Comments on: Asilomar #5: Michael Serra

By: Michael Serra

Michael Serra — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:50:06 +0000

Hi Dan,
Thanks for the kind words. I would not abandon Battleship. However, I’d suggest changing the name to Buried Treasure.
Perhaps next years talk at Asilomar will explore some of the variations I’ve created with Buried Treasure (Battleship without the war and killing inference).

How about Buried Treasure with Equations?
Or Polar graphing Buried Treasure?
How about on the sphere?
Or 3D Buried Treasure?
Or…
Again the kids will offer up a variety of rule changes for each.

By: dy/dan » Blog Archive » Asilomar Dispatch #1: Schedule

dy/dan » Blog Archive » Asilomar Dispatch #1: Schedule — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 01:37:13 +0000

[…] Games And Puzzles That Develop Sequential Reasoning, Michael Serra. [link] […]

By: Frank N.

Frank N. — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 04:38:55 +0000

I’m glad to see you enjoyed the racing game! Vector Racing is a physics classic. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racetrack_(game)

And how do you do this digitally? Like this:
http://vectorracer.boschloo.net/

By: Tom Hinkle

Tom Hinkle — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:39:39 +0000

I wish I’d had this trick when I was teaching basic GUI programming to students (students were, in fact, making a race car move around a screen).

This game is exactly what (I quickly learned) I was taking for granted students could do in their head. Turns out many of them couldn’t.

Next time I find myself doing this, I’ll make sure kids have played on graph paper before I introduce the concept of pixels on a screen… :)

By: dan

dan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 01:03:27 +0000

Say whatever you want about me, Tom, but leave OMG MICHAEL SERRA!!1! out of this.

By: Tom Hoffman

Tom Hoffman — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:50:57 +0000

OTOH, apparently you can be a rockstar math guru talking about things I did in class as a middle school (elementary?) student…

By: Tom Hoffman

Tom Hoffman — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:46:14 +0000

I was independently thinking about racetrack math this week. Given that I haven’t played it in about 25 years, that’s a good sign that it’s a winner.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:37:07 +0000

I was thinking the same as Mark – indeed, if I did this in a class then I would demonstrate it on a whiteboard, and once I’d got everyone going, I’d have one pair of kids playing on the whiteboard at all times (they love that).

Still, *the rest of them would be using paper.*

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 23:50:38 +0000

You could do it digitally with an IWB. ;)

By: Kate

Kate — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 22:39:26 +0000

I don’t see why you need to throw out battleship. The racetrack is good for positive & negative, and two dimensions, and, I dunno, head to toe vectors in later courses, but don’t you need them to learn about that strange coordinate axis thing sometime?