𝓔𝔁𝓹𝓸𝓷𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓵𝓪𝔀𝓼 𝓰𝓪𝓶𝓮

Hello everyone I’m back again, and in case you have missed me in the three days since I have posted, I’m hear to talk to you again! This blog post is about a completely different subject Scimatics! This is my blended course of science and math and for this project we focused on math! We were told that we were going to make a game using exponent laws. We were told we would have to incorporate 4 exponent laws and the core competencies. These competencies were the specific things this project would help us lean. Things like mental math skills, reasoning and analyzing using reasoning and logic to solve problems and puzzles. But before we jumped into the project we had to learn what the exponent laws even were!

We started with some simple math lessons. We learned the basics of exponents by using some very helpful videos and worksheets. We the proceeded to do plenty Kahoot! quizzes to brush up on our skills. This stage was not really a part of our final project but I thought it was really important to mention because it taught me a lot about doing mental math (one of the core competencies). Learning all of the math on worksheets and then getting to practice the math over Kahoot! quizzes really helped me to learn how to do some of those exponent equations in my head.

After we had learned how to do the equations we started our game! Me and my partner Ally had several ideas for what to do for a game but we decided to start with the idea of a board game. We decided we would build a board game that would correlate with exponent laws. If you landed on a certain square you would get a certain law that you would have to solve. This first draft was very rough and definitely needed improvement so we got some feedback from Mr. Gross. Mr. Gross told us that our game seemed fun but was a little boring and straightforward. It was just doing math that was badly disguised as a game. We definitely agreed and decided we would make changes in our next draft. This stage was very important as it definitely taught me a lot about idea generating. In most plp projects we have a lot of time to generate ideas in a ridged and structured way (by using specific idea generating sheets or strategies). In this project I got to try a lot more think of ideas by myself and just trying it out, you didn’t look at the idea from multiple angles before deciding if it was good enough, you just gave it a try and saw how it worked. I found that really fun and I know it will be helpful because it’s always good to be able to come up with ideas on the spot and quickly.

Our first idea for our game board

Once we had received our feedback, we went to make some changes. We decided to stick with the board game idea but we upgraded the board. We added extra squares that had fun tasks, we coloured it in to make it more interesting, and we tried to make the game less centred around math. But the long story short is none of it worked. Our game was still not very interesting and needed to be completely rethought. This step taught me a lot about trying to fix problems but also knowing when your energy is being wasted by trying to fix a lost cause. We were putting so much effort into our game when we knew it wasn’t going to work and I regret that. Sometimes your ideas just don’t work and you need to rethink things before you waste all your time. If we had learned this earlier we could have had more time to do our final draft.

Our second draft’s game rules

In the final draft we reinvented our game. We went from a strait up board game to a card game. We made a brand new card game where you recreate an exponent law using cards you draw from a certain pile. This new draft (in my opinion) was much more fun. It fast paced, a lot more exciting, and it involved much more thinking. This draft was a real improvement from our first draft and definitely showed our ability to problem solve when faced with feedback. For instance when we were to to make the game more simple and revolve less around math we took that problem and solved it. I learned a lot about taking ideas you already had and reworking them to be better. I also learned a lot about what makes a game interesting. You need to keep a good game relatively short so people don’t lose their attention, you should ad interesting twists that shake the game up, and you should make it fast and interesting so people want to play. These are also useful things to remember when doing a project because those things will keep people wanting to hear about what you did.

The rules for our final game

Overall I had a lot of fun on this project and I think I learned a lot. I learned some really useful skills that I definitely think I will use in almost all PLP projects after this. I’m really glad I got to do this project and I hope you you had some fun reading this post. Hopefully see ya soon!

τα λέμε αργότερα (See ya later – Greek),

𝓗𝓸𝓵𝓵𝔂