Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Made 4 Math: Math imPossible

I am excited about this week's project.  In fact, it has been rolling around in my head since I was first introduced to Geocaching at a Discovery Summer Institute by Bridget Belardi.  Hooked by this around-the-globe treasure hunt, I began to toy with the idea of how to create a virtual cache for my students.  Ahem...several years later... I finally figured it out!  This week's #Made4Math project: Math imPossible.
Using my favorite new website creator, Weebly, the project was a cinch and is perfect for our upcoming test's review.  I first created a fictional scenario (the beloved class website was hacked).

And yes...I added a hacked page to the real class website and hid the actual pages from view (just in case the students checked).

I added a play-by-play animation created using Powtoon featuring a rendition of Mission Impossible (recorded by my amazing brother-in-law).

I then developed five webpages with 2-3 problems on each page.  The students can only advance from page to page by entering the hidden code obtained after working each problem correctly.

Here is a close up of the directions the students see on the bottom of each "clue" page:

The "clue" pages were marked as hidden on Weebly...so that only the home page for the math task is visible.  In Weebly, I was able to name the pages; they were named according the the answers generated from the review problems.  I added "t1" in front of each page so that I will remember the activity was for "Test 1".

After students work through all of the review problems, they are able to enter a guess as to who they think may have hacked our site using Rafflecopter.  Whether my Super Sleuths correctly guess the culprit or not, I am more hopeful that this approach to review helps them successfully crack the assessment on test day.