Video Script for Ontario Ministry

Main Points to Cover:

Introduce ourselves (1m)
Give them some background on the company and how this started
Explosive growth in Ontario – 3,000 to 50,000+ students
Show the battle with hints, tools, virtual manipulatives, etc. (1.5m)
Show the reporting and the benefits for teachers (2m)
Why this is free and how to get started (0.5m)

Script:

Hi everyone, I’m Rohan Mahimker, and I’m excited to tell you about a new free math game called Prodigy!

But first, let me give you some background on how this started. Prodigy started out of a fourth year project for my partner Alex Peters and I, in mechatronics engineering at the University of Waterloo.

Looking back to our own childhoods, we found that there really wasn’t a fun way to practice math. Personally, my parents had put me in the Kumon program when I was 9 and every week I’d bring home a stack of math problems to go through. While this may have helped with my math basics and confidence, as a kid, doing those repetitive problems was a PAINFUL experience.

What’s even worse is that some of my friends who didn’t get the basics at that early age decided that they just weren’t good at math, and never would be, and it’s very disheartening to see an 8 or 9 year old develop that attitude and write off this fundamental subject for the rest of their lives.

So since we both loved video games at that age, we said what if we could make learning math as addictive as a video game? That’s when Prodigy was born.

When the game was ready we presented it to one principal and her staff at Hamilton-Wentworth. She liked it so much that the next day she turned around and recommended it to 10 other principals. We officially launched this January with 3,000 students, and since then, have grown to over 50,000 students across hundreds of schools in Ontario.

[Game demo]

Let me show you how the game works. Prodigy is like a cross between Pokemon and Harry Potter, so this is the wizard character I’ve just created on the left, and I’m currently in a wizard battle with my opponent in the forest. When I select a spell, I’m given an Ontario-curriculum aligned math question to answer, and if I answer this correctly, I get to cast my spell on my opponent and take away some of his red bar, which I need to deplete to win the battle.

If I’m having trouble with this question, I can do one of three things. I can click on “Show hint”, which will give me a hint specific to this question. I can also open a lesson, which will walk me throughhow to solve a similar problem. As you can see, this lesson gives me a lot of detail and takes me through each of the steps, so it’s very helpful if a child gets stuck.

Finally, I can click on the “use tools” button, which will open up a scratchpad for me to work through the problem. I can do things here like draw myself a numberline, change the background to a Cartesian plane, grid paper, hundreds chart, or 10s frame. And since a lot of teachers like to use manipulatives in the classroom, we’ve added a virtual manipulatives toolbox, where I can do things like drag a hundreds base block onto the screen, explode it into tens or ones, group things, and build myself a solution to the problem. There are also a number of other manipulatives here like Canadian currency (we’re probably going to have to phase out the penny pretty soon), counters, dice, and some more. Where this becomes really useful is if kids are having trouble with a problem, teachers can simply open up this toolbox and use it to explain the underlying concept to a child.

As I’m going through these questions, the game will adapt and differentiate to keep me in my zone of proximal development. This means if I’m doing well, it will quickly progress me to harder skills, and I’m having trouble, it will actually pull me back to some easier questions and pre-requisites.

[Teacher features]

The most exciting part for teachers it that everything kids do in the game is tracked, and there is instant feedback in 4 convenient reports that I can view.

The first one is the usage impact report, which gives me a quick glance of my class’s activity on the game. I can hover over one of these dots and see that Niya, for example, has logged 303 minutes of on-task time and has mastered 74 math skills. I can even click on this dot to bring me down to which skills she’s answered, how many minutes she had spent practicing, when she had finished it, and the number of questions she’s answered correctly and incorrectly.

If I’d like to focus in further on one student, I can go to the student progress report, find Niya, and see what specific Ontario skills she’s covered so far. The big advantage here is it highlights specific skills which Niya is having difficulty in, so that I can pull her aside the next day and differentiate by helping her where she needs it the most.

Our newest report, and one that was heavily requested by teachers, is the curriculum expectations report, where I can get a breakdown of what my class has covered on the game by expectation. I can see exactly …

Some teachers have told us that they are using these reports to find a child who is doing well in a skill, and pair them up with another who’s having difficulty with that skill, to drive collaboration in the classroom.

Finally, we have a trouble spots report which highlights if there are any skills which a lot of my students are struggling with. In this case, 4 of my students are having difficulty with subtracting 2-digit numbers to 99 with regrouping, so this might be something I’d want to spend half a class on reviewing with everyone, or only these 4 students.

There’s also an assignments feature, which teachers can use to specify which skills their kids are working on in the game. I can simply create a new assignment, choose a grade, a specific skill, and number of questions I’d like to assign…

Where teachers are finding this most powerful is using it for formative and summative assessments, because they get real-time feedback on where their kids are doing well and where they’re struggling.

[Why it’s free and next steps]

The best part about this game is that it’s free, for bothteachers and parents. The way we make money is through premium game features, like special wands, hats, and pets, which parents can subscribe for, just like an iphone app. What this means is that the 5% of parents who upgrade allow us to keep 100% of the educational content free and equal access for everyone. Teachers can get started in 5 minutes by visiting our website at prodigygame.com. If you’d like to sign up a few schools, please email us at or call us on our support line. Thanks for your time, and I hope you enjoy the game!