Dave McDivitt

I am finally getting caught up on the paper work and getting some real numbers.  Here is what I have in terms of stats from the geography quiz.  Students were given a pre test.  I handed them a blank map of 1938 Europe and said fill it out and you can get a maximum of 15 points.  1 point per country that is correctly labled.  The same process was followed for the post test.  I used the same map and did not tell kids in either group that they would be retested on geography.  They did know a post test was coming but they were not told what was to be on it. 

So the control group has 29 students in it.  To be counted in the stats a student had to be present for both the pre and the post.  I had several who were not in that category so their scores were dropped.  The control group’s score on the post test dropped by .103 points.  Also only 44.8% of the control group scores went up on the post test.

The game play group consists of 61 students.  Their post test scores were up 2.017 points from the pre test.  Also, 73.7% of the group saw their scores go up.  The game play group had some significant increases in individual scores as well.  Tops was a +12, then a +10 and a +9.  The control group’s largest increase was a +3 followed by several +2’s.

If someone has an interest in another part of the geography section please just leave a comment.  I will try to post anything I can that is of interest.  I have some other questions that are not done yet and it is Friday and is 4:15PM.  I am heading home to play with my kids, grill some burgers, have a cold drink and kiss my wife.  I probably won’t touch this stuff again till Monday.  Have a good weekend….I plan to!!

For those of you who have been following this from the beginning, my control group now has had their hands on the game for two days now.  It was a much anticipated event.  They were ready to play.  I had several students show up on Tuesday this week and were asking if we got to play that day….unfortunately for them it was our post test day.  But on Wednesday we finally started and we continued today.  It has been much easier on me this round of play.  Having information fresh in my mind from my first groups playing has made my library of working knowledge much better.  One funny story from today…..I had one team of two girls yesterday, who was assigned to play Germany.  One gal took control yesterday but she was absent today.  So when I was asked by the remaining girl to come help her figure some things out……I couldn’t resist.  I initially showed her a few things, sent a treaty or two, gathered some natural resources through strong arm tactics etc…then I walked away.  When that turn was over I had to go back and check how my decisions had played out.  So again I helped her do some things in the game that I was relatively certain would work.  Through our (ok my) workings Germany was not in need of any natural resources and our military had at least 20 units in production.  We had plenty of oil, arms, textiles and consumer goods to fill all of our needs.  Three turns in to the day….I finally sat down at the girls computer and assumed my rightful place of dictator of Germany.  The girl was loving all of it…..due to the increasing size of our military and the evil laughter that seemed to be coming from her teacher.  We invaded the Sudetenland and started our conquest.  Anschluss…..Lebensraum……..no…..we wanted it all.  At the end of the day, we were saving the game and students wanted me to read the world events before we logged off.  Well, all of those stinking sophomores declared war on Germany.  Every one of them.  They knew I had taken control of Germany and they all teamed up against me.  So, tomorrow I think I am in big trouble.  I don’t think I have the military to ward off the UK, France, Italy, and Russia.  Time is running out on my attempt to make Europe the new German State.  However, it was great to see all the other teams unite against me and coordinate their efforts.  It took some planning on their part and they had to do it quickly.  So as I gather in my bunker in Berlin tomorrow at least I will have the comfort that my students can coordinate a multi front attack on their teacher.  Is education really this fun?  We all left the computer lab laughing, trash talking, and actually looking forward to tomorrow.  Please don’t spread that around.  I would hate for someone to find out we were having a good time

On a more serious note.  I will post tomorrow with as much data as I can.  The loads of papers I have now have some reasonable amount of organization to them.  (thanks to a couple of study hall kids)