Hello world,
This is the first blog post of my grade nine year. I’ve started this project with a driving question and a final task. The driving question for this project is “how does math make games more complex, interesting, and re-playable?”. To answer this question me and my partner, Theryn, made a board game based on the law of the exponents. To work up to the final stage, or shall I say the final game, we went through many milestones. “What are milestones?” You may ask, well…milestones are a form of learning checkpoints that help you build and present your knowledge.
Furthermore, to start the project me and my class learned about exponents and how they can form equations. The way we did this was by filling out a unit note book, that stated many questions about exponent laws. At first I didn’t really understand what an exponent law was, however when I moved further with this project it became more clear.
To continue with the project, I completed a milestone called “Dice game rules”. In my opinion I didn’t feel like that milestone was very relevant to my learning. However, the next milestone that I completed did help me understand the project better. This milestone was called “Khan Academy Exponents Test”. This milestone was about completing a khan academy unit test about exponent laws. To work up to the unit test I referred back to previously learnt information, in my unit notes, as well as containing new information from videos. With this knowledge, and much more, I felt proud of how I could apply my learning to the different aspects of this project.
In addition, this milestone best represented my use of the curricular competency “Applying and Innovating”. The way I showed an sophisticated contribution to my learning was throughout the constant work ethic that I put into the quiz. The reason I think this is because I stay on task with my learning as well as continuing to use supporting approaches to answer questions from my quiz. Even though this was a quiz and I couldn’t have work collaboratively on it I still could have improved in that spectrum. The way I could have work collaboratively, but still individually, on this milestone was by asking question to my peers before it started (this would have gave me a different point of view on the solutions to the questions throughout the quiz). Overall I approached this competency with a sophisticated understanding of where to grow.
The next big learning point that I faced was called “Game rules draft 1”. This milestone was the first stage of actually creating the game. To start this milestone me and Theryn brainstormed game idea’s that could revolve around using exponents. The concept we came up with was a virus game, where you take you pieces and move them throughout a world map by evaluating the exponent of the dice rolled and the number of chips you have. We thought this would be a good way to incorporate exponents because the way you move is by evaluating the properties of an exponent (little did we know that we would face a problem). This milestone was a great start for our project because it was the foundation for the next drafts that we would face.
After we were given feedback on this milestone we realized that the when we were using exponents in our game we weren’t supposed to be evaluating them. I was confused on how we weren’t supposed to evaluate, because how can a game just use laws? Well…those questions were answer in the next milestone…
The next milestone for this project was called “Game rules draft 2”. This milestone was a continuation of the drafts that would make up the final product of the project. Throughout this milestone me and Theryn realized that if we weren’t supposed to evaluate exponents we would have to make the pieces on the game board move with the laws of exponents. This then lead us to the idea that a player would start with a power and would move through the map on route that would use the exponent laws to infect countries with their virus. From this idea we were able to the incorporate more exponent laws into the game, such as ‘power of a power rule’, ‘Quotient of powers rules’ and much more.
Furthermore, this milestone best represented my use of the curricular competency “Communicating and Representing”. The way I showed symbolic forms of mathematical idea’s was throughout the integration of exponent laws into the game. The reason I think this is because I showed the concept of how exponents can be altered using different laws with supporting concrete materials. An area I could have improved on is competency is by intertwining the laws of exponent to flow a bit better throughout the game. Besides that I approached this competency with an understanding of where to improve and learn.
Lastly, I moved onto the milestone called “Final Game Evaluation”. This was the last milestone of the making of the game. Within this milestone me and Theryn made sure that the game was up to date with our knowledge with exponents. Once we were certain that our game was informative and entertaining we presented it to our fellow peers. I was very impressed with our final game called Epidemic Exponents!
This final game product best showed my use of the curricular competency “Reasoning and Analyzing”. The way I showed logic and patterns was throughout the point system and process of mathematical concepts in the game. The reason I think this is because I showed how exponents can be used in game play and how they can be altered to create patterns. An area I could have improved on is competency is by create a clearer point system that would make it easier to show the use of the exponent laws throughout the game. Besides that I approached this competency, and the whole project with an understanding of how to demonstrate my knowledge.
In Conclusion, this project taught me a lot about exponents and the laws associated with them. As informing me about how to gain certain competencies. These competencies also lead me to answering the driving question “how does math make games more complex, interesting, and re-playable?”. My answer is… math makes games more complex, interesting, and re-playable because it can be altered to suit many different game based situations math has different patterns that move throughout it. Mythical concepts can even become patterns which help make the game play interesting because these patterns can be designed. This certain designed aspects can change, which keeps the players interested and involved with the game play.
Thank you for reading, I hoped you learned a lot,
Alicia 😀
credits: Check out my project partner, Theryn’s, blog