5 Cool Ways to Learn Math with Apps

Our feature this week is from Lynn Rasmussen, creator of Arithmaroo – a math counting game focused on number patterns and relationships. The Arithmaroo team is working on an entire series of educational math apps that engage the user to explore and experience numbers.  Today Lynn highlights the many different ways math is being presented with mobile apps, which makes it an exciting time for students and educators.

Many of us were taught math in classrooms. Everyone was given the same worksheets, drills, homework, and tests at the same time. If you didn’t get it, the class kept going.  Too many of us were either “bad at math” or bored.  Apps offer a solution. They are personal, interactive, and provide instant feedback. Most of all, they are fun.

Here are five ways that Moms With Apps developers apply math to apps:

1. Apps offer a beautiful introduction to math for little ones.  TickleTapApps’ Counting Caddy is a simple, fun counting game. With their Pattern Painter preschoolers learn to identify shapes and then they learn to draw shapes.
2. App games are great for practice and assessment. Kids can start at their own levels. Incorrect answers are challenges, not failures. The KidsMathFun series  separates math operations by grade level and replaces grades with wins. They even have an app for Telling Time!
3. Some apps are real tools that can be applied in fun ways.  Using Percentally kids can tally basketball stats or tally how many times someone says thank you, and then see how tallies convert to percents.
4. Apps bring math alive. The iLiveMath series is not only graphically beautiful, but their app design and navigation is fascinating. Word problems with gorgeous photos are way more fun than standard worksheets.
5. Apps offer diverse learning experiences.  Using a “right brain” approach, the Arithmaroo series replaces rote memory methods with increasingly complicated rock and hand patterns, all presented as games.

Apps offer powerful new ways to teach and to learn. We developers are just beginning to explore the possibilities!