Teaching 4th Graders Statistics with a Nintendo Wii

A story that covers math education, board games, and the Wii, and ends with an engineering design challenge, is practically tailor-made GeekDad linkbait: Using a small-scale Millville, NJ school district math and science grant, Robert Drewnowski bought a Wii for his 4th-grade classroom, and uses it to motivate his students to study math:

The teacher brought the gaming console in last month and each of his three fourth-grade classes began designing their own character. Up to four students can play a game such as bowling, tennis or basketball, at one time. As they play, two other students record the scores and other statistics during the games.

At the end of the session, the data are recorded and analyzed through different graphs. The students will also use it to compute averages and statistics of how the students performed.

Last year, Drewnowski used board games for the same purpose, but the kids are more excited about the video games.

My 2nd grader goes into his school’s 4th grade class for math, and I’m pretty sure he’d be a lot more excited about learning the differences between different types of tables and graphs if he were plotting in data from video game conquests! (Goals, assists, and crosses in FIFA 11, for example, would hold his attention for an arbitrarily long period of time.)

I found this story via @republicofmath on Twitter, who also links to the related news that most 4th-grade US students fail at proficiency exams in science

Here’s a video of Drewnowski with his students: