Team members:

Project Description - 2/18/00

Motivation and Summary
Mad Minute is an interactive math software program that we plan to develop to aid youngsters in the development of basic math skills like multiplication, addition, division, and subtraction. The impetus for the project came from the enthusiastic and dedicated Karen DiPrete, a third grade teacher at Vartan Gregorian Elementary School at Fox Point. In Mrs. DiPrete's classroom, she administers short math drills that test a child proficiency of various multiplication tables. Students can proceed onto more difficult multiplicands by mastering these drills. Unfortunately, due to time constraints Mrs. Diprete has a hard time administering these drills to the entire class at the same time. She hopes that Mad Minute will give children an opportunity to take these tests individually at their own pace.

Computers
On February 10, 1999 our group visited Mrs. DiPrete at Vartan Gregorian Elementary School to observe the learning environment. Mrs. DiPrete has two Pentium class PC's in her classroom, in addition to a computer lab with more than 20 Pentium I, II class machines, all connected to a central application server. Mary Ellen-Boisclair, the computer teacher, gave our group brief overview of how students utilize the facility.

Semester Schedule
The Mad Minute Project Team will meet every Friday at 3 PM for the remainder of the project. We plan to assign each group member a particular section of the project. The section leader will delegate responsibilities among the group and coordinate schedules for completing the various components of that section. The main tasks that need to be completed are background research, concept design/storyboard, program design and implementation.

Tentative Time Table:
Mid March:

Storyboard
Literature Review
Program Design
Class Room Visit/ Teacher Consultation

Mid April:

Program Completion
Testing and Evaluation

Authoring Tool/Environment
We have not decided on a particular authoring tool, but we have determined the criteria we feel that the tool should be equipped with. The authoring tool we choose must be able to support animation, file input/output, flow of control, and a graphical user interface.

Expectations/Aspirations for Program
Our group chose this project because of the flexibility and the endless creativity possibilities. The idea is simple, but to create a program that is fun, useful, and better than what has been done will be an interesting challenge. We see our program being used to allow 3rd graders to practice their multiplication tables and arithmetic. But we also envision a larger scope for the program - providing motivation for the students by showing their progress, improvements, and the evidence of their success.