It’s time to kick off the new year with my first blog post of 2019. This post is a brief reflection of our most recent Scimathics project which focused around the mathematical concept of Algebra Tiles. Similar to a project we worked on in Grade 9, this was a group assignment where we were tasked with creating a game that utilized mathematical knowledge we learned throughout our Unit as game mechanics. Check out my partner Jessie and I’s tutorial video on our game below:

Our Game

Our project is a gold rush themed board game in which algebra tiles are gems which you want to fill up your mine cart with to win. It takes the basic premise of completing an algebra tiles square and turns it into a fun and challenging competition. This project was fun to create, but also was valuable to our learning as it allowed us to expand on our curricular competency skills. Here are some of the competency’s I feel our game really emulates;

Developing thinking strategies to solve puzzles and play games

This is a pretty obvious competency to include as it’s the main focus of the unit, but it is important to mention non the less. The reason that I personally like game projects is it forces us to really test our knowledge of a subject area, because if it isn’t sound our game’s mechanics will not work. It really gets us to learn how to think in a way where we learn to not only understand the concepts, but learn to apply them to make and solve games. These thinking strategies are demonstrated in our game with the creative ways we incorporated different mathematical concepts such as prime factorization and how we found ways to work this all into the game.

Connecting mathematical concepts with each other, other areas, and personal interests

My partner and I both have an interest in geology so the mining theme we based our game around was a great choice. We found ways to make mathematical ideas such as factors into physical game pieces that not only connected with each other to make the game playable, but also worked with our theme (such as algebra tiles being gems).

Visualize to explore and illustrate mathematical concepts and relationships

The entire concept of algebra tiles works around this idea, and in our game we made sure put a major focus on this element. You can see this in the fact that each algebra tile has a distinct shape, size, and name which illustrates their value (such as a big, bright diamond being the factor of the highest worth). We also used ideas such as our algebra square being a mine cart to illustrate the concept of filling up your square in a way that would make sense to people not familiar with algebra tiles. Our cards, bounty board, and video animations are also an example of this.

Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms

Relating to the last competency, our game puts a major focus on representing algebra tiles in a symbolic, concrete, user friendly way. The idea of factors being equal to theoretical tiles is quite the abstract concept, but when turn them into physical pieces, understanding becomes a lot easier. It also makes more sense to people when a concept such as this is presented in a symbolic way that they are familiar with, such as the idea of mining gems with different worth’s to fill up a mine cart. You also see a pictorial form of our game in our video animations. Mechanics such as these that we included in our project we found make algebra tiles a lot more understandable and concrete.

This unit was probably one that I will remember for a long time as the concepts we learned during it are truly fundamental parts of mathematics. The extra diagrams and concrete models we were able to create really helped my understanding of algebra, along with the fun premise of creating a game that encouraged me to explore more in the realms of project and video making. Below is my reflection of the unit in it’s entirety:

Want to know more about our game, or how you could make it yourself? Feel free to comment below