Jen’s aMAZEing GGB

While looking through through the weeks activities on what is required. I was able to tap into my inner child. Any time you get to play with a maze, it is hard to pass up the opportunity. I spent the first five minutes with the maze just trying to find my way through the difficult sequences to be successful. It was a mighty challenge turning left and right especially when the car got faced the up-side-down (opposite way of start). I often found myself hitting the wrong direction and crossing over the walls and having to restart.

After continued failures I started to become more reactionary. The left and right movements no longer became left and right. I was getting the sensations I as in the car and moving forward with the vehicle itself. My errant turns became less problematic and I was successful more often, completing the maze quickly and flawlessly. 

After mastering the craft of rotational translations, I decided to give a few 7th graders a crack at it. Much like my experience they continued to turn the wrong direction and cross the walls. I was interviewing them about their experience and asked them what was making it so hard? The response was almost always carelessness. The students did not pay any attention to the writing on the buttons signifying turn left or turn right. 

I pondered why they would not pay attention to the scrip on the buttons. My conclusion is, video games. Especially the older the video game the more alike to the aMAZeing program, games like Pack-man come to mind. Many of the original NES games where you control a character on a 2-dimensional map moving up, down, left, or right are also similar to the maze. Maybe there are some benefits to videos games, I'm going to look into more ways to incorporate them into math class. 

At the end of my reflection with Jen's aMAZeing GGB I looked at her Unit Plan which included the maze program. I was shocked and taken back with her lessons. Her incorporation  with history is "amazeing." Being certified to teach history as well as math, I have always wanted to incorporate the great mathematicians of the past into lessons. I need to start doing this more. I am assuming she is not using a textbook for this lesson. Seeing this amazing unit plan has motivated me into looking at dropping our new textbooks for a self created unit. I'm going to use my time in MAT641 to do this, more to come....

Jen's aMAZEing GBB: http://www.geogebratube.org/material/show/id/48117