Escape Dr. Latham's Laboratory

The final game from the 2020 math capstone GAMES class. Begun by Char Beckmann, I was thrilled to teach this course and will soon have my second group. Here's the final entry, an escape room. Ashly was committed early on to make an escape room and I am impressed at the work as well as the perseverance required to finish while student teaching during the pandemic under the conditions .

GUEST POST by Ashly Latham

Escape Dr Latham’s Laboratory is a game I created for my capstone project for MTH 496. When I first heard that we were creating a game I thought of the escape room me and my friends played before the class where we sat down and started talking about creating our game. This inspired me to create an escape-room inspired math game that allowed students to have fun while also doing math!

This game originally started as a fifth grade game but as I got into an accident and injured my hand, I had to postpone the idea. Finally, when I received enough function to get back to work I was a Teacher Assistant in a third grade class classroom. These third graders inspired me to adjust the game so they could play it. 

The puzzles students will complete in this game will focus mostly on multiplication skills as this is what my students were working on at the time I created this. There are ten different puzzles but some puzzles have two answers which allow students to only play six puzzles each play. 

To create this game I searched the internet for fun multiplication puzzles. This included literal puzzles but also some riddles. After I found enough puzzles for what I wanted, I began to construct the scene cards. These tell a story as students work from puzzle to puzzle. The hardest part was constructing the solution wheel so that it was hard for students to guess answers and each answer had a different code. This took me spending lots of time creating my own symbols.

When I tried it out with my third grade students, they LOVED it. I tested out the first couple puzzles and the students were constantly asking where the rest were. After finishing it, I had those same students try it. It took two 30 minute sessions to complete but they sacrificed their recess time just to finish it! They even want to do it again to find the other solutions! 

In the attachment for the game, all of the topics and standards are explained along with how to begin the game and set everything up. Though it’s in color, you can absolutely print it out in black in white. I hope you give it a try as it’s very fun and rewarding! Though carving out an hours time of your classroom might be hard, you could have students do one puzzle a day for a morning or ending activity for the day. 

Ashly's extensive materials and instructions, including for her supper cool solution wheel are here.

In addition, each capstone student picked a good math game to promote with a video. Ashly picked Michael Pershan's Baldermath.

Student Voice

Touching documentary from our local PBS, WGVU. They capture admininstrators, teachers, and student voices.  Nicole, starting around 18, in particular, is full of determination and will.

Watch Get Your Diploma. Get Your Dream. on PBS. See more from WGVU Presents.

When I see something like this, it drives me crazy that we can't convince our society to invest in these students, or the teachers that have answered the vocation to mentor them.

Mystery Teacher Theatre 2000

Welcome to our first episode. Recently, in the halls of School University, some teachers attempted some selfdirected professional development, encouraged by their principal and given hope by Sal Khan, a man described as "Bill Gate's favorite teacher" (from a TED endorsement), "very popular," "extremely popular," "an educational revolutionary," and being like "like a nerdy, South Asian-American Seinfeld." (I'm not making any of those up. The last is from Wired.)

Here's what happened.





So, obviously, as comedy improv actors we're a couple of math teachers.

We're very interested in your comments. What do you think of this video? Of the teaching? What did we miss in our commentary? 

Dave was the instigator here, but is too smart to put it up at Deltascape.

Math Memoirs

There's one of my favorite math teaching videos up in Keith Devlin's most recent blogpost.  (Thrilled that it's now on YouTube with several other of her interviews.) It's from the wonderful Marilyn Burns, who has really done more for math education than anyone in recent decades. Her stuff was good enough to get word of mouth sharing before there was an internet. (Dan Meyer is quite reminiscent of her in several ways.) Devlin uses the video to make the point that apparent understanding is not proof. A better assessment can uncover the truth, and Burns is excellent at questioning to get an accurate picture.




As a novice teacher I quickly found that the students giving an answer did not tell me whether they understood or not, and I moved to asking for how they got it. It took me years, however, to get to understand that how is better, but also does not get at understanding. It's their thinking that I want to hear. Then I should ask for it! Unfortunately, even spoiled university teachers don't have time to sit down and interview students over all of our major objectives. I can, however, ask questions to which I really

Dave Coffey found this excellent solution by Carl Barnard, a high school student, to the painted cube problem that crossed the line to be a memoir. We often introduce the idea of a memoir by having our students read it and comment on it. (Here's my most recent version of the workshop; Dave was almost certainly the original writer of it.) It's a start to learning how to communicate your thinking. While it's important and beneficial for any math student to do this, it is unbelievably crucial for math teachers, and a big part of pedagogical content knowledge to me.  Most students on end of term evaluations comment that this is an area where they grew significantly.

I wanted to experiment with what this looked like in elementary school, so I asked my daughter to give it a go. These are from the summer between her 4th and 5th grade. She was a bit precocious with her writing, but had had pretty traditional math instruction. (And not interested in talking with me about to a large extent.)

Just writing the method. A first attempt at memoir. I supported with a kind of questioning framework.




She was game enough to try twice more.






This is the sort of information that I want from an assessment. I get so much more an image of what ideas she has about number and operation. And it is far more interesting reading than traditional assignments where I'm looking for what I expect or not.

Fraction Sense

Watched a nice video about Dor Abrahamson talking about how math is, or should be, about making sense.



In this video he describes a device to let students play with a proportion, and I thought it would be simple enough to do in GeoGebra, so... here you go! I'm pretty happy with the sketch, it's clean and the controls should be simple enough for young students.  Close means within 5%, and Wow! is within 1%, so it's easier with a large unit. There's a lot of research supporting introducing fractions with a comparison model before the typical part-whole model, so it's nice to have a tool for that.

Available as a GeoGebra file or dynamic webpage. I've mostly stopped embedding GeoGebra files on the blog because it adds to load time significantly, it seems faster as a separate webpage.What other fraction representations would you like to see in a dynamic representation?

EDIT:
Made this before GeoGebraTube! I've updated this a little with a practice mode and more sensible checking. Here's the Teacher page (download) or the Student page (applet). Also have made this multiple choice fraction estimation applet.

Graphing Stories: Balloon and Tower

Yeah! I have rarely been so excited to get an email.  "We just pulled your Graphing Story out of the oven!" The only downside is that my name is prominent, when I really just incited other people to make them.  But I'm still geeked. Huge props to Dan Meyer and BuzzMath for doing this.

First, the Balloon.  Filmmaker - Anna Minnebo, Balloonist - Gregg Minnebo.






Second, The Towers of Hanoi. Stacker/Graphist - Eric Thuemmel; Camera - Monica Leneway.  In the original he just got the fourth stack complete on the 15th second, but it just barely gets cut off here. He was quick.





Still to come: four simultaneous tower builders... can understand why the graph for that is a special problem.

Who Are the New Teachers?

Guest post today from one of our student teachers from this past semester.  Sarah Cavazos will be student teaching in Fennville, MI this fall and is - to steal a phrase from Sir Ken Robinson - exceptional but not an exception.  She is bright, dedicated and passionate about teaching.  I find that many of our novice teachers have much in common with her.  This past semester I got to see her try a game of her own design in a classroom that had not done much of that, and adjust it on the fly to improve both gameplay and better address learning outcomes.  Then she gave a terrific Little Big at the end of the semester about teaching all students.



Triangle Rummy

Object of Game: Obtain a set containing the picture, the name and the definition of the same triangle.

Triangle Rummy is a game made for two to four players that contains 24 cards (7 pictures, 7 names, 7 definitions and 3 Free cards). There are 7 different triangles in the deck of cards, each demonstrated by a picture, a name and a definition. There are also three Free cards (Free Picture, Free Name and Free Definition).

To start the game, the dealer deals out three cards to each player and places the rest of the deck face down between the tables. The youngest play starts by taking the top card from the deck. In order to keep three cards in their deck, the player must discard one of the cards in their hand face up next to the facedown pile. The player to the left can chose to take the face up card in the discard pile or choose to take a chance and take the next card in the discard pile. In order to win, a player must obtain the same triangle demonstrated by three different cards.

If any player obtains a Free card, they can choose to use that card in place of a triangle name, picture or definition depending on the name of the card. For example, say a player had the picture of an isosceles right triangle and the name of the isosceles right triangle and then obtained the Free Definition card. In order to win the game, the player must say the definition of an isosceles right triangle. If the Free Picture card was played, the player must draw the correct picture as well as have the matching name and definition cards. If the Free Name card was drawn, the player must name the correct triangle and have the matching definition and picture cards.


The Unreachables






Photocredit: qthomasbower @ Flickr

Change the Channel

Yeah! The K-8 geometry video is ready for release! The students did a great job getting footage, and had lots of creative ideas that used their talents. I hope you enjoy it!  (The students would love it if you share the link.)

The video started back at the midsemester when students at our school were making a lipdub.  During my class.  "Can we go?" (GVSU lipdub - came out pretty well.)

"Not now - you had to be involved before."

"What's a lipdub?"

So I showed them what I consider the classic of the genre, Shorewood High School's reverse lipdub.  We were just starting our unit on teaching (following doing, preceding learning).  So we talked about how many teachers find it hard to get students to do any work, and yet here's a whole school working their butts off to make a video.  They had a great discussion about it, bringing up choice, student interest, engagement and other factors.  Then... "can we make one?"

Any reasonably bright teacher would have seen that coming, but not me.  "I'll think about it."

Starting our last unit, I brought it up.  If we're going to do it, it's time.  Discussion led them to believe that the reverse lipdub was right out, followed shortly by a lipdub.  Some students were really into the idea, most were in favor, and a few were dead against it.  There's a fair number of choice workshops in my courses, and I said most of the prep work would be choice.  They wouldn't be graded on the success or not.  The class voted on it with most in favor.  I started freaking out.  It was worth doing to me because:

• Student interest was high, 
• The idea of how to capture and communicate math is relevant to a math ed class,
• By the end of the semester it could be connected to review, and
• The preservice teachers wanted to be able to show it to their students to answer why they should be engaged.

But as the last couple weeks went by, only a few students were contributing.  (We had a google doc for students to add their ideas and development to.) My freak out got freakier.  Was it even going to be worth trying?  Part of this was also I wanted them to see a teacher giving something a go, taking a risk.  That's better if I'm uncomfortable, right?

We used our last class period to do the filming.  One of the cameras failed completely.  I just wheeled in all the manipulatives with which they had had the most fun.  Objective: get some good footage.

One student had written the Math, Math, Baby rap, and found someone to rap, so they started choreographing it.  Other students got building and drawing.  One student had come up with an I Love Charts style demonstration (on Jeggings, which you can buy but she proves do not exist), and another was ready to demonstrate our amazing rubber band enlarger.  The atmosphere got charged and they really got into the spirit.  In hindsight, we should have gotten this footage earlier, and then students could film and add to it.  Ultimately I had to do the first pass editing, but it was inspiring to do it because they got such good footage.  The Geometry song came from me noticing that it would fit to Adam Sandler's Hanukkah song, the guitarist learning it in 5 minutes from youtube, and the singer coming up with the lyrics (with some crowdsourcing) on the spot.

Even if there was no video result, I would have been happy to see the students so engaged in making math visible and engaging.  But it's better with the video!

Resources: Jamendo was a great place to find cc 3.0 music, and I think the songs from Antony Raijekov (jazz) and Josh Woodward (pop/folk) really help make it. They're not math songs, but nobody's perfect.

Web Roundup

After sending links to a few people, I seem to always come to the conclusion that I should just be posting them.

Dan Meyer's excellent TEDx talk on Math Curriculum (and problem solving, and tech enhancement...):

What do you care enough about to make the subject of your 10-20 min TEDx talk?  You can find Mr. Meyer's excellent blog at http://blog.mrmeyer.com/, called dy/dan.  I saw this video first via Michael Paul Goldenberg. 

There's a kind of interesting web of blog posts on what interest is and how to generate it.  I'd start at wehrintheworld, which I found via Ben Casochna. (an entrepeneurial site.  Hmm.)  I'm interested because of how interest relates to engagement.  Which is Holy Grailish for me.

On an almost total aside, I've also been deeply interested in the fantastic images from Iceland's volcano, from two different educational sites:

• http://www.universetoday.com/2010/04/18/incredible-images-of-iceland-volcano-from-just-a-few-kilometers-away/
• http://www.swisseduc.ch/stromboli/perm/iceland/eyafallajokull_20100414-en.html 

 Both came up in What's Hot in Google Reader, so hat tip: internet.

I'm a Learner

Great send up of the "I'm a mac" ads.  Via David Coffey via Nick Ceglarek, super superintendent of Hudsonville Schools.  And proud GVSU alumnus.  They are just too good not to share.  Spread them around!

And the piece de resistance:

The makers, 21st Century Learning, or C21L, are a Colorado cooperative.   They have a wiki, which has more info than their homepage. 

What is it about CO?  That's where  the Public Education & Business Coalition is, which launched the whole Mosaic of Thought comprehension movement.

Family Mathematics Videos

A former student at GVSU, Jamie Trost, is showing a lot of initiative, and posting videos to youtube providing instruction on elementary topics. They could be used as support for students who are struggling, extension for students succeeding in one method by exposure to another, or as support for parents trying to make sense of their children's math class.

She's just getting started, and is very open to suggestions, for topics and for improving the videos. If you get a chance, please check out Jamie's Family Mathematics, and give her some feedback. Her initial series is on multiplication.

Constructivism and WatchKnow

Two interesting web links to pass on:

1) Interesting essay found by Michael Paul Goldenberg (no relation) at Education Notes Online: a teacher and parent commenting on constructivism and the math wars in NYC. There is some really interesting math happening in the city classrooms, in particular the Math in the City project, and the essay is a good read. Check it out: The Math Wars Revisited: Lisa, Why Doth I Love Thee....


2) New web resource: one of the founders of Wikipedia has started a collection of educational videos that is rapidly growing and becoming comprehensive. It's called WatchKnow. Everything from Carl Sagan addressing the shape of space-time (I was just talking about that with my students...) to a geometric solids story starring Sniffer Bob (which is what we were discussing...). The rating system will become really helpful as the site matures, I think.

Inspirational Videos

If you haven't been there, you should try TED. (Technology, Entertainment, Design.)

While math is not their greatest area of stength, they do have a few insightful talks. Try these. Also or alternatively how we learn, especially Stuart Brown on play. Although somehow they missed Nate Silver. Get more Nate at his excellent blog, which covers the intersection of statistics and politics.

My favorite is about the nature of genius and creativity, though I think she's off by a smidgen. (Needs God/Holy Spirit in there. But who doesn't?)

It's basically impossible to watch everything on there that's worth watching. So if you see something worth it, let me know!