A While

Once again, I've been pretty bad at this. Nothing really to say, I guess.

I did think I'd better jot down some notes on my latest project though, if only for posterity's sake.

So, here goes:

Mario Kart Mechanics

The premise, simple: use a driving game to engage pupils with speed, distance and time calculations.

Why?

Well, my Int2 class are still struggling with the mechanics section. In particular most are still not getting full marks in tests when they have to do speed calculations, even though they've all done either Int1 or SG physics. The class is also hard to motivate, and most would much rather be doing something else.

How?

I decided on Mario Kart as I've used the Wii and Mario Kart in particular as an end of term reward and it went down really well. Plus it's easy to play and anyone can join in.

Unfortunately Mario Kart lacks any real data in the game. It has lap times, like all other racing games. But no information about distance.

This isn't really a problem - we could easily bring in a whole new lesson about estimation. Take Mario as an average human, for example, or guess the length of a Kart. So I decided that it was a step to far for my class. I might try it with another, but the time being it went back to the drawing board.

I did a bit of research on more realistic racing games, focussing on original XBox games, as I'd picked one of these up cheap a few years ago, and managed to find Forza Motorsport for £2 online.

Once it arrived, I had a quick look over. The game has track lengths and also an ingame speedometer, so on to a winner, I thought.

After setup, it went down pretty well. I only have one controller so they did time trials against each other and had to work out their average speed over each lap after they'd finished. Most seemed happy to do it, and there was a real sense of competition. There were a few problems with units, but this could easily be made into a teaching point - the track was measured in km, the time in min:secs, so there was lots of converting going on.

The engagement tailed off towards the end, but it was the end of a triple period and it was a subject we'd covered many times before. I think it would work better as an introduction to speed, maybe, or a better way of doing the repetitive practise questions needed to cement the algebra in pupil's minds. As a short pilot, I think it was a success.

The problems:
With a large class I think it wouldn't work as the sole activity - I only had about 8 and they were all happy to sit and watch while the others had a go. With a class of 20 this might be different. A multiplayer game would be more suited and would allow more pupils to get a go in lesson time.

Forza is HARD. I suck at it. A couple of pupils were "hardcore" driving gamers and did so much better than everyone else that it pretty much took out any competition. Something like Mario Kart, which is easier to play and more "fun" would work better in my opinion. The only problem being lack of data.

More scaffolding - I had to help the kids who struggled with the unit conversions individually as the game was projected on the board and I don't have any other space to write. This wasn't a massive concern, but it would be good to have a group of pupils playing then coming away into some kind of 'mini-tutorial' on working out their speeds.

One of the pupils asked if we could have another game of bomberman (the other end of term award game we played). I said if he could write a note on how it would teach them physics I'd be happy to. I'll let you know if I get anything back.