Sherlock Holmes and the cruel Mathematicians

                                  Subject : Mathematics 

Done by students of Class: VII

Teacher: Babitha E. Z.

Team members: Ashwin Ujre, Shreyas Raviprasad, Sambhrami Patil

Overview of the project:

Many students who  struggle with the basic concept of maths benefit from learning through new technology and interesting games.

The main aim of this project is to enrich the user in some of the basic mathematical concepts like decimal, integers, algebraic expression, decimals, fractions etc through a game. The main characters in these projects are the famous detectives Sherlock Holmes and Watson.

Educational games and quizzes will help the students to learn more and research better and understand the concept in a better way.

Why Incorporate ALICE?

ALICE is an easy to use software program, Students enjoy animating and exploring new Objects and working with subparts, variables, arrays. Working on Maths problems can be monotonous after sometime. Interactive projects can be created for creating students interest in the subject. New concepts and different ways of executing an idea can be determined. Students enjoy working on ALICE and creating new projects.

Learning objectives:

Sno	Subject Learning objectives	Alice 3.1 Learning objectives	Skills Developed
1.	Understand the areas of difficulties faced by the students in the respective lessons	Understand how to create an initial scene with appropriate objects and settings.	Observation Skills
2.	Basic Concepts of decimal and fraction numbers	Understanding the use of procedural abstraction.	Creativity, Observational Skills
3.	Understanding the concept of algebraic expression	Understand how to use the various sub parts in achieving a particular action	Problem Solving, Logical Thinking, Time Management.
4.	Concept of prime numbers.	Understand the use of loop, variables and arrays.	Self-confidence, Concentration, Time Management, Creativity.
5.	Understanding parallel lines and introduction to angles.	Understand how to accept and process user input through “functions”.	Self-motivation, Organization, execution, Problem Solving.

Project Schedule:

Project task	Start and End dates	Number of periods (40 min)	Activity
Project planning	23.07.13 to 29.07.13	2	Group formation and topic selection
Task scheduling	30.07.13 to 05.08.13	2	Assignment of roles, drafting the project overview, discussion of deliverables, creating a scenario
Fact collection and pre-project survey	06.08.13 to 12.08.13	2	Conduct a survey among the students of the class about their existing knowledge on the topic. Collect relevant facts on the topic from sources such as textbook, the Internet and other books (library).
Create the animation	13.08.13 to 02.09.13	6	Divide the project among the group and create the animation.
Showcase the project	03.09.13 to 09.09.13	2	Alice project presentation and PowerPoint presentation to the class
Assessment and Reflection	10.09.13 to 16.09.13	2	Q & A session on the topic, documenting team members’ experience. Evaluation, reflection and analysis of the project by the team members.

The learning experience and difficulties faced by the students who worked on this project is mentioned below.

1.      Ashwin Ujre:

I really liked doing the project. I and my teammates, Shreyas and Sambhrami, worked on the project a lot. We chose Sherlock Holmes because the objective of investigation and Math is the same: find the answer. All of us enjoyed building the story and making an ALICE project from it. Once, there was a bug in our project and the file wouldn’t open. Luckily, we had a copy, but, it was a previous version. So, we worked on it again. In the ending, we finished the project and it was very nice.

2.      Sambhrami Patil:

First when we were told to do this project I didn’t have the confidence that we will work in a team. But then later on we all helped each other in doing the project. We first decided on which subject we will go about and what our theme will be. Shreyas started setting up the scene.  Then we started staying back for working on the project. I set some stalls where the math quiz will be.I found it difficult in setting the carts of the Ferris wheel but then somehow with help of Shreyas and Ashwin I did it.

The best part is we never chose any leader for our team we never even thought that we have to make a leader for our team because everyone in our team were co-operative. We divided the work equally among ourselves.While doing the recording because we used to record something it wasn’t coming properly, we deleted many recordings and again did it. Sometimes bug used to come which irritated me a lot.

Shreyas helped me in preparing the questions for survey and Ashwin helped in editing the presentation of our project.Later on when it was done I was very happy because it came out well and we all had got equal chance to work on the project.

3.      Shreyas Raviprasad

My experience in this ALICE project was really fun and I enjoyed it.  Friend Ashwin and Sambhrami have helped me a lot and we had a lot of fun in this project, although we had to stress that there was little time left. I was really happy when we had almost finished the game but, I was just as sad to find out that our game was not opening and there was a bug. Well, the good thing was that we had a backup project but it was an old version. We took a long time to get the coding finished but it was done. I thoroughly enjoyed this project and I am looking forward for another project like this one.

RESOURCES & CREDITS
Music Courtesy : Hans Zimmer-Discombobulate

Maths text book: Bharathy Bhavan

Unleashing the Orb of the Night

Team name: Lunar walkers
Project Start and End date: 22^nd Jul 2013 to 16^th Sept 2013
Type of project: Science (Astronomy)
Class: VII
Teacher: Nalini Ujre
Team members: Samarth Jain (team leader), Ahaan Bhatnagar, Gursameep Singh, Devyanshu Rout
Overview of the project:

The Moon has been a very important object along Mankind’s history.  In olden times, the moon was used to make the first definitions of the length of the months, and it is observed that it affects the life of people that live in certain ocean coastlines due to the tides. Now, humans have uncovered many interesting facts about the moon. This project tries to explore the topic and present the facts in a fun and engaging way. The students will enhance their technical, analytical and social skills through the project.

Alice is fun 3D environment. A topic presented in Alice is more appealing to students since it is animation than facts read from a book. Students enjoy programming using Alice and present their project. This is clearly seen from the feedback/learning experiences shared by the students.

Learning objectives:

Subject Learning objectives 1. Understand what a lunar month is and how it is calculated. 2. Know how far the moon is from the earth and long it would take to reach there. 3.  Understand the dimensions and the surface composition of the moon. 4.  Understand the phases of the moon and the orbit of the moon. 5.   Know the facts related to man’s first travel to the moon.

Alice 3.1 Learning objectives 1.  Understand how to create an initial scene with appropriate objects and settings. 2.   Understanding the use of procedural abstraction. 3.   Understand the use of variables and arrays. 4.   Understand how to accept and process user input through “functions”. 5. Understand how to manipulate objects through keyboard input and mouse input.

Project Schedule:

Project task	Start and End dates	Number of periods (40 min)	Activity
Project planning	23.07.13 to 29.07.13	2	Selection of group, topic
Task scheduling	30.07.13 to 05.08.13	2	Assignment of roles, drafting the project overview, discussion of deliverables, creating a scenario
Fact collection and pre-project survey	06.08.13 to 12.08.13	2	Conduct a survey among the students of the class about their existing knowledge on the topic. Collect relevant facts on the topic from sources such as textbook, the Internet and other books (library).
Create the animation	13.08.13 to 02.09.13	6	Divide the project among the group and create the animation.
Showcase the project	03.09.13 to 09.09.13	2	Alice project presentation and PowerPoint presentation to the class
Assessment and Reflection	10.09.13 to 16.09.13	2	Q & A session on the topic, documenting team members’ experience. Evaluation, reflection and analysis of the project by the team members.

Evaluation Rubric for Student Presentations:

Assessment criteria 1.    Creating an initial scene 2.   Alice animation 3.   Understanding of topic by the group 4.  Keyboard and mouse control, procedural abstraction 5.   Team work 6.   Creativity 7.   Powerpoint presentation 8.   Survey and fact collection 9.   Post-project Q & A Total

Max Marks 10 30 5 10 5 10 10 10 10 100

Resources:
http://www.eaae-astronomy.org/moonwalkers/
http://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/time/moon/facts.htm

Student experiences working on the project

Samarth Jain (Team Leader)

Working in Alice was an amazing experience. When we started working on the same we never thought of creating such a big program. Last year in San Francisco during the Thinkquest Award Ceremony when I heard about Alice, I was very curious to work on the same and wanted to create a quiz game. Now here it is, where we have learned a lot, to be precise also learned how to meet bugs and handle them.

Challenges – Many times we have seen the finish line “before the finish” when we encounter the bug, i.e. back to start again. Over all this is a great experience of learning by fun. Thanks to Principal Sir, teachers for guiding us and giving this opportunity.

Devyanshu

First when we thought about what to choose as our Topic we wanted to educate the user about something new so, we chose the topic ‘Moon’. We all worked together as one and learned many new things hidden in ALICE. Overall this experience was great and our our project was a huge success. Thanks to our teachers.

Ahaan
Working in this project with my team mates and teachers was actually fun. It was educative and yet a fun filled to learn new stuff. It was a fun learning experience and I hope there will be more projects like this to come.