by While waiting for the 5th grade class to settle down between recess and their holiday party, I wrote this project starter for creating arithmetic flashcard software in MicroWorlds. While the “math” isn’t particularly interesting or open-ended, there are plenty of opportunities for the students to improve and augment the software.
Bad drill and practice doesn’t become good because it is programmed in Logo, or by kids. However, the person who learns the most from “educational” software is the person who made it.
I thought of doing this because “practice multiplication facts” has been written on the classroom board for months. If the kids “write the software, perhaps they’ll think about multiplication a bit.
This is also an opportunity for introducing concepts, like percent, in order to create a cumulative score.
Download the PDF project starter by clicking the link below:
A “Math” Game Only A Mother Could Love (PDF)
Veteran educator Gary Stager, Ph.D. is the author of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, publisher at Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. He led professional development in the world’s first 1:1 laptop schools thirty years ago and designed one of the oldest online graduate school programs. Gary is also the curator of The Seymour Papert archives at DailyPapert.com. Learn more about Gary here.