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1. 2 Selects Delete l Student 3 Selects Create Puzzle 4 Selects Edit Saved Puzzle 6 Selects View Report 7 Selects View Individual Results levels levell background_Image CurrLevel double SelectedLevel Level goBtn_MouseEnter goBtn_MouseLeave BoardClick b BoardSquare l lt lt derive gt gt time double I lt lt derive gt gt BankClick 1 b BankSquare time double execute BankClick Add Delete Student Puzzle Selected Puzzle level Student Student Roster Attempts Puzzle Puzzle Assingment Libra Play Report 13 4 Assign Level 5 Send Data I l a l I I l E 2 1 delete Student ldNum l l l l l l I I l I I I 6 1 Generate E report 7 1 Choses Student 7 1 1 Selects I I I puzzle to view a l Fig 5 Sequence Diagram of the Teacher Module Game _ Student Teacher playerListBox ListBox players Player actionTime double i A puzzles Puzzle prevStage int student_Roster Player remAcorns int puzzle_Library Puzzle 1 stagePuzzles Puzzle attempt Database levelMap Level_Map teacher Teacher CurrAttempt Attempt 1 CurrPlayer Player CurrPuzzle Puzzle total_score int LevelN double Attempts List lt Attempts gt LevelScore int CurrLevel dou2. The authors wish to thank faculty in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics for their support on the requirements analysis of the application This research was also supported by faculty in the Martha Dickerson Eriksson College of Education at Austin Peay State University 4 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 REFERENCES R E Reys et al Helping Children Learn Mathematics Danvers MA John Wiley amp Sons 2014 N N Vacc Gaining number sense through a restructured Hundreds Chart Teaching Exceptional Children vol 28 pp 50 55 1995 D S Niederhauser and T Stoddart Teachers instructional perspectives and use of educational software Teaching amp Teacher Education vol 17 pp 15 31 2001 P D Pearson and J A Dole Explicit comprehension instruction A review of research and a new conceptualization of instruction The Elementary School J vol 88 pp 151 165 1987 D Ogle and J W Beers Engaging in the Language Arts Exploring the Power of Language Boston MA Pearson Publishers 2012 C Ghezzi M Jazayeri and D Mandrioli Fundamentals of Software Engineering NJ Prentice Hall PTR 2002 J A Kulik C C Kulik and R L Bangert Drowns Effectiveness of computer based education in elementary schools Computers in Human Behavior vol 1 pp 59 74 1985 N Balacheff and J J Kaput Computer based learning environments in m
3. Development of a Novel Computer Application to Teach Counting in K 2 Classroom using the 11 Unified Process Method Using the Unified Process A Practical Approach NJ Prentice Hall PTR 2002 19 F Armour and G Miller Advanced Use Case Modeling Boston MA Addison Wesley 2000 20 J Li Teaching unified process in software design and development courses a case study The Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges vol 24 pp 5 11 2009 21 J Arlow and I Neustadt UML 2 and the Unified Process Practical Object Oriented Analysis and Design Boston MA Addison Wesley 2005 22 M Fowler UML Distilled A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language Boston MA Addison Wesley Professional 2003 23 L Copeland A Practitioner s Guide to Software Test Design Norwood MA Artech House Publishers 2004 24 P D Pearson and M C Gallagher The instruction of reading comprehension Contemporary Educational Psychology vol 8 pp 317 344 1983 25 R Koenen F Pereira and L Chiariglione MPEG 4 Context and objectives Signal Processing Image Communication vol 9 pp 295 304 1997 26 K R Dittrich Object oriented database systems the next miles of the marathon Information Systems vol 15 pp 161 167 1990 Authors Profiles Jiang Li received his Ph D in Electrical Engineering from the University of Nebraska Lincoln USA He also holds B S and M S
4. degrees in Electronics Engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology China He is a Professor in Computer Science and Information Technology at Austin Peay State University USA His research interest is in image processing machine learning data mining software engineering and distributed computing He has published over 20 refereed articles in international journals and conference proceedings Dr Li is a member of ACM and he currently serves on the ODBMS ORG s Panel of Experts Ling Wang received her Ph D in Literacy Studies from the Middle Tennessee State University USA She also holds a M A Ed Degree in Reading from Austin Peay State University USA and a M A degree in Foreign Languages and Applied Linguistics from Shandong University of Finance China She is an Assistant Professor in Education at Austin Peay State University USA Her research interest is in educational multimedia literacy studies and foreign language acquisition She has published several refereed journal and conference articles Dr Wang is a member of International Literacy Association and she currently serves on the Editorial Boards of Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia and Journal of Technology and Teacher Education Lacey L Williams holds a B S degree in Computer Science and Information Systems from Austin Peay State University USA Christina A Allan holds a B S degree in Computer Science and Information Systems
5. from Austin Peay State University USA She is currently a Professional Science Masters student in Data Management and Analysis at Austin Peay State University USA Copyright 2015 MECS I J Modern Education and Computer Science 2015 10 1 11
6. Science 2015 10 1 11 8 Development of a Novel Computer Application to Teach Counting in K 2 Classroom using the Unified Process Method level 3 1 00000000 Fig 14 Game play screen in the Student Module Fig 15 illustrates a typical puzzle solving process To play the student will click on a number from the number bank to the left and then click on the acorn where the number belongs If correct the acorn will crack the number will be placed and the score will pops up see Fig 15 a c and d If incorrect the tile will turn red see Fig 15 b Each player is given 3 hints per level As hints are used the acorns will disappear from the hint box When the hint is clicked the board will highlight a number in the bank and then highlight either the row or the column it belongs in See Fig 15 e The faster a student places a number in the correct spot the more points are awarded The score for the level is accumulated and at the end of the game the score and time are saved together with the highest score of each level see Fig 15 f The student can replay the level to improve the score or continue on to the next level Fig 15 a Correct Placement of Number 12 Fig 15 b Incorrect Placement of Number 26 on 7 Fig 15 c Correct Placement of Number 7 Fig 15 e Hint for the Placement of Number 67 Well Done Score 3500 Time 99 3 seconds ya Fig 15 f Game E
7. are presented in section IV Section V discusses the contributions and implications of this research and section VI concludes with proposals for future work II RELATED WORK Computer applications have been widely used in modern education such as instructional method design course content delivery and e learning A meta analysis of comparative studies on computer managed instruction CMI and interactive computer assisted instruction CAI showed that computer based education has generally had positive effects on the achievement of elementary school students 7 Studies have revealed the positive impact of computer based learning environments in different mathematical domains including arithmetic algebra geometry statistics and calculus as the students are more engaged in committed learning through computer aided instructions 8 In addition web based computer application has offered functionalities and tools to bring Students teachers and enormous Internet resources together in online learning environments 9 Although computer based educational games as an approach to enhancing student learning experience in a variety of disciplines have drawn attention of educational researchers and classroom teachers no consensus has been reached on the effects of computer games on the achievements and outcomes of student learning due to the lack of empirical research on differential effects of diverse learners The use of educational compu
8. changing requirements and project goals better 13 In this study we adopted the Unified Process a model based on the Unified Modeling Language UML that has been widely accepted in industry 14 The programming language is Visual C integrated with the Visual Studio NET platform that has a large collections of tools and libraries 15 16 The development cycle of the Unified Process model includes four major phases Inception Elaboration Construction and Transition while each phase contains five workflows Requirements Analysis Design Implementation and Test 17 The following subsections discuss each phase in details with emphasis on different workflows A Inception Phase The inception phase is to achieve agreement between the development team and the user on the requirements the expectations for the functionality and the procedural approach that is to be taken to implement the application 18 After meeting with classroom teachers and completing an initial requirement analysis the team decided to divide the Hundred Acorn Forest into two major components Teacher Module and Student Module The Teacher Module is where a teacher can manage his or her student roster create new puzzles or edit existing puzzles and view student attempts through automatically recorded video playback The Student Module is where a student plays the puzzle game i e a student can progress through the game by solving puzzles created by the te
9. for completing it must be recorded into a video file of all the actions completed in the particular attempt at completing the puzzle Action that is completed during a level by a student must be scored A database containing all attempts files of all students must be maintained Once a puzzle is completed all of the actions completed by the student during the level will be saved as an attempt file in a database so that it may be reviewed by a teacher A teacher should be able to view the actions completed by a student in any one of their attempts A teacher should be able to add a student to the student list A teacher should be able to delete a student from the student list A teacher should be able to edit a student s current stage level A teacher should be able to generate a report on a given student that displays their overall score and the student s scores and times for all completed levels A student should be able to begin a new game and create a username if they have been added by a teacher into the student list and have not yet begun a game Upon leaving or logging out of the game the player s score only taking into account the highest score achieved for each level and current level state must be saved Upon opening the game a student must select his or her username from a list to start playing A teacher must be able to access the program with a password Copyright 2015 MECS ACKNOWLEDGMENT
10. much less storage space than the AVI format Additionally given the unstructured information in the application such game maps puzzles videos etc we will investigate object oriented databases 26 that Copyright 2015 MECS offer better indexing and searching functions than the traditional relational databases APPENDIX A REQUIREMENT KEYS Requirement Key Description Puzzle_Create A teacher should be able to design his or her own Hundreds Chart puzzle by selecting which numbers will be hidden Puzzle_Delete A teacher should be able to delete any saved user created puzzles but not the default puzzles supplied in the program Puzzle_Load A teacher should be able to load a puzzle from the database in order to edit it or use it as a template to create more puzzles Puzzle_Save A teacher should be able to save a puzzle into a database once he or she is finished creating it It should be possible to overwrite existing puzzles Pattern_Create A teacher should be able to design his or her own Hundreds Chart puzzle by first creating a pattern of squares in the puzzle and then choosing which numbers in the pattern will be hidden Pattern_Delete A teacher should be able to delete any saved user created patterns but not the default patterns supplied in the program Pattern_Load A teacher should be able to load a pattern from the database in order to edit it or use it as a template to create more patterns Pat
11. the level I J Modern Education and Computer Science 2015 10 1 11 10 Level_Load_Saved Level_Scoring Level_ Select Action_ Click Action_ Hint Action_ Record Action_Scoring Attempt_Database Attempt_Save Attempt_View Student_Add Student_ Delete Student_Edit Report_Generate Player_Create Player_Save Player_Select Teacher_Login Development of a Novel Computer Application to Teach Counting in K 2 Classroom using the Unified Process Method When a student user leaves an unfinished level the level should be saved exactly as is so that the student may continue the level when he or she next plays the game Upon completing a level a student must be awarded a score for the level that is the summation of all action scores achieved during the level play From the level map a student may select to play the next incomplete puzzle or a puzzle that he or she has already completed in order to attempt to achieve a better score In order to place number blocks into empty blocks on the hundreds chart a student should be able to click the block from the block bank and click the desired location on the Hundreds Chart For certain difficulties of puzzles when a student attempts to place a block incorrectly if the block is in the correct horizontal or vertical row that row will light up to give the student a hint When a student completes an action that action as well as any score awarded
12. I J Modern Education and Computer Science 2015 10 1 11 Published Online October 2015 in MECS http www mecs press org DOI 10 5815 ymecs 2015 10 01 Modern Education and Computer Science PRESS Development of a Novel Computer Application to Teach Counting in K 2 Classroom using the Unified Process Method Jiang Li Department of Computer Science and Information Technology Austin Peay State University Clarksville TN 37044 USA E mail lij apsu edu Ling Wang Department of Teaching and Learning Austin Peay State University Clarksville TN 37044 USA E mail wang apsu edu Lacey L Williams and Christina A Allan Department of Computer Science and Information Technology Austin Peay State University Clarksville TN 37044 USA E mail Iwilliams82 callan my apsu edu Abstract Classroom teachers of Kindergarten Ist Grade or 2nd Grade often use the Hundreds Chart puzzles to teach children the basic mathematical knowledge and skills like counting Computer programs have been developed to help them to create puzzle sheets by cutting out the numbers but students still need to solve the puzzles on the printed paper This study designs and implements a computer application named Hundred Acorn Forest as an instructional method to teach basic counting skills with the Hundreds Chart puzzles using the Unified Process method The application not only offers an easy way for classroom teachers to create and edit puzz
13. a subset of numbers that the teacher want their students to work on As the teacher clicks a number the box will turn orange indicating it belongs to a pattern Clicking it again will return it back to a number Once the teacher has the desired pattern he she may click Set Pattern at the bottom of the screen so that only the pattern will be displayed To create puzzles based on this pattern the teacher can click on which numbers to hide similar to the process of creating a Basic Puzzle Clicking on a number will cause an Acorn to appear and hide the number while clicking an Acorn will remove it and the number will appear again In the bottom left the teacher may select a stage for this puzzle based upon the level of difficulty with 1 being the easiest and 6 being the hardest The default stage is set to 1 like in the Basic Puzzle design Once the teacher has set the stage and all the numbers he she wishes to hide the puzzle can be saved and added to the game The teacher can continue to create a new Patterned Puzzle or return to the previous menu to create a new pattern One of the advantages of using a Patterned Puzzle is that the teacher can quickly create similar puzzles without repeating the same process as that in the Basic Puzzle design Additionally in the situation when students have trouble solving puzzles that contain a certain type of sequences the teacher may want the students to practice Copyright 2015 MECS more o
14. acher in the Teacher Module Requirement keys were captured to scope the application in this phase See Appendix A In addition inception phase includes the use case analysis 19 The UML defines a use case as an objective users want to achieve with an application It aims at describing a system from external usage viewpoint rather than from I J Modern Education and Computer Science 2015 10 1 11 Development of a Novel Computer Application to Teach Counting in K 2 Classroom using the 3 Unified Process Method developer s perspective Fig 1 is the use case diagram for the Teacher Module and Fig 2 is the use case diagram for the Student Module gs 3 Fig 1 Use Cases of the Teacher Module Student To Fig 2 Use Cases of the Student Module B Elaboration Phase The elaboration phase provides an architectural baseline that implements a working application with limited functionality and to formulate a project agreement with the user to further pursue the project 20 The project vision business case requirements and system scope were refined The analysis workflow describes what the application is supposed to do without defining how it is done given that how to implement the application will be completed in the design workflow of the construction phase 21 The design task in this phase is to develop a stable architecture using UML A detailed project schedule was finalized the initial UML class diagram
15. athematics International Handbook of Mathematics Education Springer Netherlands pp 469 501 1996 A I Khan S Mahaboob A M Ali and C V Bebi Study of blended learning process in education context Int J Modern Edu amp Comp Sci IJMECS vol 4 pp 23 29 2012 DOI 10 5815 jmecs 2012 09 03 S Kim and M Chang Computer games for the math achievement of diverse students J Educational Technology amp Society vol 13 pp 224 232 2010 F Ke A case study of computer gaming for math Engaged learning from gameplay Computers amp Education vol 51 pp 1609 1620 2008 M Kebritchi A Hirumi and H Bai The effects of modern mathematics computer games on mathematics achievement and class motivation Computers amp Education vol 55 pp 427 443 2010 L A Maciaszek and B L Liong Practical Software Engineering A Case Study Approach Harlow England Addison Wesley 2005 G Lenz and T Moeller VET A Complete Development Cycle Boston MA Addison Wesley 2003 A Troelsen Pro C 5 0 and the NET 4 5 Framework Berkeley CA Apress 2012 D Esposito and A Saltarello Microsoft NET Architecting Applications for the Enterprise Redmond WA Microsoft Press 2008 P Kruchten The Rational Unified Process Introduction Boston MA Addison Wesley 2003 D R Windle and L R Abreo Software Requirements An I J Modern Education and Computer Science 2015 10 1 11
16. ble SelectedBank Bank IncompleteLevel Boolean LevelHighs int 1 indexLevel double AcornN int 1 AcormNums int tiie load Pattern contBtn Button helpBtn Button 1 hintBtn Button board BoardSquare OptionsBtn Button pauseBtn Button pauseOpen Boolean score int timer Timer Bank Bank Board Board CreateParams Params Score int number int TIme double acorn bool TimerOn Boolean timer_Tick mainForm_Load btn_MouseEnter btn_MouseLeave hideNum unhideNum Fig 6 The UML Class Diagram of the Hundred Acorn Forest Application Copyright 2015 MECS I J Modern Education and Computer Science 2015 10 1 11 Development of a Novel Computer Application to Teach Counting in K 2 Classroom using the 5 Unified Process Method The second iteration implemented the features for creating and editing puzzles in the Teacher Module The teacher may create two types of puzzles Basic Puzzle or Patterned Puzzle A Basic Puzzle is one that includes all 100 number boxes and the teacher may select which ones are hidden freely Creating a Patterned Puzzle is a two step process The teacher needs to create a new pattern or select an existing pattern with a certain sequence of numbers and then choose what numbers to hide Meanwhile the teacher may assign a difficulty stage ranging from to 6 to each puzzle that will be loaded in
17. dren in Kindergarten Ist grade or 2nd grade mathematics using the Hundreds Chart The teachers will be able to create puzzles freely or based on certain patterns edit existing puzzles and save puzzles into a database that can be utilized as a supplemental tool later Meanwhile students will be able to practice lessons learned while maneuvering through an interactive computer game that has a storyline to keep them interested In addition this new software will allow for classroom teachers to have instant feedback to identify students who are struggling with counting concepts As the Hundreds Chart is consistently used in K 2 classrooms research have revealed that the need to view how students complete the Hundreds Chart puzzles the process rather than the final puzzle the product has become more pertinent 4 Therefore the design of the application should provide teachers with just that feedback while presenting a fun interactive game for students that reinforces the math lessons previously taught Hundred Acorn Forest allows teachers to create different levels of Hundreds Chart puzzles After a student completes a puzzle by playing the game the teacher can view a video playback of how the student completed the puzzle through a unique automatic screen recording function The playback will give teachers insight on what parts of the lesson students are grasping and what parts he or she may need to reinforce The development of such a
18. les based on patterns but also engages students in a unique interactive game play environment which helps to maintain their interests of learning In addition the video playback that demonstrates the process of students solving the puzzle provides classroom teachers valuable information to set up levels of control and consistency that have not been available before Index Terms Math Education Teaching Counting Computer Application Unified Process I INTRODUCTION Counting is a very important math skill taught in Kindergarten through 2nd Grade The Hundreds Chart which presents a continuous sequence of numbers from 1 to 100 with some numbers left out for the students to fill in is one of the most widely used puzzle tools for classroom teachers to teach children counting 1 Educators have dedicated their time into researching and developing the most useful way for teachers to teach mathematical methods to young children using the Hundreds Chart 2 While there are computer programs Copyright 2015 MECS that may help teachers to create sheets by cutting out the numbers students still have to solve the puzzles on the printed paper and it is inconvenient for the teachers to observe each individual student and identify the difficulties the student may have experienced during the puzzle solving problem 3 The goal of this study is to develop a computer application named Hundred Acorn Forest for classroom teachers to teach chil
19. me will be saved Copyright 2015 MECS and will appear in the Player List the next time he she returns to play If the nickname the student selected is already being used he she will be asked to enter a different name Hundred Acorn Forest Pinkbeard J X Please select a player from the list m Fig 12 a Player Menu Hundred Acorn Forest Please select a player from the list Please enter your Nickname Mother Goose Fig 12 b Player s Nickname Creation The game interface combines a quick access menu and easy to identify metaphors as shown in Fig 13 The buttons to the left allow the student to change options and obtain help 1f they get stuck on a certain level Fig 13 Game Menu and Level Selection in the Student Module The game has some notable features On the Game map the student can select what level to play Clicking on any level he she has attempted already will display the highest score achieved so far for that level The student may replay any previous level to improve his her score However the student is not allowed to play any levels past the first un played level After choosing the level he she wishes to play the student clicks on the Go button to start the puzzle game The game will randomly load a puzzle from the library of puzzles with the same difficulty created in the Teacher Module based on the level the student is currently at See Fig 14 I J Modern Education and Computer
20. n similar sequences but with different numbers and difficulty levels Patterned Puzzle design offers the teacher a more flexible way to group or arrange puzzles of different difficulty level in each stage of a game to reinforce the students ability to count similar sequences of numbers Click to Hide 95 96 Set Stage 4 Exit Fig 9 a The Patterned Puzzle Design in the Teacher Module Click to Hide 17 i lg iiai 45 67 Exit Fig 9 b The Puzzle Created based on the Pattern Set Stage 4 The Administration function in the Teacher Module loads the Student List form as shown in Fig 10 a with which the teacher can add or delete students and view student attempts of solved puzzles The Add command displays a new Student information form where the teacher may fill out student information such as Student ID and Student Name and meanwhile choose a Student Level See Fig 10 b Student Levels are set at 1 to 6 corresponding to the difficulty of the puzzles appropriate for this student The Ok command dismisses the Student I J Modern Education and Computer Science 2015 10 1 11 Development of a Novel Computer Application to Teach Counting in K 2 Classroom using the 7 Unified Process Method informa
21. nding Screen Copyright 2015 MECS I J Modern Education and Computer Science 2015 10 1 11 Development of a Novel Computer Application to Teach Counting in K 2 Classroom using the 9 Unified Process Method V DISCUSSION The Hundred Acorn Forest application is the first computer game developed to teach counting skills with Hundreds Chart puzzles Its intelligence lies in the creation of the puzzle as well as the process of how the game is played Not only has it allowed the teacher to make basic puzzles like those of the traditional paper based Hundreds Chart only without the hassle of cutting papers but provided the teacher a handy tool to create more challenging puzzles based on the same pattern that can be reused The interactive play with animated presentation following a story line should keep the student interested The hint feature adds another level of control by giving the student a better chance to solve the puzzle and therefore helps to avoid the frustration of the student who might otherwise get stuck on a level with difficult puzzles Furthermore the teacher is able to efficiently manage the difficulty level of each puzzle and game as well as the skill stage of individual students The puzzles with same difficulty levels are randomly selected to generate a sequence of game plays appropriate for a student at a certain stage The achievement score which should be a good measurement to reevaluate the skill stage of the s
22. ng the application the instructions came in two versions one for classroom teacher s use and the other for student s use The teacher s version includes not only how to design and set up the puzzles but how to track students performance through video playbacks The student s version was developed with a more children friendly tone and the complexity of vocabulary and sentence structure in the instructions were carefully controlled to make sure they are at the appropriate instructional reading level of the children It is suggested that when classroom teachers start to teach their students how to use this application they should gradually release teacher s responsibility by following these four steps 24 1 teacher models how to use it 2 teacher invites students to join him or her to use it 3 teacher encourages students to use it on their own but is prepared to offer timely support 4 teacher observes students to use it independently IV EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS The design of this application adopted a document view architecture with traditional looking form based interface 16 Although the implementation of the user input and data storage is quite different for Teacher Module and Student Module the application shows the characteristics of usability robustness and efficiency based on the results of the acceptance test 23 that verifies the user can complete all the tasks and actions according to the requireme
23. nts without problems A Teacher Module The Teacher Module has two major functionalities Puzzle Management and Administration Puzzle Management let the teacher to create edit and save puzzles As aforementioned a puzzle can be a Basic Puzzle created freely or a Patterned Puzzle based on a certain pattern that can be reused On the Basic Puzzle design form shown in Fig 8 the I J Modern Education and Computer Science 2015 10 1 11 6 Development of a Novel Computer Application to Teach Counting in K 2 Classroom using the Unified Process Method teacher may click on any number and it will be hidden by an Acorn Clicking an Acorn will remove it and the number will appear again In the bottom left the teacher may select a stage for this puzzle based upon the level of difficulty with 1 being the easiest and 6 being the hardest The default stage is set to 1 Once the teacher has set the stage and hidden all the numbers he she wishes to hide the puzzle can be saved and added to the game The teacher can continue to create new basic puzzles or return to the previous menu Click to Hide Exit Fig 8 The Basic Puzzle design in the Teacher Module Set Stage 3 With the option of Patterned Puzzle the teacher should first create a pattern for example the orange boxes in Fig 9 which contain only
24. ring testing are fixed or deferred to the next version and the application is prepared for release An integration test 23 was performed to verify each component and module work correctly together such as the interactions between the Teacher Module and the Student Module The defects on the remaining components were analyzed and all the Copyright 2015 MECS known errors were fixed A defect tracking sheet were used to record this testing and fixing process Transition phase also requires a way of distributing the developed software Installation packages which include executable binary code of the Hundred Acorn Forest application together with supporting libraries and files were created using the Visual Studio NET built in setup utilities and deployment tools The application was successfully deployed on computers in a lab In addition the team manager collected and archived all the documents including requirement keys use case diagrams activity diagrams sequence diagrams UML class diagram and defect tracking sheet etc The manager also exported the source code documentation from the Visual Studio NET and composed the help file for the released software product Archiving these development documents is very important for code reuse software maintenance new release and future training The user manual was created to give users detailed instructions of how to use the application Since both teachers and students will be usi
25. s an application requires I J Modern Education and Computer Science 2015 10 1 11 2 Development of a Novel Computer Application to Teach Counting in K 2 Classroom using the Unified Process Method joint efforts from experts in both education and computer science For instance the requirements of classroom teachers who create and edit the puzzles can be collected from a professor in math education who has had experience in practical classroom activities using the paper based Hundreds Chart On the other hand the user interface of the application such as the onscreen instructions layout of buttons and pictures user actions and animations must consider the reading and comprehension ability of children who are at the early stage of their literacy development 5 As a result the input from a professor in content reading can provide useful insight of how students apply literacy knowledge in content area mathematics In addition the design and implementation of the application demands experts with strong programming knowledge as well as those who know the principles of software engineering 6 and have applied the software development models in real world projects The rest of the paper is organized as follows Previous work related to this study is listed in Section II Section III introduces the four phases of the software development method used to design and implement the functionalities of application The experiments and results
26. s were created and the prototype of the application was implemented The main documents developed in this phase were Activity Diagrams and Sequence Diagrams An activity diagram describes procedural logic business process and work flow which is like a flowchart but supports parallel behavior that allows the user to choose the order in which to do things 22 Fig 3 shows the activity diagram for the Teacher Module which decomposes user actions captured in the use case into detailed activities involving conditional branches and concurrent flows A sequence diagram which describes how groups of objects collaborate in some behavior is one of the several forms of interaction diagrams defined in the UML 22 It usually shows a number of example objects and the messages that are passed between these objects within the use case Fig 4 indicates the interactions and messages passed among the objects in the scenario that a student plays a game in the Student Module Similarly Fig 5 illustrates a scenario in the Teacher Module that involves Copyright 2015 MECS the actions of maintaining a student list creating or editing puzzles and viewing recorded puzzle solving actions of student attempts which gives a good picture about which objects are doing which processing Player 2A RecordAction Numb erSquare row column 3 RecordAction True 3 1 MoveCorrect NumbejSqua re row column 4 Mo
27. ter games to facilitate elementary students cognitive math achievement and attitudes toward math education have been examined by case studies 10 The results indicated that students developed more positive attitudes toward learning math through computer math gaming which highlighted the value of situating learning activities Copyright 2015 MECS within the game story and making games enjoyably challenging in elementary math education Focusing on gender and language minority groups empirical studies investigating the effects of playing computer games on math achievement of elementary students have indicated that male language minority students who daily played computer games in math demonstrated higher math performance scores compared with their male English speaking counterparts who never played 11 Furthermore studies examining the effects of computer games on students math achievement and motivation illustrated that students who played the games in their classrooms and school labs reported greater motivation compared to those who played the games only in the school labs 12 HI UNIFIED PROCESS METHOD Commonly used software development models fall into two categories traditional models such as Waterfall and Evolutionary Prototyping for more static projects whose requirements do not change much during the development and contemporary models like Scrum Adaptive Software Development and Unified Process that may handle
28. tern_Save A teacher should be able to save a pattern into a database once he or she is finished creating it It should be possible to overwrite existing patterns Bank_Generate When a student begins a level the program must generate a number bank of Hundreds Chart blocks that contains all of the missing number blocks from the puzzle or pattern and additional random number blocks that will not be inserted into the puzzle or pattern Level_ Edit A teacher should be able to enable or disable certain features like hints for various levels Level_Generate When a student begins a level the program must load a stored puzzle or pattern of appropriate difficulty Level_Load Upon continuing a game if the student s last play ended on a level that was not completed that level should be loaded into play so that the student may complete the level Level_Lobby Upon continuing a game if the student s last play did not end on an incomplete level the student should be taken to a level lobby from which they may select a level Level_Map The student s level lobby should contain a map of all levels both complete and incomplete that should be displayed The student should be able to scroll through the map but only to view levels already completed Level_Score Upon selecting a level in the map the student should be able to see their current highest score and the associated completion time and be given to the option to play
29. tion form and puts the student in the Student List The teacher may select a student in the list to view the information When deleting a student a warning message will pop up to ask the teacher to confirm the deletion operation if the student has attempted any puzzle a Student List Student ID Student Name Student Level Fig 10 b Student Information Form With the View Attempts command the teacher may view a list of attempts in order of completion by the selected student See Fig 11 This list will be empty if the student has yet to complete a puzzle The teacher can select an attempt labeled by a sequence number date time and score The Play command starts the recorded video showing how the student was completing the level When finished playing the teacher may select another attempt to view or exit this screen and return to the previous menu Ne fare Toe aon i p Fig 11 The Attempt Browser and Viewer in the Teacher Module B Student Module Selecting Student from the application s starting screen will take the student to the Player menu where the student will select their name from the Player list as shown in Fig 12 a Once their name is highlighted the user may click Play to access the game menu However 1f this is the first time the student plays the game he she will be asked to set up a nickname as shown See Fig 12 b before continuing to the Game menu Nickna
30. to the game of the Student Module The third iteration implemented the game play of the Student Module As the student progresses through the levels puzzles will increase in difficulty according to the stages teacher has chosen during the puzzle design The screen recording feature was completed in the fourth and final iteration Fig 7 shows the code map of the classes related to video streaming and recording The video file is in the standard AVI format which can be played back on any computer system g AviPlayer GB EditableVideoStream g VideoStream 3B AviManager OY AudioStream Fig 7 The Code Map of the Screen Recording Function During the entire construction phase UnitTest a software testing framework integrated into Visual Studio NET was used to verify that all the required functionalities are actually implemented and that the various components are working in isolation 23 The UnitTest is seamlessly integrated with Visual Studio to take advantage of many NET language features such as custom attributes and other reflection related capabilities For example UnitTest verified that the puzzles created and saved in the Teacher Module can be successfully loaded into the game in the Student Module These tests were further extended into the transition phase D Transition Phase This phase starts after the initial application testing has been performed and the application is ready to be deployed 21 Bugs discovered du
31. tudent is awarded according to how quickly a student solves a puzzle as well as whether the student uses hints in the process One of the unique feature of the Hundred Acorn Forest application is the video playback for the teacher to review the attempts by the students Besides showing the score and time it takes a student to solve a certain level of puzzle the automatically recorded video reveals what missteps the student have taken in the process of game play whether the student has used any hints etc which helps the teacher to identify the specific area of the problems the student may have and therefore to enforce the learning with follow up instructions VI CONCLUSION A complete cycle of using the Unified Process method to develop a computer based Hundreds Chart puzzle game for teaching K 2 students basic counting skills has been presented The success of this project demonstrates the effectiveness of the Unified Process method in the design of a math education application which integrates modules for both teachers and students The teacher will benefit from the application by efficiently creating and editing puzzles managing the difficulty of the game evaluating the student skill levels and reviewing the attempts by the students while the student will enjoy the game experience to build their counting skills Our future work will look into encoding the recorded videos in a compressed file format such as MP4 25 which demands
32. veCorrect Tue 5 RecordTryNumber 5 1 ScoreMove 6 1 1 ScoreMove int Fig 4 Sequence Diagram of the Student Module C Construction Phase The UML model with supporting documents the software product the test suite and the user manuals are deliverables for the construction phase 17 This phase reveals and analyzes any requirement that has been missed and refines the requirements that have been implemented 21 The design task is to complete the UML design model for functionalities to be implemented in this phase Fig 6 shows the UML class diagram of the Hundred Acorn Forest application which defines classes their attributes operations and relationships including aggregation association and inheritance The functionalities as defined in the use cases and requirement keys were implemented through four iterations The first iteration was to implement the I J Modern Education and Computer Science 2015 10 1 11 4 Development of a Novel Computer Application to Teach Counting in K 2 Classroom using the Unified Process Method administration feature in the Teacher Module which student skill levels It also let the teacher to view allows a teacher to add edit or delete students and assign students attempts of puzzles Student Teacher from Roster List recorded i Database 1 1 create Student choices 1 Selects idNum Student lviNum Add a New l Student l 4 4 4 Add Student idNum
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