Hi Vivian, Thank you for your question. the best thing about our conceptual gains (based on our open-ended and some multiple choice items test) was that there were NO differences between girls and boys and no significant differences by ethnicity, English language learning level, or socio-economic status. Our products emphasize concept images by using all modalities. We developed all our products with the diverse kids available in Southern New Mexico. Karin Wiburg, P.I. for this grant

Vivian,

The grade span is significant, but with the shift of content in the common core, the content in the games covers many grades. Monster School Bus is the most elemEntry content, focusing on the ten-frame, but even this game addresses decimals that add to 10 and decimals that add to 1, which is a 5th grade concept. Whereas Game Over Gopher focuses on the coordinate plane, a 6th or 7th grade concept, 4th and 5th graders love this game. The great thing is that they are good games and kids play them because they are challenging and enjoyable and kids of all ages want to try them all. There is a common core guide for each game that shows which concepts are addressed across grade bands.

Great to see your responses. Very exciting preliminary results. And, thanks for reminding me about the common core and how that actually reinforces the appropriateness of the snacks across different grades. Students sound “hungry” for the snacks (I couldn’t resist:)

We had 100 students on campus yesterday and we had them play the games. These kids were mostly third graders so they were playing Monster School Bus and they enjoyed it. We even had a group of kindergarten kids and they could navigate through the first three levels.

I am always pleased to see how adept young people are in plunging in and navigating these kinds of materials. Creating opportunities for them to continue doing this through middle and high school and sustaining their interest is so important. Any plans to “grow” your materials for higher mathematics?

Actually all SNACKS include inquiry activity in addition to watching videos or playing games. the differences are based on which pictures we took. Nothing is just on the computers and nothing is just inquiry. All are connected. Karin Wiburg

Debra, If you go to the website you will find all of the Bonus activities. Each game and each animation has at least one hands on activity that enhances the learning in the game/animation. They go together, however we found that learning took place when students used just the games because not all teachers had time for the bonus activities.

Thanks for suggesting we take a look at the website. And, good to know that the games, by themselves, are not only appealing but support learning. Do you have data on the various ways teachers are using these resources?

Thanks for the pointer to the website!

The games are great, but make sure to look at the animations as well. They are great teaching tools and the lesson plans kind of bring the concepts together.

Will do.

And most important for myself as the PI for the project was the development of actual videos of teachers teaching kids with the math snacks modules. Many teachers need modeling of inquiry-based lessons which is central to the use of Math Snacks. Karin

Right now they are available to everyone on computers. We have some apps for the iPad. Would like to see expansion to more platforms and I think we are working on that with Glass Labs. Barbara Chamberlin can provide more information for this question. I think they are trying a language called Infinity. K.Wiburg

Nevin,

Karin addressed some questions. As far as the use in the classroom, there are multiple resources at the website. There are teacher guides, lesson plans, how to videos and student support materials. The goal is to us the animation or game as a learning opportunity and not an ‘extra’ activity when kids are done with ‘real’ work. Each lesson shows how the animation orgame can be used as part of the learning experience. The kids learn vocabulary and facility with the concepts through gameplay. This can be observed during discussions after gameplay or listening to student talk during gameplay. I hope this helps.

Nevin,

The short answer to your question is no, but the long answer is kind of.

When we did our experiments, we did have pre and post tests. We used released items from standardized tests and developed some of our own. The instruments were validated during pilot studies and unreliable questions were eliminated. So yes, we did test student content knowledge before and after treatment (using Math Snacks), but these instruments were used internally.

Nevin,

I wish we could ramp up the production of new games, but there is just so much involved in doing them right. The animation, the iterations, the user testing, classroom testing etc. just takes a long time. We are focusing on two things right now—first taking all existing games to the mobile platform. Ratio Rumble and Pearl Diver are available in Itunes, but Game Over Gopher, Gate and Monster School Bus need to be programmed for mobile. WE also have another proposal into NSF that has made it through the evaluation round and we are waiting to hear if we will receive funding. This new round will focus on pre-algebra concepts.

Glad to hear you are working to continue production. And, that you are doing it based on solid research, content, and approaches. Have you all worked with other NSF mathematics projects that are trying to do similar things? If so, which ones?

ON the Math Snacks web site there are additional videos of teachers teaching the snack modules with real kids in real classrooms. Try out these as well. Look at Teaching with.. on the mathsnacks.org site. As the PI I wanted to demonstrate inquiry-based teaching to go with our snacks.

We have data from focus groups with teachers but haven’t yet fully analyzed this data.

Thanks, Elizabeth! That was really important to us… it means a lot that you recognized that!

short answer: (from our research summary at http://mathsnacks.com/media/print/mathsnacks_re...) Before developing the intervention, researchers examined over 20,000 standards-based test results for K–8 students in four different districts to determine gaps in conceptual understanding, paying special attention to open-ended questions. They also conducted over 500 hours of classroom observations to explore and confirm the identified gaps, identifying why students misunderstood the questions they did. Middle school math students showed the greatest learning gaps in the areas of fractions, decimals, ratio/proportion, and number system concepts. These results were consistent regardless of socio-economic status, grade level, type of school, or education level of parents.

We used Flash for the animations and the online games. We have used Flash and AIR for some of our other educational tools and for the game, Ratio Rumble, but the other games for Math Snacks are too robust for the AIR packaging. Pearl Diver and the Math Snacks Video player were done in Objective-C/XCode. For future development, we will likely go with Unity… but it wasn’t where we needed it to be when we started development on these tools. Let me know if you want more details on development.