Today's Fresh Look Fridays post comes via word of mouth tweet from numerous members of my PLN.  Specifically, thanks to:

    - Emily (@StarrMatica) for retweeting a tweet posted by

    - Steven (@web20classroom) which led me to a blog written by a NEW member of my PLN,

    - Keith (@k_ferrell) who wrote about a great Physics Game website, and named his top 3 fave games...one of which was

    - The Magic Pen -- which is the topic of today's Fresh Look Fridays review.

Whew!

Talk about six degrees of separation.

The Magic Pen is a fantastic, problem-based game where one must draw shapes in order to cause the red ball to roll over to the flag(s).  I'm not going to lie, while I enjoyed Physics 20 and Physics 30 over a decade ago, angles and spatial manipulations are not my forte.  I'm currently stuck on level 4 - LOL!

I LOVE this site because it has so much potential for use on an interactive whiteboard in the classroom.  Challenge a small group of students to collaborate and solve the increasingly complex levels together.  Make it an on-going battle between different groups in the classroom.  Use it to model and demo overarching concepts in a Physics class.  Use it as a 5 minute end-of-class activity.  Challenge students to come up with 2 (or 3 or 4) different solutions and then test each theory.  

So. Much. Fun. :)

Try it for yourself by clicking here or playing with the embedded version below.

Happy playing and happy Friday!

Vanessa