I have talked about this math game before, but I have come across it again in my fieldwork for Arcadia. The math activity "First in Math" is something I saw again in a 5th grade classroom this past week and find it to be computer based. The activity goes on all throughout the school year and has students compete against each other and other schools for "gold stars" and "points." I am not sure of the reward at the end, but I do know there is one. I believe First in Math is computer based because although some of the games could be done without a computer using man-made cards and what not, for th e most part these activities require a computer. For example the one activity I saw a student doing was a suduko like game where he had to find patterns and ways to make the square "work." Instead of using numbers like Suduko, this game used shapes and colors. The computer would check each time and let you know if you got the pattern right. Each time the game became more difficult until accomplishing the final task. Again I believe this is a computer based activity but am not completely sure.
Week 10 Computer-based vs. computer-delivered (March 19-25)
This is a follow-up to the Digital Storytelling task from Week 7: http://p2pu.org/en/groups/ed218-developing-mathematics-the-early-years/content/week-7-digital-storytelling-february-27-march-4/
People who teach with computers distinguish computer-based and computer-delivered math. Computer-based math includes interactive models, programming, games and any other media that draws upon the ability of computers to compute. Computer-delivered math includes texts, pictures, videos and other media shared and used via computers.
Of course, all computer-based math is also computer-delivered. But not all computer-delivered math is computer-based, the way the term is defined.
GapMinder, the interactive model about social issues in the world, is an example of computer-based math: http://www.gapminder.org/ A TED video about GapMinder that I linked in Week 7 is merely computer-delivered.
Another example: a multiple-choice online math quiz is considered computer-delivered math. Even if the quiz is wrapped as a computer game where kids need to shoot down monsters with right answers, it's still computer-delivered. The reason is that the kids are not using the power of the computer to do math during the interaction.
TASK
- Find an example of computer-based activity for measurement or number sense.
- Explain why you think the activity is computer-based and not just computer-delivered.