Motion Math

Too often, educational games are neither fun nor educational, and there are plenty of educational games that fail on both those counts. Without an exhaustive study of games and game designers, it’s hard to pinpoint why. Do those making educational games have little experience in game design? Or do those making educational games have little experience in instructional technology? Or has the bar just been set incredibly low?

Perhaps it’s that educational game designers have been targeting school districts or teachers as their audience, and as long as they’re more exciting than classroom worksheets, kids really haven’t complained.

But the audience is changing for educational games, in part because of the explosion of mobile and Web technologies. Parents are buying more educational games, and kids now have a larger say in what they want. And as a result, games are becoming more engaging, more whimsical — more fun.

What’s more, those who grew up playing video games are now becoming the game designers and developers — and their bar for fun factor is high.

Take, for example, the creators of Motion Math, available on the iPhone and iPad. The founders, Jacob Klein and Gabriel Adauto, graduate students in the Learning, Design, and Technology program at Stanford, are both 32 years old. They’re bringing their background in education and cognitive science to the design of the game.

Certainly having a deeper understanding of cognition helps. But Klein and Adauto are also gamers — “hardcore,” says Klein. And it’s clear they’ve built games based on “things we’d like.” It’s scaled down, so that the game is playable by elementary school-age children. But it’s not dumbed down — in content or in gameplay.

Klein says the inspiration in part came from the iconic Mario Brothers: simple yet fun. I’d add that it’s a game for any age — a third grader struggling with fractions could enjoy the game, as much as a seventh grader, or an adult. Klein also points to the design and the flow of sports-related video games. These “flow experiences,” says Klein, mean that the entire game keeps you continually engaged. And in the case of Motion Math, that engagement is with on-task learning.

At the moment, the games mostly focus on fractions, a notoriously difficult concept for children to grasp. Fractions are often taught with the pie metaphor — how many slices are half, for example. But that graphical representation actually does little to help students understand how fractions work and how they’re related to percentages and to the number line.

The game aims to helps students develop this number sense and estimate fractions — and estimate quickly. It’s a game, after all! This is how it works: Players control a bouncing star, and the goal is to make that star land on the right part of the number line, matching a particular fraction. To do this, the app uses the gyroscope that’s built into the Apple mobile devices, so you have to tilt your device.

Motion Math has won rave reviews from those who are watching the industry closely. The Children’s Technology Review, for instance, gave the app 4.5 stars for being able to “bridge the concrete and the abstract.” The creators plan to expand to other platforms, including Android soon. Klein says they’ll also add new subject areas beyond fractions and even beyond math.

WordLens

You can take the time to learn a new language with online tutors as described in the post below, or you can just use your iPhone for immediate gratification.

The WordLens app for the iPhone, released a few days ago, automatically translates words to your chosen language and pastes them onto the scene through its lens.

This is one of those instances you might think you’re watching a video of a scene from the future, but make no mistake about it, this is real and it’s now.

The app itself is free, but you pay $4.99 for each language download. And though the translations are literal rather than in context, it is very much a useful tool for both casual travel and for learning.

Now if we could only create an app that reads thoughts.

Tina Barsghian

The mobile app world is changing constantly, as are learning theories around them. For more context on the Cooney Center’s study “Is There an App for That?” here’s my Q&A with Dr. Michael Levine, executive director of the Center, Dr. Cynthia Chiong, the report’s lead author, and co-author Carly Shuler.

How does this report change the thinking around mobile learning apps?

Before the report, we thought of the mobile device as simply another platform for educational applications, only more mobile. But we discovered that the unique affordances of the mobile device is actually going to shift how technology is used in educational settings. This breakthrough has potential to address long standing concerns with young children using media. 1) The average session is short – this calls for a different kind of application. Kids probably aren’t going to watch a 30-minute show on a phone or spend an hour playing a game like they might on a computer or video game console. This may help to allay concerns of too much screen time for kids. 2) The touch screen allows for more active involvement. This can help to address concerns of passive learning (like watching a show).

Should parents feel guilty about allowing their kids to use their mobile phones for games?

No. Kids see their parents using mobile phones all the time. It is only natural for them to want to use them too. And from the data in our study it looks like many parents are letting their children use them responsibly – with restrictions and in moderation. We recommend a balanced media diet that consists of content that is fun, educational, and doesn’t take up too much time in a given day.

However there is reason to worry that such vigilance will erode over time and we would be quite concerned if young children, especially preschoolers began to dramatically increase their mobile screen time

Based on the design principles the study lists, are there any mobile apps you’d recommend to parents now, even if they’re not fully “there” yet? The study mentions Martha Speaks and Superwhy, but any others that might not be PBS-related?

There are dozens of fun and educational new app’s for elementary age children.  Two that we have looked at closely are Project NOAH, a citizen science app that allows children to collect real time data on their favorite animals, flowers and other organisms.  A second one is Motion Math, which teaches fractions to children.

Were you surprised at the finding in the study that “there is reason to believe that children currently may not play with an app for long enough to learn much”?

Not surprising at all. Researchers and designers are just at the beginning of their work on mobile apps and there isn’t yet an established “mobile theory of learning.” The shortened sessions we observed will probably be an important factor for designing educational apps. It’s especially not surprising when you think about the context that children are most often playing with apps – in the car and on the go.

What are the most important factors of a great educational app?

At least for right now, mobile apps are meant as supplemental and informal – so make it fun!  We also value the intergenerational potential for the apps to help start rich conversations among adults and their children. They should be based on pedagogy and we should continue to do more research in the area.

Why is adaptive technology important in these apps? Are you seeing any encouraging products in the market that truly qualify as such?

Students learn and progress at different paces. It is important to be able to target specific skills at an individual level. Adaptive technology makes it easier to pinpoint those specific skills and also monitor individual student progress. Thus, adaptive technology is often seen in relation to assessment measures. The leader in creating adaptive mobile learning tools in classrooms for young children is Wireless Generation. Another group well worth watching is the work of the Teacher Mate technology.

How can parents differentiate between legitimate educational apps and those that just claim they are?

This is a significant gap in this rapidly emerging field, and one of the main recommendations that our report makes: App developers’ claims of educational impact are largely unsubstantiated and should be based on specific evidence. Parents need more information from consumer groups and educators on how mobile devices can and should be used as learning tools.

1) Go to trusted sources–groups such as Common Sense Media and Children’s Technology Review are establishing criteria to judge just how effective, age appropriate and well-designed apps are.

2) Most products that have research backing the content will have those research studies available on their website.

How can the educational community make sure that kids from under-served communities have the same access to these educational materials?

We know that the average smart phone buyer – at least for iphones – is skewed towards higher income individuals. But reports still show that more lower income families own a new smart phone than a new computer.  Smart phones are cheaper. Perhaps smart phones are a good way to start bridging that gap.

Ideally, these devices will begin to get integrated into the education system through public funding and other grants, taking the expense away from the consumer. However, at this point examples of such are few and far between.

Flickr:SoopahGrover

Parents shouldn’t feel guilty about letting their kids play games on their mobile phones — especially if they’re educational ones. That’s one of the main conclusions in the recent study released by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, “Learning, Is There an App for That?”

The report uses information from three quantitative and observational studies conducted by the Center in conjunction with PBS Kids, Sesame Workshop, Hotspex Survey Research and Rockman, to document for the first time the design, development and research issues related to the use of educational apps for young children’s (preschool and primary age) learning.

Most parents know to moderate the amount of time kids spend with the gadgets, and with the help of these kinds of studies, can readily find out which have protein and which are just empty calories.

The best learning apps have the following attributes:

1) They’re interactive. Touchscreens beg for touching.

2) They’re designed for shorter playtimes.

3) They’re focused narrowly by age and relevant to what they’re learning and their motor skills.

4) They’re fun, engaging children by making them laugh — but too too much.

5) They’re inter-generational, allowing a way to involve parents.

6) They’re modifiable, giving kids options to personalize.

7) They have built-in goals, to keep kids coming back with incentives.

As a parent, I was heartened to learn that parental involvement is important, too.

Having a parent as a playmate, especially for the younger kids,seemed to motivate children to keep playing. Adult playmates provided scaffolding and extra prompts to help their children understand the material. They also helped to reinforce the materials in activities undertaken outside of the app.

The study concludes overall that when they’re designed well, children can learn a lot from educational apps.

As the report states: “The challenge now is how to carefully target pressing educational needs tied to literacy, numeracy, and scientific inquiry in the early years, consider the distinct potential of mobile apps, and confidently respond, ‘Hey, there is an app for that!”

In my next post, we’ll hear from the studies’ authors about its implications.