[Activity] Angry Birds

Recently returned from my honeymoon -- so that means I will soon be writing up lots of blog posts!  I've discovered that there is so much that I want to blog about.  I just hope I will have time to blog about it all!

This probably won't come as something new for most math teachers out there, but I thought I'd throw in how I approached the topic.

When Angry Birds first came out late 2009 - 2010, it made a huge wave.  It made me a bit jealous because my phone at the time was a flip phone that barely performed the "phone" function.  When I finally got an iPhone (I don't remember exactly when that was...), Angry Birds was one of the first apps I downloaded.  I immediately went ahead to creating activities for Angry Birds.

What I did
I had 2 classes to try my activities on last year.

This picture was waiting students as they entered the room.  "What's the first question that pops into your head?"

I gave them some time to talk, get excited, argue, discuss, then I collected their responses.

We have already covered a lot of quadratic functions before this point, so it was relatively easy to lead them to exploring that aspect.  A lot of fun things also came out - gravity, angles,...etc.

*here are some more details in what we established in act 2*

We related to graphs, x-intercept, and basically had a lot to talk about when it came to these birds.

I then used the free Angry Birds Chrome to bring up the different birds.  It was a great experience because it is browser-based.  Since I had a smartboard in the class, I was able to put it right on there, and students can use the touch features to play around with the game itself.

I let the students play with them, and have them come up with "what's happening here."

Get Google Chrome if you are interested.  It comes as a free add-on, and you can play without paying a cent!

Here are the different birds I am talking about:

A lot of them generated very interesting discussions.  Even on the front of "what would the quadratic function look like", "how did the function change when you tap them".  The blue bird, for example, they talked about transformation of functions, what the functions would look like, and why did it split in the way that it did.

I don't completely remember what else we did in those classes (I have a memory of a goldfish when it comes to certain things, which my wife constantly reminds me about - which is why evernote has been a lifesaver), so I will stop talking about it there.  There were so many great conversations that happened during class...  which is why I may move to a different way of assessing students in the future.

In any case, I will move onto:

Potential future changes

• The general idea is a catapult.  What about building a real one with a slingshot for us to do outside?  Would that take too much time?
• Use Jing and VideoPad (or some alternative video editing software) to create a video version of act 1.
• Overlay the picture on Geogebra to give it a graph and more interactivity
• Maybe leave the "other birds" for a different lesson.
• I found this picture from a great photographer who does cool picture sessions with his kids.  His name is Jason Lee and here's his Flickr photostream.  I might use this picture in the future as well!  Maybe use Geogebra to separate the kids so it can be moved (or even with smartboard software this would be easy).  This would change the function every time I move the individual pictures.

• Create test questions based on this activity.
• Something that you guys suggest!

*I did more of an elaboration here*