game over gopher | strempletechtools

Math Snacks: Game Over Gopher

Curator: Terry Cheng

Link to Tech Tool or Tool homepage: http://mathsnacks.com/gameovergopher.php

Brief Description of Tech Tool: This game is similar to defense tower games. The goal is to protect your prized carrot from hungry gophers. It uses a coordinate grid for students to place their carrot launchers to feed the gophers. By feeding the gophers, students earn “rubies” to buy and upgrade carrot launchers (and at higher levels, additional tools to defend against the hungry gophers). Students can also place Ruby Drillers on given coordinates to earn more rubies. The game starts with fourteen levels, each progressively more difficult and each presenting the mission of defending the carrot in different ways (similar to Angry Birds). Four challenge levels give players the opportunity to earn discs that can be used to unlock additional levels.

EVALUATION

Description of Learning Activity

According to the game's website, "Game Over Gopher guides students in:Learning coordinate pairs and plotting numbersIdentifying the four quadrants and differentiating negative coordinates from positive coordinatesEstablishing fundamentals of plotting functions on a grid."The game also implicitly, through the guise of game actions, asks students to explore‍ domains, ranges‍, and operations with coordinates. In the challenge levels, students are introduced to ideas that will lead them later to learn about slope. This online game is appropriate for the exploration and practice of mathematical ideas related to coordinate grids and graphing. This activity could be used as a reward or homework for students who are being introduced to the coordinate grid or as homework for students in later grades who do not have a sufficient understanding of the coordinate grid and graphing.

1. Learning Activity Types

LA-Practice - practicing for fluency: The majority of the game actions center around improving fluency of coordinate grid knowledge by the placement at specified coordinates of Ruby Drills and Carrot Feeders (and in higher levels, other tools) that, respectively, help the student acquire rubies that are used to get Carrot Feeders to feed the gophers.

LA-Present - (read or attend to) presentation of new content/ideas: The game becomes progressively difficult, not just because the gophers are hungrier, but also because the game asks the student to demonstrate increasing knowledge of the coordinate grid and related concepts. The game does not explicitly present the new concept; rather it asks the student a question, and in order to progress through the game, a student has to figure out how to answer the question. This aspect of the game also invokes the

2. What mathematics is being learned?

NCTM Standards

Number & Operations

NCTM-N&0-understand numbers - understand numbers, ways of representing numbers, relationships among numbers, and number systems

Algebra

NCTM-Alg-patterns - understand patterns, relations, and functions

NCTM-Alg-models - use mathematical models to represent and understand quantitative relationships

Geometry

NCTM-Geo-specify locations - specify locations and describe spatial relationships using coordinate geometry and other representational systems

NCTM-Geo-visualization - use visualization, spatial reasoning, and geometric modeling to solve problems

VA SOL Strands

8.14 - The student will make connections between any two representations (tables, graphs, words, and rules) of a given relationship.

Proficiency Strands

PS-procedural fluency - The game concentrates on procedural fluency. The major action of the game is to place Ruby Drills, Carrot Feeders, and other tools on the correct coordinates.PS-conceptual understanding - At various points, this game does implicitly demand some conceptual understanding, especially in the challenge levels where a student has to enter coordinates to find a disc and use the directional arrows to narrow down the possibilities of where the disc might be located. However, the emphasis on this strand is minor.

PS-strategic competence - The emphasis on this strand is minor in relation to mathematics learning, but students do have to solve simple mathematical problems in higher levels of the game in order to make progress. The need for strategic competence generally in this activity is important if the student wants to play well and win the game.

PS-adaptive reasoning - Again, emphasis on this strand is minor and generally having adaptive reasoning skills when playing these types of games is important to being successful at the game. Specifically, in relation to mathematics learning, the game does ask that the student demonstrate these skills at various intervals in the game (like a challenge level), but it is not consistent.

PS-productive disposition - Within the context of the game, mathematics is worthwhile because you save the carrot, win the levels, and get a number of different kinds of achievements as you are working toward the goal of saving the carrot. Winning the game is not a matter of chance but of work in placing the Ruby Drills and Carrot Feeders on the correct coordinates. The belief in one's own efficacy and abilities is promoted through the achievements and when students successfully complete levels.

3. How is the mathematics represented?

The game visual design lays on top of a coordinate grid. ‍The origin of the grid changes at various levels. In the first level, the grid is not apparent to the student.‍ In subsequent levels, students are required to plot points on the coordinate grid for that level (thereby creating the path that the gophers travel to get to the carrot) before proceeding to the game itself. The grid itself is represented graphically, and the points plotted are represented both graphically, numerically, and symbolically.

4. What role does technology play?

Computing & Automating - This game automates, in a really fun and engaging way, the exercises that students have to do to develop procedural fluency in relation to the coordinate grid and plotting points. Instead of having a student do exercise after exercise where he plots a series of points on graph paper, the game makes this work seem like play.

Representing Ideas & Thinking - Whether or not it is considered "significant," the game does promote one particular idea related to representation, that is, the game explicitly links the coordinate grid and points with geographical locations. Students see that a grid is not just a grid, but that a grid represents a space, and the points represent specific locations. In the game, the grid is the garden. The points mark the path from the gophers to the carrot and the locations of the Ruby Drills and Carrot Feeders.

5. What advantages and/or disadvantages does the technology offer for facilitating learning?

As noted earlier, the game introduces the coordinate grid and plotting in a fun and engaging way and by playing this game students learn without realizing they're learning. One of the drawbacks I saw in this game was that when you, as a player, wanted to plot a point by setting the gopher path or dropping a Ruby Drill or Carrot Feeder, the game would tell you over which coordinates you were hovering. Having the coordinates displayed has the potenti‍al to allow a student to go through the game without really learning well how to locate poin‍ts on the coordinate grid. The student might just move the mouse haphazardly over the grid until he found the coordinates he needed without really understanding where they were or how he could find them there. On the whole, though, the game offers more advantages than disadvantages, and I would have no hesitation offering it to students as practice or homework.

6. How could this resource supplement/facilitate PBL?

This resource can be used to supplement PBL. Students can play this game as additional practice to introduce functions.