Educational App - Mathletics

An acquaintance of mine shared with me an web application her daughter was using at school called Mathletics. As an IT coordinator for a school district I've seen my share of educational applications (most of them quite awful), but Mathletics is different.

Each morning I have 30-40 minutes with my oldest boy before he catches the bus to school. For the past week we've worked together on Mathletics stepping through lessons, taking tests, and playing games with other children from around the world.

Flash based

Mathletics requires the Flash plug-in to function on the client and it tested well on Windows Vista, XP, and Mac OS X with browsers Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Camino, and Opera - offering true cross platform compatibility. The application is light-weight, broken into small sections for easy loading, and saved after every action automatically.

Curriculum

The curriculum covers kindergarten through 12th grade advanced, and several lessons/modules per grade level obviously designed by highly qualified educators. My son, who is just finishing up his first year was able to work through kindergarten quickly and easily, level one with understanding, and level two with slight difficulty but interest.

For instance, the 1st grade course has 91 activities and includes: everyday maths, numbers, direction and order, counting and comparing, patterns and position, shapes, objects and time. A more advanced curriculum (say 12 grade advanced) includes 124 activities on coordinate geometry, parabolas and circles, integrals and limits, calculus: geometrical applications, area and volume, radian measure, logs and exponentials, series and sequences, trigonometry, probability, and the physical applications of calculus - whew!

Student console

On login a new window is opened up full screen, and students are asked to create a profile entering their name, country, grade level, and building a picture of themselves. My son had a lot of fun building a picture of himself selecting colors for eyes, hair, skin, and clothes, plus the shape of his nose, lips, head, eyebrows, and selecting glasses and/or a hat.

Emphases is placed on the number of points you've built up by completing lessons, tests, and competitions you've entered. The point system is based as follows:

• Live Mathletics: 1 correct answer = 1 point.
• Bonus Level: 1 correct answer = 2 point.
• Full Curriculum: 1 correct answer = 10 points.
• Maximum 300 points per activity.

A weekly certificate is awarded if the student attains 1000 points.

After the first week my boy had attained 1620 points and we printed off a color certificate we placed on his wall. If incentives are needed to keep your students involved, points, certificates, or personal rewards are easy to track.

After a student creates their profile, they are then asked to select a level and being work. For instance, the image below shows level 1 lessons, the top three having already been completed:

For instance, if a student selects "Number Facts" it drills down further to individual lessons as follows:

Because the whole system is based on Adobe's Flash each question can be highly customized. In fact, I am amazed at the amount of work it must have taken to create all the lessons. Feedback is instant when stepping through each lesson with a simple check, and support is just a click away with clear and precise directions.

Teacher console

On registration an alternate username and password are provided allowing parents and teachers to monitor and track student progress. Reports are very detailed, showing points gained, lessons accomplished, test questions with student responses, and statistics. Weekly e-mail reports are also delivered in HTML format that can be printed, entered into a score book. Each e-mail allows the receiver to opt out of the subscription, but I wouldn't suggest it - the reports are very detailed and useful.

Summary

Mathletics is one of the few educational applications I've used that I feel may actually make a difference in student learning. The lessons are short, well designed, simple, and most importantly fun. The lessons are right on par with what needs to be covered in the classroom, addressing each standard, and offers a way for parents, teachers, and students to practice together.