Multi-Touch Maths - iPad App

Firstly, a little Christmas message made by Ladybug's Teacher Files and sent to me via A Teacher's Treasure blog which I follow. You can make your own at http://picasion.com. I'll have to try that out so that next year I've got an animation that includes Jesus' birth, the reason for the season.
And now, back to the post at hand...

I have another iPad app to share. I tried this one out on my Mum and my grandparents on Christmas Day and it was actually quite popular. It was fun watching Mum trying to push the screen like a button, no matter how many times I tried to assure her that it only required a light touch. In fact, if she'd pushed hard enough to make the "button" move I would have been very UNimpressed as it would have broken my screen.....not a likely senario at all.

Mum got her own back though. As I rocked out my numeracy project add/sub strategies, she announced that I was doing maths just like she'd taught me. "Doh!" I though. Why couldn't I have remember that! I relied on the written strategies I was taught at school until 2009 when I taught (and learnt) year 6 Numeracy Project!! It just goes to show how trends come and go and come back again.

I have to say a big thanks to Tracy and Anna for introducing me to this App after they were shown it at a session run by the wonderful Allanah.

Multi-Touch Maths (available from iTunes App Store)

To play the game, the children have to first answer the question and then work out how to make the answer using the paint splodges provided. They need to use multiple fingers at once as the splodges only count while the finger is on them.

So, to answer the above question with an answer of 7, the player would need to place one finger on the 5 and one on the 2, OR, 7 fingers on the 1, OR, one finger on the 5 and 2 fingers on the 1.

The App gives addition, subtraction, multiplication and division questions or any combination of these. Questions can also be limited by the number of questions per set or by the maximum answer. The latter is great for targeting fact groups. Times tables (multiplication only, max answer 100), 10s facts (add & sub, max answer 10), etc.

These settings are accessed by placing a finger on both cogs on the main question screen. (visible in the second screen shot of this post.)

This app is great for helping kids to master the art of pulling apart numbers and putting them together in new ways. It's a great way to get those reluctant mathematicians away from using their fingers. They may get the answer from their fingers but they have to part-whole to tell the iPad the answer.

Also, answering this way helps to build the solo players dexterity as they stretch to cover all required splodges with the required number of fingers. Or, for a more team approach, the kids are each only allowed to use one hand (or, one finger to get even larger numbers involved). This means they have to work together and use their communication skills as well to complete the task. A great way to get lots of kids involved at once.

If you have a quiet student, they get to answer every 4th question on their own and can "boss the others round", telling them how to answer it. The quiet thinker is hands off for their question so they learn to voice their thinking around their peers.

BUT, MOST IMPORTANTLY; THEY LOVE IT!!
Here is a video of a group of kids (mostly active, sporty, year 4-6 boys!) who were having so much fun playing, they actually asked if I minded giving up MY lunch break so they could play through their's. This is only a small snippet of that video as they kept playing for ages.

NOTE; One draw back of this app, is that the game does get confused at times and sort of freezes or retains numbers when fingers are removed. If this happens, I generally find it's easiest to close and restart. I'm sure an update will address this in the not to distant future. Apps are regularly updating themselves. Although, as far as faults go, this is not a terribly annoying one because you don't really loose any data unless you were going after a high score. Having said that, the scoring system isn't all that interesting anyway. The kids had enough fun without scores. In fact they barely looked at them. They were more interested in getting quicker so a timer function would have been more useful. You could give them an external stopwatch if you wanted to up the anti. They can time how long it takes to complete a set number of questions and then try to beat their record.