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James Russo

James Russo

Senior Lecturer in Mathematics Education at Monash University researching primary maths games and challenging tasks; founder of surfmaths.com and co-developer of ABC's GOAT Maths games.

Sep 13, 2026

AlishaHOST
21:14
I
21:14
don't know, the problem is you talk in such colourful ways and I spend more and more time out of the classroom reading about stuff and writing about stuff, which is great in a sense because it's a luxury, but it also makes everything a bit drier because often there's a teacher educator audience rather than just the teaching audience that you're writing for.
21:31
But having said that, that's my kind of disclaimer if my answer's too boring.
21:34
I think about a perfect game needing sort of ideally having these three kind of ingredients from a mathematical perspective.
21:40
And, you know, for the game to sort of be mathematically integrated, it does need to have a choice that's well aligned with the learning objectives that I said.
21:48
So, and you want that to be like the strategic thinking in the game is well aligned with the mathematical learning focus.
21:53
And that's where students' choices sort of lie within the game structure.

6 MINS LATER

27:48
So is the competition part actually helping learning or is it just helping engagement? And is the competition important in regards to running a maths game or implementing a maths game in the classroom?

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