The Interactive, Immersive and Intelligent classroom

Scene: Classroom
Location: A park
Subject: Mathematics

Break is over. Last bite of a sandwich, the last sip of juice, the last loud laugh, and the group started to settle down.

In just a few moments, headsets and glasses up, you enter a little city bustling with stick people and boxy cars. Interesting, you whisper, and walk a little further. “Who’s that?” Angelio — a little angular shape hopping around. Say Hi!

“Hello!”, she replies with a confused face. “Do you know what place this is? I want to go home.”

To which you reply, “Where do you live? Do you have an address?”

“Yes, I live in my white, beautiful house with a cone head.”, she says.

“I see. Let’s look around,” you say, wondering how one could find such a house. You start to walk in the soothing shade of the huge banyan tree. Oops, Angelio bumped into something, is that a wall? Is she blocked?

“Do straight lines block Angelio?”, you wonder.

You try moving her around… umm oh… there you go!!

She can hop corner to corner and hop across straight lines to corners with equal angles. Alright, makes sense.

You feel ready to dive deeper into the world of Angelio now. You hop around with her, crossing barriers and lines by using various angle theorems..still looking for the pretty house she mentioned.

Ouch!

She bumped again… you suddenly hear your friend Mia suggest a path you hadn’t thought of. You look at the path, and wow! you had completely missed the alternate interior angle jump that she is now frantically waving her hands at. You promptly make the move, Angelio is hopping about all excited, and Mia breaks a smile. Sushant is here too now. All of you cross the bridge, into a beautiful garden, but oh! you’re losing Angelio behind these thick maze walls that you unwittingly walked into. You’re all scratching heads trying to find a path through this maze to get the little one home.

In a moment of genius, Sushant uses a stick lying about to make a transversal line between two parallel walls, unlocking a simpler, shorter path. Brilliant!

Angelio jumps to the other side right away. Hop by hop, getting closer to the house, and BOOM! Angelio hops right into the front yard of the house with a cone head :D

You did it. AWESOME. You’re all jumping with joy!

In a few moments, you start walking back to the rest of the class, strolling past the banyan trees you crossed earlier, and it feels much more pleasant now. It was a collaborative game teaching angle theorems and geometry. Every group discusses their experience, the challenges, the smart moves they made, with the teacher and rest of the class. The teacher shares her insights about tough situations that every group faced, she even suggests some solutions and hidden tricks to solve some of hard ones. It’s a fun conversation with everyone pitching in to understand the puzzles and their connection with theory better.

On the way back home, Sushant talks about the moment when Angelio was stuck in the maze, and all of you nearly gave up. He mentions how a stick fell down from a maze wall nearby, it made a new connection between the walls and corners stated glowing. That’s when he got his idea to pick up the stick and make a transversal between the two walls Angelio was stuck between.

Thinking about it now, it doesn’t seem entirely accidental that a stick just happened to fall down at the right time. Was the game helping out? Did the game understand that the team was stuck and losing motivation?

Nah, that would be crazy, you think. And anyway, Angelio is home and safe now. You can’t wait for the Math class next week.