Specimen Hill Primary School grade 6 students have made their friends’ homework a lot more fun.
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Connor Green and Xavier Turner won the primary school division in the Victorian Schools Games & Apps Challenge for developing their own fractions-based game application.
Fractions Fashion teaches children fractions in a fun and intuitive way.
“Since grade 2, we noticed fractions is something everyone struggles with,” Xavier said.
“It is something we are confident with, so we wanted to show how easy it is to learn them.”
The pair defeated 2000 other entrants to win the statewide competition.
As well as designing the app, Connor and Xavier also wrote code for the mini-games used in the app.
Connor said he had already designed his own video game before developing Fractions Fashion.
“I designed a game because I like playing them, so thought I would like to design them. My dad can code, so we did that together,” Connor said.
“I've been learning how to write code for a little while and Xav's just started. We can code our own mini games now.”
The young tech-heads had to develop their own design brief as well as designing the app.
“The first thing we did was the design brief and submitted it to the website,” Xavier said.
“Then we got an email at the end of October to say we were shortlisted. We went to Melbourne to prepare a speech with a guy from TedX and presented to a panel of judges.”
Connor said he and Xavier came up with multiple designs for mini games that help students solve fractions-based problems.
“There’s some unique features like various mini games, customised fonts and several different game modes,” he said.
“It also has a rewards system that encourages learning, tutorials to help people, a feature for people who are colour-blind and a hint system that tells you different strategies to solve problems.”
This week Connor and Xavier were presented with the prizes at a school assembly.
“Nearly everyone at school knows we won it. We got an X-Box each and the teachers told whole school about it,” Xavier said.