Minecraft + 8th Graders + Sleep Deprivation = ?

We recently took our 8th grade trip to Washington D.C.  The ride is about six hours there and six back with several long trips between all of our stops.  We have a bunch of time to kill.  I usually encourage my students to bring their Nintendo DS, so I can crush them at Mario Kart...which I do (LRN2Powerslide). 

This year, I found out that I could run a mobile hotspot off my phone and set up a minecraft server.  I got a group of about six students to team up and play minecraft.  I took on the role of the team leader and we quickly produced a decent fortress.  The communication and teamwork inherent in this type of gameplay lead to a very productive bus ride and very few behaviorial issues.  Which is nice.

In the end, we had a well oiled machine of gatherers, designers, builders, and hunters.  We planned our next builds around breakfast and created during the long hours of monotonous bus travel.  We only ever had any trouble near the end of the ride home when two overly sleep deprived students began an in game conflict and eventually decided to rage quit.

 

Considering that the time could have been spend texting each other mindless filth, bothering teachers and chaperones, or playing the next hot mobile shoot-em-up, I think this was a great use of our time.

Chicken Races!

So, I have to review genetics as part of my state test curriculum.  A few years back, I got an idea from an old video game my brother and I had found a long time ago.  The game was called Mutant Chicken Races and I was pretty terrible.  Also, it was very fun.  The premise was that you needed to save up money by breeding and racing chickens.

So, I adapted this game to work in a classroom.  I had the students use Punnett Squares to determine the traits of their racing chicken by using the genes from its parents.

These traits directly translated to how the chicken would perform in a race. 

I held a stable of my own racing chickens to compete with them.  If I beat them in a race, they'd have a change to breed a better chicken by looking for favorable traits in parent chickens and combining their genes.  The follow up discussion led to an examination of how humans can use selective breeding to produce the traits we want in a species of animals.

Survive!

For the past several weeks, I've had a student teacher.  We started up our state test review, and she did most of the review on Physics, Chemistry, and Earth Science.  Now that I am back in the driver's seat, we're reviewing ecology.  I've made a game for mys tudents to play to simulate an ecosystem.  Each of them is given a sheet with statistics that represent a population of an organism.

Each population has certain values for attack, defense, and reproduction.  They also have a starting population.  The rules are essentially alligned with the behaviors each type of organism is normally capable of.  Producers don't have to eat, primary consumers can eat plants, secondary consumers can eat animals, etc.

The game is turned based and has three phases per turn.  Phase 1 - Attack.  Each organism needs to eat if it wants to have the energy to reproduce.  Food is all around them and each student will make a roll against the other's defense to see if an attack was successful.  Phase 2 - Environment.  I roll for a random environmental effect that might harm the organisms.  Phase 3 - Reproduce.  If the organism ate that turn, it may reproduce.

That is mostly it.  I tell the students that the only goal is to survive.  Then I set them loose.

Waves and Slinkies!

A while back we used slinkies to demonstrate transverse and longitudinal waves.  Here are some of the results.

CSI Science Class

We covered light, optics, and fluorescence in class.  As a culminating activity, we set up a crime scene investigation for my students to work through.

THE HORROR!!

I brought in a stuffed animal owl (Thisty the Owl) from home to play the victim.  He was missing and the students had to follow a UV blood trail to find the body.

Ship this poor bird off to the morgue.

They also used magnifying glasses to match fingerprints to our database.  This gave us suspects to interrogate.  I wrote scripts for students to follow, and I even interrogated my guinea pig, Bridget.

Besides fingerprints and blood, the students founf hairs and fibers at the crime scene.  They used microscopes to match with our database of fibers to narrow our search to a final suspect.

Guinea pig hair has a bumpy texture.

Human hair does not.

Using the evidence they gathered and the testimony of the suspects, the students had to justify who they chose to blame the crime on.  (It was Bridget)

Roller Coasters!

Tis week we talked about how gravitational potential energy is used to propel roller coasters through twists, turns, and loops.  In class, we made roller coasters using 3x5 cards.  We each had a potential energy "budget" that came from a ramp set at a fixed height.  If someone wanted to use more energy, they had to design a ride that went off the table to the ground.

My Student's are making a Video Game. Pt 1

Last semester, I dabbled in RPG Maker VX Ace with my computer class.  I had them help out with elements of a game that I produced.  I've decided to pull out all of the stops and give them complete creative control of the building process.

RPG Maker VX Ace has a wonderful mapping utility.

The plan is to have them handle all of the writing and design elements of the game while I do the grunt work over the course of the next semester.  So far, I've had them begin the writing of the story and even write up a budget for our "game studio."  These fulfill the requirements of my class to review MS Word and Excel.

The blank map is used to select random shapes for continents.

Next, I am doing some work with GIMP to teach image manipulating.  The first thing we've done is made world maps.  Each student starts with a "blank" map.  They then select chunks to be the continents and add details to separate the biomes and climates.  These designs can then be translated into RPG Maker VX Ace.

Here's something I cooked up in GIMP.

Meteorites!

With the recent meteorite action in Russia, I thought it would be a great time to bust out my own meteorite activity in class.  I put dishes of flour on the tables and had students drop objects from different heights.  They also tested to see if an object with more mass would make a larger crater.

More Newton Footage

Our school got ahold of some MacBook Airs, so I decided to flex my film editing skills with this one.  We reviewed Newton's laws through a series of activities and I recorded them with my high speed camera.  Here's the result.

Thor vs. Physics!

To help demonstrate Newton's 3rd Law of Motion, I have a student stand on a rotating platform and swing my homemade Mjolnir (http://rjcosplay.blogspot.com/2012/05/my-mjolnir.html).  I had "Loki" stand in front of him and I assured her that she could not be hit with the mighty hammer.  Sure enough, every swing of the hammer moved "Thor" in a circle in the opposite direction of the hammer and he never landed a blow.

We also demonstrated the 3rd Law by using balloons.  A couple students aimed them at their foreheads and let go.  The air rushing out of the balloons forced the ballons into their faces. 

As a bonus, we did a demonstration on the conservation of momentum.  A ping pong ball dropped on a golf ball is launched super high due to the larger mass of the golf ball.

Fight Science!

Way back in college, I recall seeing a special on National Geographic called Fight Science.  At the time, I was studying Isshinryu Karate and was pretty interested in combining the study of martial arts with Scientific theories and measurements.  While the "measurements" were presented in a manner that promoted the show rather than the Science, it was still an interesting show with some good explanations of fundamental concepts of Physics.

In class today, we're talking about force.  I have my students make a hypothesis about which fighter will be able to punch the hardest based on what they know about force.  The fighters hit a crash test dummy, and we get results in pounds (I convert to Newtons).

This usually leads to pretty thoughtful discussions about how the size/mass of the fighter affects the force of the punch and how each fighter can generate speed in a punch. 

It's an interesting lesson that grabs the attention of a lot of the students whose interests lie in the somewhat unsavory realm.  I think its actually a good idea to promote this kind of training for students who get in trouble a lot.  Any martial art teaches discipline and structure, which most kids need.  Also, they're a lot of fun.

Newtoooooooon!

I started teaching Newton's Law of Motion today.  I presented my students with some inertia based challenges.  Each of these was a take on the old tablecloth trick.  They had to remove a piece of paper from between two bottles, or from under a coin with one finger.  Below are some of the results at 300 fps.

High Speed Highlight

A couple years ago, I got ahold of a camera that shoots high frame rate video.  The result is a super slow motion video that I can use in class to demonstrate many wonderful Science concepts and I can use these videos to make somewhat accurate measurements of actions too fast to normally see.

In class today, we were measuring the velocity of a student punching.  That backdrop is set up in increments of 0.1 m.  Anyone with a stopwatch can record the time and the rest of the students can calculate the velocity of the punch.  I had several students do this and compete for the title of fastest hands.

We also redorded Sackboy riding a skateboard.  We estimated that the distance between the "rock on" hands was about 1 m.  We recorded the velocity at the start of the hill, the bottom of the hill, and the time it took to get to the bottom.  With this information, the students could calculate his acceleration.

Finally, I ended class with a demonstration related to Newton's cannonball experiment.  The cart moves and fires the ball straight up.  Due to the motion of the cart, the ball lands back in the lancher.

Photogates!

 

A few years ago, I got ahold of some photogates to use in class.  They've got a beam between two points on a gate that start a timer when broken.  Not only does it allow for very accurate measurements, it measures to the ten-thousandths of a second.

 

In class today, we're measuring the acceleration of a golf ball down a ramp (thrilling stuff).  I built a wonderful little velocity device out of a hot wheels car and sent it down the ramp.  By measuring the length of the card and the times from the photgates, I can calculate the initial/final velocity, the time between the two, and the acceleration.

Mario Kart? Science!?

While teaching my students about motion, I have to distinguish between velocity and acceleration.  Most students have an idea that acceleration means to speed up.  They've ridden in cars and can feel themselves getting pushed into a seat when a car takes off from a stop.  But it's not something they're used to quantifying.  Fortunately, I have a tool in the back pocket to help...MARIO KART!

I put my DS under the Elmo camera and project it on my big screen.  Then I compare Toad and Bowser.

Toad:  High acceleration/low speed.

Bowser:  Low acceleration/high speed.

Then I do a race with each character without using any power ups and have my students record any observations about how the character performs.  Here are some of their observations:

Toad:  Has good starts; makes it around turns easily; has trouble catching up to people.

Bowser:  Has crummy starts, crummy turns; has little trouble catching up to people.

Poor Bowser can't get off the line.

Because acceleration is a change in velocity, I impress upon my students that this includes speeding up, slowing down, and changing direction.  With regards to Mario Kart, I explain what statistics are important for varying circumstances and how stacking one statistic is usually a recipe for disaster.

Lesson for the day...go with Yoshi...or Dry Bones.

Silly Walks

Now that I've started teaching Physics, I can have students perform experiments that translate very literally to the content material.  I recently taught them how to calculate the velocity of an object.  There was a time when I didn't have a very good lesson for calculating speed because my classroom didn't have a lot of space for them to run around and I usually can't take them outside in the middle of winter.
So, I taped off parts of the room and had them walk between the tape lines.  They measure the distance and time; then calculate velocity.  Here's the catch...they must perform silly walks from the Monty Python sketch. 

Then I film it at 300 fps and put together a wonderful compilation.  They usually have an absolute blast doing this activity and they get a lot of good practice calculating velocity.

What does your desk look like?

Here's my desk at school on a normal day.  Allow me to take you on a tour.

This is my computer provided for me by the school district.  I also have my ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity kicking around. (It took this picture)

My PS3 is here to run Little Big Planet on my projector.  Sackboy is helping me teach Physics.

The mousepad is from the WoW: Cataclysm collector's edition.

The LEGO minifigs are mostly there from some trading I've done with one of my students.

R2-D2 and my personal assistant robot are around to perform robot tasks.

I use beakers as change/pencil holders.

I have a few collections of Mythbusters DVDs around for when Adam and Jamie help me teach.

I have A LOT of playing cards.  Not just the single deck you see here.  Mostly because I am a magician and collect cards like a crazy person.

In the back is a PVP print from my wife.  You can also see the bottom edge of a Penny Arcade poster.

Sackboy is Teaching my Physics Class

As an 8th grade Science teacher, my curriculum is split between Chemistry and Physics.  We just had our midterm exams and I've switched to teaching about Newtonian Physics.  Normally, I would trot out some old Road Runner vs. Wile E. Coytoe videos and have the class describe all of the laws that are blatantly violated.  However, I was recently inspired by a program called Steam for Schools:(http://www.teachwithportals.com/)

The basic idea of Steam for Schools was to have students play Portal and overcome specially designed challenges that would illustrate certain concepts in Physics.  (Gravity, conservation of momentum, friction, cake, etc.)  The program sounded great, but time did not allow for me to get it all installed in my computer lab and develop an entire unit out of it (read: too busy doing OTHER awesome things ;) )

So I brought the PS3 and Little Big Planet into my room and Sackboy gave an introductory lesson on how video games utilize (and sometimes break) the laws of Physics.  We talked about how programmers use MATH to translate real life rules into game mechanics.  We also rode a give skateboard and got scared by ghosts.

Little Big Planet is a great game to use to demonstrate Physics because the goals of the game are directly related to the Physics-driven game mechanics.  Also there is a distinct lack of high paced combat, arterial bleeding, cursing, and nudity.  We keep it clean in Mr. Doran's room.

My Students Helped Make a Video Game

A while back, I got a deal on some software called RPG Maker VX Ace.  It is a utility for creating old school looking RPGs.  I got the idea to make a game that my students could play that had elements of Science in it.  The basic premise was that the school got attacked by acids and bases and the students had to act as the hero to defeat them.  I created a mechanic for the students to use specialized "attacks" to neutralize the acids and bases.  An "acid" attack would do extra damage to the base monster and a "base" attack would do extra damage to an acid monster.

I also mapped out our school, put in the teachers and staff, an wrote the story to place the player as the hero of the day.

On top of creating the game, I had students in my Computers class record music for the game.  Finally, I had my Computers students play the game and write up bug reports for me.

Test Quest Continues!

Here's a detailed explanation of how a class operates:

When students come into class, they pick up their character sheet.  They also take out their review homework from the night before.  I stroll about the room with a stamp to mark the students' character sheets if they completed the assignment.  These stamps count towards achievments they can earn.

After a debreifing of the homework, I give the students a ten question, multiple choice, mini-quiz.  After they've completed this quiz, I have them raise up a lettered card to show which answers they got for which question.  This allows me to quickly count the total number of correct responses.

This is where it gets fun. Every day I draw a different type of monster on the whiteboard.  The monster starts with an amount of hit points that are related to its "challenge level" and how many students are in the room.  The students' hit points are related to their own average level, how many students there are, and the average number of correct responses on the mini-quiz.  I have spreadsheets set up with formulas to track all of this information.

Then we do battle!

My Science Class is a Role Playing Game

Last year I read an interesting article about one Ben Bertoli (http://classrealm.com/blog/), a 6th grade teacher.  He had an idea to run his classroom like an RPG.  His student could earn points and achievments in class that would "level them up."  I thought it was an astounding idea, and I immediately started to set my own in class RPG

Students In New York take a standardized Science test in eighth grade that covers four years of material.  I usually spend over a month of my school year covering a variety of Science topics.  I use old state tests and review texts to ensure that my students will get to see all of what could be on the test.  The process is typically arduous as my students can get overloaded with information and lose interest part of the way through it.  I decided that I should try my RPG during this review period.

It was a success on so many levels.  My students were excited to "play" every day and didn't even notice that we plowed through ten years of old state tests.  Homework assignments flowed in when they might normally trickle.  Even the "too cool for school" kids got into it.  The results of the state test even showed higher than normal progress.





This year, I've made many modifications to the game and am now running it through it's beta as we review for our midterm.  Here's what it looks like:

Students fill out a character sheet.  This includes experience points, their current level, a race, a class, and an ability based on their class.

On a day when we're playing, they'll be presented with some type of foe.  On day one, it was a training dummy.  The foe is given hit points based on its level, and how many students are in the class.

Next, the students take a short quiz.  Correct responses to the questions earn their starting hit points for the battle.

Next, they can attack the foe by using their abilities.  Each foe has its own abilities and the students trade blows in order to defeat the foe.

Students have to incorporate dice rolls, adding bonuses, and subtracting penalties to their abilities (MATH!)

Once an enemy is defeated, the students are awarded loot and experience points.  Students also have the opportunity to earn achievements.  For example, turning in their homework assignments could earn an acievement that gives them extra loot.