Games & Simulations

Tlaloc’s Book

Technology

Tlaloc’s Book is an educational video game designed to improve students’ understanding of the effects of the operations of multiplication and division on quantities, multiplicative relationships, and the relationships between whole numbers and fractions.

The game challenges players to overcome barriers they encounter during their adventurous journey through a mysterious jungle. Players move through the jungle by choosing to move left or right, or jump. Players encounter barriers that prevent them from moving forward or reaching valuable items required to overcome subsequent barriers. By using the numbers and operations they collect and store in their backpack, players can change the height of platforms. The player uses the platforms to overcome barriers. All tasks in Tlaloc’s Book involve using a multiplicative comparison to change the platform height to a target height. The platform height is denoted on the platform, and the target height is denoted on a signpost. The height of the base of the signpost is to scale with the height denoted on the platform. The height on the platform is updated with each player action, which is composed of the choice of an available operator, either multiplication or division, and the choice of a scalar from the backpack.

Teacher Notebook


The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305C080015 to the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST).