"Fantasy Math" on ESPN

(You may need to click "play" twice.)

You can also click here to open the video in a separate window:
'Fantasy Math' on 'Outside the Lines' (Google Video)

In a segment very similar to the article posted on the ESPN web site(Fantasy football adds up for students), our Fantasy Football class was one of two classes showcased on the ESPN sports documentary show "Outside the Lines". Although the segment displayed some of the harsher realities of life at Foothill, the reaction at the school was largely supportive and I received a lot of positive response.
 

ESPN article is posted

 

The Internet story that corresponds to Sunday's "Outside the Lines" segment has now been posted onto the ESPN web site. The article was written by John Barr, who is also the reporter that came out for the "Outside the Lines" segment.

The beginning of the article focuses on the environment at Foothill High School, and it certainly doesn't mince words about the situation in our classrooms. From my perspective, the article is a little overly dramatic at times - for example, the "unused" books are actually "new" books and the most obvious aspect of the "gang presence" at our school is our strict dress code. Despite the dramatics, the only inaccuracy in the story is the date of my termination from BroadVision (although I ended my software engineering career in March, 2005, I left BroadVision in July, 2002, at a time when they still had a domestic engineering department).

Most importantly, though, the article shows how Fantasy Football can be a big assistance to math classes across the country and it is a very compelling read:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=2680335

"Fantasy Football 101" on KTVU

(You may need to click "play" twice.) You can also click here to open a separate window: KTVU Interview (Google Video) This clip is an interview with me and Ross McGowan of "KTVU Mornings On Two" about my Fantasy Football class that was conducted on Wednesday, November 29th, 2006. Of course, I especially enjoyed the comments from the anchor desk at the end of the interview!

Fantasy Football Publicity

There has certainly been a lot of excitement this week in anticipation of the "Outside the Lines" report that will be shown on ESPN's "Outside the Lines" on Sunday morning. On Monday, the San Jose Mercury News ran a story about our class that was on the front page of the paper, with a picture:

San Jose Mercury News, article:
Football scores big in the classroom

As a result of the Mercury News story, KCBS radio also ran a story for their midday report. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capture the audio.

Introducing the Fantasy Football Spreadsheet

In addition to the essential material and worksheets that are included in the Fantasy Football and Mathematics: A Resource Guide for Teachers and Parents, Grades 5 and Up manual, I also implemented a spreadsheet using the new technology at Google Spreadsheets. My latest Fantasy Football Spreadsheet consists of three worksheets: Rosters, Lineup and Standings, and can be viewed at the following URL:

Foothill Fantasy Football Excel Spreadsheet (view only)

The Rosters Worksheet shows which student belongs to each fantasy team as well as showing the actual current rosters. Below the rosters, I also list the roster changes that have been made throughout the season, and the week that the change was made. I keep track of this because I only allow three roster changes per team, so I need to make sure that no one exceeds their limit.

The Lineup Worksheet contains the lineup changes for each week as well as a breakdown of the weekly scoring for each player. This worksheet is very useful because it allows me to quickly print out the current lineups for every student when it is time for the next lesson. Since lineups don't change very much from week to week, this worksheet also lets me quickly create a default lineup for the following week by copying the previous week's lineup onto the bottom of the worksheet.

The Standings Worksheet shows how each fantasy team is doing and also shows which students belong to which team. Currently I manually enter and sort the statistics on this worksheet each week, but eventually I hope to enhance this worksheet to pull the statistics from the Lineup Worksheet.

Although this year I personally update the spreadsheet each week with the scoring updates and lineup changes, I hope to eventually have my students enter their information into the spreadsheets themselves using the new Google Spreadsheets technology. In schools where students are already more familiar with Excel spreadsheets, I recommend that teachers introduce students to this spreadsheet in first couple of weeks.

Adjustments to our Fantasy Football League

In the implementation in my class, I made a couple of adjustments:

• The Teacher’s Resource Guide suggests allowing four receivers to be drafted and then require three receivers to play each week. While the Teacher's Resource Guide allows any of these wide receivers to be a tight end, I modified these guidelines slightly by requiring that each fantasy team draft five receivers: three wide receivers and two tight ends. I then require two wide receivers and one tight end play each week. I mostly did this because the web site that I use to download statistics doesn't combine wide receivers and tight ends in one list. As a result of the extra player, I also gave each owner an extra two million dollars for their draft.
• As described in the Teacher’s Resource Guide, the game encourages trading players amongst teams. However, trading is difficult in my class because the teams are spread amongst several different classes. To allow teams to change players, I implement a modified waiver system that allows each fantasy team to exchange players from their team for players of lesser value (based upon the values in the NFL 2006-2007 Player Values Sheet at the beginning of the season). However, I only let a team do this with three players over the course of the entire season. Be sure to advise your students that they save one waiver option for the end of the season, especially if they own fragile quarterbacks like Donovan McNabb!
• The Teacher’s Resource Guide offers 111 different scoring systems that can be used for any given week. However, my class has a significant fear of fractions so I prepared a few fraction-based scoring systems that were simpler than the systems suggested in the Teacher’s Resource Guide.

Fantasy Football 101

The integration of Fantasy Football into my teachings this year has been an extremely successful experience and has become an important part of my Algebra I curriculum at Foothill High School in San Jose, CA. After a thorough online investigation of Fantasy Football options, I implemented my league based upon the guidelines in the Fantasy Football and Mathematics Teacher's Resource Guide at FantasySportsMath.com. The FantasySportsMath.com web site states that their implementation is designed for a wide variety of grade levels (grades 5-12 and basic college mathematics), and I have been able to build upon the Algebra I aspects of the implementation in my classroom. In fact, I enthusiatically recommend this approach to any teacher looking for an alternative approach for preparing their students for the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) or any similar state exam.

I first introduced the game to each of my Algebra I classes during the first week of school, originally concentrating on getting the students familiar with the rules and drafting a team. I divided my class into groups of four, making sure that at least one student on each fantasy team passed my “Tiki Barber Test” of being able to identify Tiki Barber as the running back for the New York Giants. By the end of the first week, each team had chosen fourteen NFL players based upon a 42 million dollar budget and the player values listed in the NFL 2006-2007 Player Values Sheet at FantasySportsMath.com.

Now that all of the teams for my league were set up, I needed to find a web site that could provide statistics for the league. Although I looked at several free football web sites, I ended up joining a Fantasy Football League at CBS SportsLine (http://www.sportsline.com/fantasy) to enable me to accumulate and distribute my weekly statistics. I have been told by the FantasySportsMath.com web site that they expect to make these statistics available through the web site next year, which would be a major benefit to every participating school.

For my Algebra I class, I was able to skip the more table-based methods in the Teacher’s Resource Guide and introduce the algebra-based Fantasy Football equation during the very first week of competition. My students used the basic formula for the first several weeks of the season, and originally most of the students were convinced that the equation was too difficult for them to ever learn and master. However, after we spent a day using this equation with the sample statistics in the Teacher’s Resource Guide, many of the students were already ready for the actual competition.

We have had one Fantasy Football lesson per week since the first week, usually on Thursday so that I have ample time to gather all of the statistics. I start out my Fantasy Football lessons by distributing three items to each of my students:

• Weekly scoring worksheet to record the team’s results (from the Fantasy Football and Mathematics Student Workbook)
• Printout of the weekly statistics for every player (from CBS SportsLine)
• Printout of the weekly lineups for each fantasy team (from my Fantasy Football Spreadsheet)

I then write the week’s equation on the board and work out an example before letting the students finish the rest of their worksheet. Eventually, I used some of the 111 different scoring systems in the Teacher’s Resource Guide to introduce increasingly more difficult equations. Some of the beginning Algebra I skills learned that the class has already learned through Fantasy Football include:

• Order of Operations (PEMDAS)
• Algebraic substitution
• Commutative and Identity properties
• Distributive property of multiplication over addition

Since I don’t allow calculators in my classroom for Algebra I, I have also used the equation to teach the students how to perform multiplication and division in their heads without paper or a calculator (perish the thought!). Specifically, I ask the students to calculate the passing, rushing and receiving values by dividing the yardages by 25 and 10 in their heads. For some of my students, even dividing by 10 was not a trivial matter at first but they all quickly grasped the concept after some instruction. I was eventually able to cross reference this knowledge about division by 10 to provide insight into my scientific notation lessons. Even dividing by 25 was pretty easy for most of my students once they understood that dividing by 25 was the same as determining how many quarters were in a dollar (or two dollars, etc.).