Some Early Tests with Students and Teachers

During the summer I was able to test out how The Sierpinski Triangle game of Leap fractal worked on two audiences.

The first audience was a class of seventh and eighth grade students. The students were participating in a summer math enrichment camp. With a bit of explanation they were able to figure out how to use the game. Almost all students figured out how to get the dot in the target triangle while on the NOVICE level. Yet it seemed like not all of them understood the underlying algorithm, and maybe were not used to thinking of algorithms in general. Nonetheless, a few students were able to come up with the algorithm on there own. Almost all students could come up with it when there were leading questions. For example: "Which part of the screen does the triangle need to be in to get in the target? and Which button do you need to click to get it there?".

I got the impression that most of the students were having a good time playing with the game. There was a lot of shouting, most of it positive: "I got the best score!". And "Can you get the best score on MEDIUM? I got the best score on MEDIUM!" Nonetheless, one student remarked: "What do we do if we're bored?".

I also was able to test the game out on a group of high school teachers. I gave them a presentation in which we played the game as a group. They were very pretty energetic about trying to figure out the algorithm. And we actually figured it out during the presentation. Afterwards some of the teachers played with the program on there own. A couple of them forgot the solution and wanted to figure it out again. A step by step teacher manual might be useful for teachers who have never thought about fractals before.



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