A group of Jamestown High students are helping their peers strengthen their mathematics skills, but instead of using flash cards and worksheets, they use computer games.
Juniors Matthew Daniel, Zachary Henshaw, David Thames and sophomore Stephen Shamaiengar are part of a group of Jamestown students putting their math skills to use helping other high schoolers develop theirs. Their unofficial club — working “underground,” as Shamaiengar put it — designs and develops computer games that teach high school-level mathematical concepts.
The group began their work last year after their math teacher, Johnathon Upperman, pointed out how video games could be used to help students develop math skills. Daniel said he immediately saw an application based on his experiences with 2-D and 3-D objects as a math student.
“I never really understood [the difference] in middle school — I would just memorize the formulas,” he said. “I never really thought of the concept behind it. So we came up with the idea, ‘Why can’t we make that into a game?’ You actually take a 2-D object and make it into a 3-D object … so you can visualize it.”
That visualization comes from taking the equations off the paper and putting them on the computer screen. In the “Darts” game, players are presented with a standard “x,y” graph, with two balloons plotted on the field. Based on the location of the balloons, the player must find the equation for a line that passes through both balloons, “popping” them.
Compared to traditional worksheets and take-home problems, Thames said video games could be more engaging to students.
“A lot of people find a worksheet just boring, mostly just because they associate it with being a boring part of school, just work,” Thames said. “Whereas video games they play in their free time, they can be more inspired by one of these and just work on it.”
Students seem to agree. Websites like CoolMath.com offer a variety of games for students to hone their math skills. Those games, however, are more elementary — in their offerings and target demographics. CoolMath offers games up to Calculus, but focuses primarily on pre-algebra and concepts more geared toward elementary and middle school students.
With so few game resources for high school-level math, the group said they knew they had an opportunity to help other students. Daniel said they worked with other math students to find which math subjects had the most demand for video games.
Their first games have focused on upper level mathematics, like graphing, physics and trigonometry. In one, players have to compute function transformations before the graphed line falls to the bottom of the screen. The faster the player finds the correct answer, the higher their score.
Other games in development including calculating a car’s deceleration before it hits a wall and sailing a boat between hazards by using simple equations and piecewise functions. Shamaiengar said he was working on a game that covered geometry, including area and volume.
The ultimate goal, Thames said, is to create tools that students can use to reinforce lessons learned in the classroom, both at home and at school.
“We wanted to make it work where teachers can actually use it to supplement their teaching, they can teach a lesson on a math subject, and then have kids use this game to actually practice it,” he said.
The group has had a chance to debut their games in math classes around the school, and Thames said the response had been mostly positive, from both students and teachers.
“[Jamestown math teacher Deborah] MacDowell said she’d be willing to pay for this stuff,” Shamaiengar said.
That could be the next step, as the growing group has discussed the possibility of advertising on their math game website, which is currently under construction. The games themselves, however, remain free to players.
