This week’s articulate e-learning challenge was to design an interaction to teach any math concept online. With several math concepts from simple additions, to number groupings, use of slide rule, right to complex permutations, it was both fun and engaging for me, to watch all entries pour in!
Special Interest.
Despite the fact that I am in the midst of many ‘good distractions’, I refused NOT to participate in this challenge as soon as I saw it. It seemed to me like David Anderson knows how to pull members back into the challenges when we become ‘distracted’ for the good reasons anyway. Yes he succeeded with this one. Since I am beginning to find my interest in Educational Technology, and developing skills in that line already, coupled with the fact that I love and teach Maths, I found this challenge a no-miss one.
Approach and Concept.
At first, several math statements that have helped me over the years began to run in my mind, so I decided to begin my entry with these math quotes. I narrowed to four of them as shown below. I hope you find them useful too.
Next, was to come up with the interaction itself and getting a concept took quite some time as I didn’t want to do the common math concepts. Finally, I remembered a niece of mine having troubles with saying the time and I decided to go that way. So my demo is an introduction to saying the time.
Design.
First I wanted a background that would be show a school theme so I got the free image from a site online and put a blur to fit my need. Using basic shapes, I designed the clock frame and arrows. The correct and wrong feedback were freebies shared by an articulate community member sometime ago (pardon me, I can’t seem to trace who now).
Interaction.
It teaches the basics of identifying the hands of the clock, the minute and hour hand.
The ‘hands’ of the clock are presented in different colors so the student can easily identify them. The student is presented with an opportunity to test his knowledge with two questions (in this demo) and feedback is provided immediately.
The Result.
A very simple interaction it is… Download the interaction here (by the way it’s in PPT) and Enjoy!