.
 
Part III: Selecting and Aligning Game Content with Classroom Instruction
Wednesday, April 30, 2014 3:30 – 4:30 PM EDT

On March 13, 2014 at 3:30 PM ET, MIT Researchers will host a webinar to discuss how their new game, The Radix Endeavor can be used to support high school math and biology instruction. They will talk about the benefits of role-playing and immersive virtual environments in general and more specifically about how teachers can start using The Radix Endeavor in their classrooms. High school math and biology teachers are encouraged to attend.
REGISTER TODAY! Be Sure to enter event # 641123549

Did you miss our recent webinar in collaboration with EdWeb.net?  No need to worry, you can VIEW THE ARCHIVE
 
During this online session, Jody Clarke-Midura, EdD and Susannah Gordon-Messer, PhD presented how massively multiplayer online games (MMO's) have the potential to enable science experiences that allow students to engage in inquiry, problem solving, and experimentation.  

Education Arcade and Scheller Teacher Education Program staff, Susannah Gordon-Messer and Louisa Rosenheck, present The Radix Endeavor, a multi-player online game for STEM learning where students immerse themselves in MIT's game world and perform quests applying biology and math skills and teachers receive real-time teacher feedback about student learning. Marriott Riverwalk, Alamo Salon E.
 
Not scheduled to be at NSTA but interested in learning about the game and its pilot scheduled for AY 2013-2014, Subscribe to Radix Updates.
 

The Radix Team is busy at work developing the world and quests that will ultimately become the Massively Multi-Player Online (MMO) game and interactive learning environment supporting high school math and biology instruction.  As if that is not enough, the team has recently launched a Pinterest Board and design blog that will allow us to see the game come to life.  Visit the Pinterest Board to see the graphical concepts evolve. Subscribe to the team’s design blog to follow them as they grapple with critical design questions including which standards to address, how long to make each quest, and how to address the role of free play.

The Education Arcade recently conducted an online math challenge for middle grades students using Lure of the Labyrinth, an online game where students collaborate to navigate a compelling graphic novel. Nearly 1000 teachers and youth mentors enrolled more than 30,000 students in the Labyrinth Challenge between April 1st and June 15th. Over the course of 10-weeks, students collectively spent half a TRILLION minutes (more than 950 years) exploring the Tasti-Pet Factory, collaborating, solving mathematical puzzles, and freeing pets. In addition to gaining problem-solving confidence and bragging rights, students and teachers also earned chances to win more some amazing prizes! 

As a learning games research lab, we’re always interested to talk to people who are making research-based commercial games and apps. We recently got the chance to talk to Gabriel Adauto and Jacob Klein from Motion Math, a San Francisco startup designing and developing games to teach number sense to elementary and middle school students. They talked to us about their games, the research the games are based on, and the process they use to build them, and we were pleasantly surprised at how much their work has in common with ours.
 
The game we looked at is called Motion Math Zoom. It shows a number line with animals lined up along it to illustrate the scale. It starts with frogs and dogs for the ones and tens, but you later discover a plethora of other critters, from dinosaurs for the thousands down to amoebas for the thousandths. Players use the pinch and spread UI to zoom in and out and experiment with scale. In my own work at STEP, I have seen the importance of playfulness in games and giving players the chance to “mess around” in a sandbox-like environment. I loved the constructivist way in which this game lets kids explore the number line on their own, zooming in and out and moving left and right as much as they want before they complete the task at hand.