We have being using the Wii and Mario and Sonic at the Olympics in a similar way to Nic Hughes at Nightingales. The children have used it as a contextual hub for learning for unit 6C1 in maths. They used the game to get real raw data as opposed to the usual boring 'counting the number of cars that go down the street' scenario, which has no real context.
They then input this data into Excel. Using this data the children worked out the mean, mode, median and range. Then by using the mean running time for each character they made a bar chart, which went up in decimals.
It was a really good couple of lessons as many areas of maths were covered such as data handing, decimal numbers, rounding and labelling graphs.
In year 5 the same game was used for spreadsheets and databases. I am sure you will agree this is a step on from 'organising a party on a budget' or a 'planets database'.
The children really enjoyed the lessons and got a lot out of it, as it gave them real world contexts... that and they had a chance to play the Wii in a meaningful and fun way!
The children put the raw data into an Excel spreadsheet and worked out the mean using a calculator
Using the Mean from the characters' run time, children made a detailed bar graph, in decimals.
Anjum and Simon
Cleveland Junior