Fraction Climber Demo Video

Final Prototype & Presentations

Finishing Touches

We spent the day of our final presentation putting on the finishing touches and ironing out a few kinks. We had to overcome a few technical difficulties involved in using one of our Nokia devices as a server for the other 3 devices. We also decorated our board with colored tents for each player’s ‘base camp’ and made the mountain have an actual peak. We made sure our devices were charged and connected, painted our posters, polished our board and we were ready! (Just in time).

Things we would have done…

1. Use better graphics. Unfortunately, the Nokia devices and the compatible platform we were using was somewhat limited. Ivan created these fun icons but we were not able to use them for our final prototype.

Sometimes the best designers have to abandon cool ideas for the sake of a better overall design, but at least the consolation here is that you can put those cool things in a blog, even when they dont make the final product!

2. Another thing we would have done, and probably do next, is create different levels and versions of the game play. Our group has a lot of ideas for ways to make fractions harder, the interface more interesting, and even totally different subjects we could test in our game. (Exs. discrete v continuous input for buttons, penalty for wrong answers, reducing fractions, group fraction questions eg ‘make pi’, vocabulary, geography, history etc)

3. We would make each user’s score/progress throughout the game really obvious. In our latest test run with kids, we found that they were constantly asking “how many do I have???” even though this number was displayed on the devices. We would make this more obvious.

4. We would also explore the notion of rounds and feedback. We might consider making the rounds shorter, or the lights corresponding to questions instead of rounds.

Team Secret Places- Team Profile & Goals

Our team began this quarter as “Team Secret Places” because in our first brainstorming session we talked about how kids, and even students like ourselves, love secret places where they can hide and tell stories. Although we did not end up constructing a secret story fort or a mysterious castle, the name stuck.

Our project itself evolved from originally a “Hungry Bear” fraction game where each player is solving fraction questions in order to ‘feed the bear’ in the center of the board, to “Fraction Climber” where each player is climbing the mountain of an arcade-inspired fraction game board. Hence our project name: Fraction Climber.

Our team members:
Kate Heddleston
Sean Holbert
Ivan Lee
Melissa Schwarz

Coached by Jenny Mailhot

Our high-level project goal was to create a childrens’ toy for learning. We wanted kids to really had fun learning. Our team also wanted to use a mixture of formal and incidental learning. Most of our peer groups are working on projects that focus away from formal learning, but we thought it would be great if we could take a traditionally difficult math concept (fractions) and make it fun!

Our shorter term goals have to do with implementing our final prototype:
1) Programming our game play in python on four Nokia hand-held devices
2) Machining a wooden & acrylic game board with a ‘mountain’ in the center
3) Wiring and programming the circuits for our led lights
4) Connecting the Arduino the hand-held devices
5) Connecting the hand-held devices to each other
6) Putting all the pieces together and finishing up our final touches (ie painting, sanding)

Showing Off Our Prototype 3/11

At our in-class showing of our prototype we had essentially two separate pieces that will be connected for our final prototype. We had the devices which control the game play, and we had the board with most of the LEDs wired and ready. Here’s a few pictures of what we had to show.

Here's a view of our game board with the outside lights lit.

Here's a view of the 'Green' player's side of the mountain with the handheld just placed on the board.

Bluetooth Connectivity

While some of us were working on lights, we were also working on bluetooth connectivity between our four touch-screen handheld devices. (The devices will be mounted and secured into the board for the final prototype, not literally hand-held.) Hayes worked mostly with Sean to give him some advice on how to connect the devices. One of the hand-helds acts as server and sends signals to the other three as well as to the MegaArduino to control the lights. This was a difficult and crucial step for us!