The DVD Programs:

Something strange happened in Enigma, Ohio on June 13, 1966. The entire Etna High School student body and all but one of the staff disappeared! They never returned. Now, no one in Enigma talks about it. Children growing up in Enigma today can only wonder what happened forty years ago.

During summer vacation, Chris receives a strange letter with a key to Etna High School. The letter leads her to believe that she will be able to solve the mystery. Chris’s good friend, Carter, agrees to help her and together they enter the eerie, deserted school.

As they investigate the interior of the high school, they encounter Pythagleo, the resident custodian. Pythagleo has been waiting for the return of the missing students and staff. Chris and Carter must work with math concepts and work mathematical problems to get clues to help solve the mystery.

Pythagleo begins each episode asking, “How strange is your world?” The unexplained, aliens, and weird happenings make for an enticing backdrop to study numbers, lines, planes, measurement, algebra, and more.

The CD-ROM Edu-game:

The mystery continues in the CD-ROM edu-game without Pythagleo or Carter. The voice of Chris, now trapped in the school, explains how the game works. Mathra, a mysterious mathematical maniac, delights in challenging your students to explore Etna High. Inanimate objects have a life of their own: a book flips its pages incessantly; a trombone seems to play by itself; a skeleton pops out of a locker. Students solve problems to calm the objects and move from room to room.

There is a room for the content covered in each of the DVD programs. Students who miss a problem loose a brain shield. If a student looses all his brain shields, he must leave the room. The student can reenter the room right away or try to earn new brain shields by clicking on hall lockers and answering standard computation problems. Help is always available and students are encouraged to have pencil and paper on hand. The problems are not intended to be mental math.

The solution to the mystery waits in the school attic – but all eight rooms must be mastered as well as the final review questions.

The Go Figure? CD-ROM and DVD are available from:

Go Figure?
WOUB Center for Public Media
9 South College Street
Athens, Ohio 45701
(800) 825-1771
woub@woub.org