Wiki Jones

Technology

Wiki Jones is a game focused on the number line and identifying fractions on the number line. The game addresses the concepts of the whole unit and the numerator and denominator of a fraction.

In the narrative, a detective named Wiki Jones is investigating a mystery in the school cafeteria. Players help Wiki Jones find the perpetrator by performing actions on the number line. The narrative is split into five scenes, with each scene requiring the player to perform a different task that builds toward writing the fraction represented by the number line. In the first scene, the player must identify the whole unit by bagging each unit of evidence. In the second scene, the player must use a laser to cut each unit of evidence into equal pieces (the denominator) for analysis. In the third scene, the player must follow a recipe that requires a certain number of equal pieces (the numerator). In the fourth scene, the player has tracked the crooks and found they have placed firecrackers in the sprinkler pipes. The player needs to defuse the firecrackers by locating a fraction. In the fifth scene, the crooks are hiding in a library. The player must input a fraction that matches the shaded portion of the number line, so a crane can locate and hoist each crook, apprehending them.

In the first scene, the player only needs to identify the whole unit. In later scenes, the task order is adapted to the player’s performance. If players are having trouble with dividing the whole unit or locating the fraction, they are directed to identify each whole unit on the number line first, and then continue with the task in the scene.

Teacher Notebook

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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).