Mapamatic Desert Challenge Technical Notes Teachers Notes (How Many Degrees in that darn desert?) Introduction General Hints National Curriculum Links Educational Aims. For Mathematics. For Information Technology. The Mapamatical Activities. The Mapamatical map. The Fuel Stops. The Banks. The Tools. The Ruler. The Angle Measurer. The Calculator. Introduction The task is to cross the desert to the treasure (marked with an X) into the neighbouring country and then bring the booty back home. To help achieve this players are given a car and some money. Some fuel will be given at the start, but players must remember to buy more during the journey or they will find themselves stranded (game over). Once they have crossed the border, fuel must be purchased in the local currency. There are banks around where they can change money. Garages and banks have varying rates, which can be checked before departing. Once the treasure has been collected they must return home. General Hints(see below for more detail) The panel at the left is the control panel. Players must fill in the field boxes and press the buttons to make their moves. To the right of the control panel is the tool bar. Drag the tools onto the map to make them work. Zoom in and out of the overview map with the magnifying glass. You can find out the rates of the banks and the cost of fuel by leaving your cursor over the icons on the overview map. You can drag the map around to find out where you are or you can use the black box in the overview map by dragging it also. Information bubbles will give you read outs on all tools if you leave your cursor above them for a second or two. National Curriculum Links The problem solving required within the task develops AT1 ( Attainment Target 1 ) skills not referenced below. AT Level Descriptor 2 3 use decimal notation 2 4 add and subtract decimals 2 5 use all four operations with decimals 2 6 calculate using ratios 3 2 understand angle as a measure of turn and recognise right angle 3 3 use standard metric units of length in a range of contexts 3 4 choose and use appropriate instruments 3 5 use language associated with angle: make sensible estimates Educational Aims. For Mathematics. The setting of the desert, the colourful graphics and the nature of the task has been designed to challenge and stimulate students. It will maintain the interest of students and encourage them to develop their mathematical skills within a heuristic environment. For Information Technology. Using this site will improve the I.T. skills of students and make explicit the links between mathematics, games and I.T.. It is intended that these skills will then be able to transferred to other activities both in and out of the classroom. The Mapamatical Activities. The Mapamatical map. The task for all students is to cross the desert from their home base to the target and back again. They will also need to plan their route so as to avoid the numerous obstacles in their path. On the way they will need to visit fuel stops to refill their fuel tanks and at banks in order to convert their currency to that of the next region. Clicking on any of the fuel stops or banks will reveal either the price of fuel or the rate of exchange respectively. This information can be used to inform their choice of route. Students will need to be aware of their fuel level at all times and the fuel gauge drops in real time as the students cross the desert. If it flashes red they will know it's time to refill quickly. Clicking on the fuel gauge at any time will tell the student exactly how much of their fuel remains, as well as the size of the tank and the fuel consumption of their vehicle. The pile of coins can be clicked to reveal how much currency they have left at any time in both the currencies available to them. Tools are provided, which are simple and intuitive to use, to measure distance and angle. There is also a calculator which they can use en route. Students will need to use angle as a measure of turn and recognise the difference between a left and right turn. This could lead to opportunities to discover the equivalence of left and right turns and that their sum is 360. Students will be able to estimate the distances to travel based on their early experiments with the applet, by using the gridlines, or they may use the ruler to give them a more exact measurement. The Fuel Stops. In contrast to the open ended nature of the mapamatical map both the fuel stops and the banks provide short procedures. The fuel stop is the less challenging of the two. Each fuel stop has a fixed price for the fuel and stopping on one will also tell the student how much fuel they have left in their tank enabling them to carry out a subtraction to ascertain the remaining space in the tank. Once the student has decided how much fuel they wish to buy they will then need to carry out a multiplication to decide on the amount of currency to tender. If the sum tendered is incorrect they will not be able to leave the fuel stop. Of course the amount tendered must be in the correct currency so they will need to carry out a currency conversion at a bank before crossing a border. The Banks. In contrast to the open ended nature of the mapamatical map both the banks and the fuel stops provide short clozed procedures. Each bank has a fixed exchange rate which is given in the form of how much of the foreign currency (of the other region) they can buy to a unit of the home currency (of the region through which they are travelling). The exchange will involve the student in solving a ratio problem involving either multiplication or division. Both the amount of currency to be purchased and the cost need to be entered correctly into the relevant fields to complete the transaction successfully. If the amounts are incorrect a message will guide the student offering information to help correct their mistake. The Tools. The Ruler. Once the ruler is dragged onto the map the ends of the ruler can then be dragged to the location of the vehicle and the destination. The cursor is then placed over the middle of the ruler and a bubble appears stating the distance between the two pointers, in metres. The Angle Measurer. Once the angle measurer is dragged onto the map both pointers can then be dragged around to face the direction that the vehicle presently faces and the direction that you wish to travel. The cursor is then placed over the indicator and the centre and a bubble appears stating the angle between the pointers. The Calculator. Once this is dragged onto the map it functions as a calculator. Technical Notes Mapamatic desert challenge is written in Java 1.02 (rather than the latest version 1.1 series) which means that it should run on all common Java-enabled browsers given sufficient memory. Java is, however, a new and rapidly developing technology and not all browsers or standalone run-times implement it quite as thoroughly or as stably as one might like. It is generally a good idea to save any other open documents before running Java programs. You may run the applet online in your web browser from this next page. It takes a few minutes to download and many more to play so you may wish to disconnect after the overview map comes into view. Perhaps better still, you may prefer to download this zipped archive containing the program and then unzip and run it locally at your leisure. Mac users should be aware that an apparent fault in all versions of Netscape Java prevents this browser being used with Mapamatic. Instead you should use Microsoft Internet Explorer and select either the Microsoft VM or versions 1.5 or later of Apple's own MRJ in the Java preferences panel. IE3 has its own annoying bug when the Microsoft "JIT VM" is selected; if numbers above 214 appear garbled on the Mapamatic calculator you need to pick another VM in the Java preferences. You can download Apple's MRJ (Mac Runtime for Java) from here. Windows95 users should be able to use most versions of Netscape and IE from versions 3 onwards. Mapamatic desert challenge was written by Soda for BBC Education.