Angry Birds craze harnessed in S’pore school
From a highly addictive iPhone game to plush toys to a Hollywood movie, now the Angry Birds phenomenon has reached schools.
In the recent school mid-year examinations, a Junior College in Singapore came out with a kinematics question involving the popular game for its Physics paper. Students had to calculate the launch angle of the slingshot in order to ensure the red bird can hit the green pig. The number of marks allocated -- 7.
Student Sim Wee Kong tweeted, "This would make me love Physics!" Another student named Hui Yi posted on Twitter, "I would probably have scored an 'A' with this!"
In an interview with Yahoo! Singapore, 34-year-old Physics teacher Daryl Ang claimed that the Angry Birds game, if used in the right way, has legitimate educational value.
"There are several laws Physics students can learn from the Angry Birds game, and they include mass, velocity, projectile motion, gravity, and Newton's laws," the technologically-savvy educator said.
In the United States, John Burk, an Atlanta teacher has been capitalising on the Angry Birds craze by using it to teach Physics lessons. He touted the game as a perfect tool for teaching students the laws of projectile motion, given that the birds are catapulted into the sky. It took students about 30 minutes to thoroughly understand the laws of projectile motion.
