Hello and welcome to the first blog of grade 9. Just to re-cap how we do things at PLP. PLP stands for Performance Learning Program, and we use many different apps to help make our learning even more creative then it already is. We use many apps like Basecamp and Showbie to complete our homework. We have things called Milestones and Stepping stones, but we are going to talk more about Milestones. All projects in PLP start with a driving question, Milestones are important because they help us get ready to answer the driving question. The driving question is no easy question to answer and requires many hours of studying to answer. That is the goal of every PLP project, its to answer the driving question. The driving question for this project was: How does math make games more complex, interesting, and re-playable. Stepping stones help us get ready for Milestones so you can see where this is headed. Now lets move on to the project. As seen in the title this blog is about Scimatics (Math and Science). Our project name was all about the laws of exponents (Fun!). Our project was about making a game that included 4 exponent laws that had easy and simple rules.
Milestone 1: For MS1, we had around 30 minutes to make our first draft of our game board rules. This was one of my least desired Milestones mostly because it really gave me a good prospective of how hard this project really was compared to recent grade 8 projects.
Milestone 2: For MS2, we needed to do the same thing, but kind of different. We needed to transfer what we already had written on a whiteboard onto a pages document, and organize it into a more organized form.
Milestone 3: MS3, This was by far my least favourite Milestone, we were told to do a Kahn academy quiz, that reviewed all of the exponent laws we have just discussed. (This quiz was really hard)
Milestone 4: Milestone 4, was our 2nd draft of our game board rules. We needed to improve the rules by making them more detailed and more informative. This was an easy milestone as it did not require to much effort to make our games board rules better.
Milestone 5: Finally, Milestone 5, the most important Milestone! MS5 was named game day, we needed to submit our final copy of our game and then present it to the other Scimatics class. Here is a picture of our final game board:
I also made a Text to Speech game version of our game board using a program called Scratch, you can check that out here:
Milestone 6: MS6, as you should all know by now is when we need to write our blog, the one you are reading right now.
Curricular competencies:
Reasoning and Analyzing:
I believe I did an accomplished job at this competency. Me and my partner max worked very hard on our game and looked at many different examples of different game board rules. We used our knowledge to put together a well structured and detailed rule list while also keeping it not too long. The reason I think this isn’t an extending is because our game did not include more than 4 exponent laws. Without knowing we jumped right into making our game great without realizing that we needed to include 4 exponent laws. What I could do to improve this is by constantly checking the rubric to make sure I’m including all that should be included.
Communicating and Representing:
I think I did a developing job at this Competency; Even though we had clear, complete, interesting, and personalized instructions, we did not include 4 exponent laws in our game, this was a vital part of our game board and somehow we missed out on it. Therefore in my point of view, this would be a developing. What I learned from this is to make sure to follow the rubric step by step to make sure I stay on top of things,like including more exponent laws.
Applying and Innovating:
Even though we have a new teacher, it seems that gaming is more unrecognized in Mr. Harris class. This may just be my point of view, but I have seen way more people gaming in this Scimatics class than Mr. Grosses class. I can also say the same for me, I did game a bit in class, not nearly as much as Declan or my other classmates, but in my opinion, gaming isn’t recognized enough in this class. Therefore I would give myself a developing. I would only give this to myself because the only way to learn from a mistake, is to fail from it. I could help stop gaming by setting more goals for myself in the near future. One of these goals could be to stop gaming.
In conclusion, this project was a change compared to grade 8 (Obviously). This was a very hard project and my least favourite project I have ever done in PLP Scimatics. Now finally, here is my answer to the driving question: How does math make games more complex, interesting, and re-playable? Well, to start I think we all know math requires skill and knowledge to solve; when you introduce a challenging problem into A game (Like math) it helps make the game more intriguing, what do I mean by this? Well, by introducing math into a game, it not only brings a challenging twist to the game, but also helps you improve your math skills and problem solving skills. Math makes the game more complex, interesting, and when you lose, will leave you telling yourself “I need to win!” Therefore you would want to re-play the game. In the end I happend to end the project with a decent game and a decent grade. This was also the first year I had a new teacher, Mr. Hansell. Thank you so much for checking out my blog, and stay tuned because more exciting grade 9 projects are on the way.
