Games in the Classroom - Jump Numbers

Sun, Aug. 20 2017

At Artgig, you might say we’re specialists at making educational games that kids enjoy playing, but to make games truly useful for educators and learners, we turn to the experts for advice. We have a strong network of teachers who work with us in the development of each of our games to validate the lessons and shape the user experience. We pay lots of attention to making our games flexible, providing options to target specific skills for focused learning exercises. In developing our Jump Numbers skip counting game, we consulted our friends at Teachley to help design the teacher options. If you don’t know Teachley, they are teachers and researchers who have developed their own award-winning math apps, and we’ve helped them to build their data-driven classroom platform, Teachley Connect. If you’re using Teachley Connect in your classroom, you can also use Jump Numbers and configure the game specifically for an entire class. What follows is excerpted from a teacher guide, written by Teachley, with some great tips on how to use Jump Numbers for both Kindergarten and 3rd grade.

Before Playing

One great feature of Jump Numbers is that you can change the settings for a variety of teaching goals. Some important settings to note:

If you teach young children, you may want to disable the stompers and fuse, which act as a timer and may be stressful.

The default is to start all counting sequences from 1, but you can also set them to start from a random number

The default setting is adaptive difficulty, but if you want to teach a particular strategy, you can set one or more particular counting factors.

Using Jump Numbers For Kindergarten

Week 1 - Count to 100 by ones

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.A.1

  • Settings - Stompers: Off, Start at number: Always 0, Count by Manual: 1
  • Introduce the game - “Today we’ll play a new game about counting. Your goal is to save the snortles by finding the next number in the counting sequence. Start by jumping to 1, then 2 then …. Yes, 3 comes next. Sometimes the next number won’t be next to where you are, so you can’t jump there. Sometimes you will need to combine two other numbers to find the next one. If you get stuck there is this orange hint button that you can use for help. The helping hand will show you what the next step is.
  • Sharing - After playing the game, ask students to pair/share, telling their partner about a success that they had. Then ask a few students to share with the group.

Week 2 - Count from any number

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.A.2

  • Settings - Stompers: Off, Start at number: Random 0-20, Count by Manual: 1
  • Introduce the new version - “We’re going to play the Jump game again today. Remember, your goal is to save the snortles by finding the next number in the counting sequence. Last week when we played we always started the counting sequence at 1, but a sequence can start at any number. Let’s say the sequence starts at 7, I don’t need to start back at one, I can think hmmm, what comes after 7 (hold up 7 fingers).... Turn and tell your partner what number comes next. Yes, 8. So we started with 7, then 8, next …. 9. Let’s practice with a partner.
  • Call up one set of partners to model. Ask one of them to choose a starting number that is NOT 1.. The other partner will say the next number. And then back to the first partner and count as high as you can. “Now turn to your partner and try the same thing.”
  • Now it’s time to play. Remember, if you get stuck there is this orange hint button that you can use for help. The helping hand will show you what the next step is.
  • Sharing - After playing the game, ask students to pair/share, telling their partner about a success that they had. Then ask a few students to share with the group.

Using Jump Numbers For 3rd Grade

Week 1 - Introduce the game

  • Settings - You can keep the default adaptive settings, but you may want to turn off the Stompers if you think the students will get nervous under time pressure.
  • Introduce the game - “Today we’ll play a new puzzle game. Your goal is to save the snortles by finding the next number in the counting sequence. Sometimes the next number won’t be next to where you are, so you can’t jump there. Sometimes you will need to combine two other numbers to find the next one. If you get stuck there is this orange hint button that you can use for help. The helping hand will show you what the next step is.
  • Sharing - After playing the game, ask students to pair/share, telling their partner about a success that they had. Then ask a few students to share with the group.

Week 2 - Practice particular factors

  • Settings - Start at number: Always 0, Count by Manual: set the desired factors. You may want to set only the challenging factors, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12. For students who already have all their multiplication facts memorized, set the Start at number to Random 0-20, which leads to sequences like count by 7s, starting with the number 12, an extra challenge
  • Introduce the game - “We’re going to play Jump Numbers again today. Remember, your goal is to save the snortles by finding the next number in the counting sequence. Remember, if you get stuck there is this orange hint button that you can use for help. The helping hand will show you what the next step is.
  • Sharing - After playing the game, ask students to pair/share, telling their partner about a success that they had. Then ask a few students to share with the group.

Expect Augmented Reality

Wed, Jul. 26 2017

Can you believe it’s been a year since that crazy summer of Pokémon Go? The breakout augmented reality app seized our collective attention and launched AR into the hearts and minds of millions of mobile gamers all over the world. An attempt to recapture the magic with an anniversary party in Chicago this month may have been an epic technical failure, but let me assure you, AR is doing just fine. Apple just announced the release of ARKit for developers and soon everyone with an iPhone will just expect AR in their daily life. I don’t mean we’ll all be chasing animated monsters in our local parks, but we will expect graphics and information to blend with our experiences in real time, to accentuate and clarify the world around us, as in this AR map app.

We’ve been playing with AR for the last year, and we were fortunate to have a major educational publisher (who we cannot name due to contractual obligations) ask us for some creative help with an AR project.

The challenge: refresh a dusty old series of K-6 math textbooks and distinguish the series from the competition.

It was up to us to imagine how AR could be used as more than just eye candy to provide interactive moments of magic for maximum educational impact. The concepts shown here incorporate elements found across the web.

When you point your phone/tablet at the cover, the city comes to life in a 3D model with information overlays describing the math all around you.

This concept uses low-poly scenes that reveal the kaleidoscopic nature of shapes.

Onscreen prompts trigger a deeper dive into lesson activities and mini games with real time feedback.

We did such a good job on the concepts that the client offered us an opportunity to bid on the production work for the fairly massive project. We assembled a stellar unit of industry pros to augment our team but ultimately, the scale of the project and the short timeline ruled us out.

If you’re hungry for more AR experiments, check out the Made With ARKit website.

If you’ve got a project, we’ve got an AR A-Team standing by…

Artgig Summer Hits!

Thu, Jun. 29 2017

Greetings from Artgig!

As the temperature outside rises to a steady boil, I’m reminded that we’re nearly at the halfway mark for 2017 and I want to share some projects that we enjoyed working on - our feel good hits for the summer...

JFK100

Here’s a little-known Artgig fact, “Kennedy” is my middle name (my dad was a big fan), and I’ve always felt a special kinship with our 35th president. So when the JFK Library called us in January with a challenge to design and develop the JFK Centennial microsite in eight short weeks with zero margin for error, we didn’t blink. We accepted the project, not because it was easy, but because it was hard, and deeply satisfying.

Project highlights:

  • Original design (desktop, tablet, mobile)
  • Custom CMS
  • Landing page to capture interest ahead of microsite launch
  • Legacy gallery - in JFK’s words
  • "Where In The World Is JFK?" interactive map

 

AIGA

Here’s another fact, I was the first designer at Artgig, and I know what it means to spend countless hours agonizing over pixels, hex values and fonts. Needless to say, it’s a tremendous honor when the world’s oldest and largest membership organization for design, AIGA, calls for help with their website design. We worked with AIGA department leaders to collect research on user and organizational needs, and we translated the findings in a Website Goals and Parameters Report that will serve as a platform for future digital strategy.

Project highlights:

  • Collect and compile UX research via interviews and data analytics
  • Define website mission statement
  • Rethink website IA
  • Synthesize and present findings in a Goals and Parameters Report
  • Design page comps for major website sections (desktop, mobile)

Summer School?

Naturally, when you think of summer you think of fireflies...and math. Another feel good hit for kids and parents, Common Sense Media puts our Mystery Math Town app at the top of the charts, calling it one of the Best Math Games for 4th Grade.

Enjoy your summer! We're working on a new educational product to demo in the Fall.

If you're interested in seeing more of our client work, check out artgig.com

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