iPad fun with math calculations

Getting students to do enough practice at maths for it to sink in and be retained is quite a challenge. QuickMaths is an iPad app that has been around for a long time but is still worth a shout out. It provides a limited number of questions and times how quickly they are done. At the end, students are presented with a graph of how long it took each time they attempted the exercise. This provides an incentive for the students to beat their previous times.

One unique feature of this app is that the students have to use their fingers, or a stylus, to write in the numbers. They can write anywhere on the iPad, any size, and the app will try to recognise the number as it is written. This provides incentive to improve their writing so giving them kinesthetic learning as well as visual learning.  An extra feature is the music that accompanies it which changes when the student gets a correct answer – reinforcing the message that the answer was correct.

First, students select which maths calculation they want to do (or are asked by the teacher to do!).

QuickMaths select mode

Let’s look at multiplication:

All modes have 4 levels making it suitable for individualising the practice – great for mixed level classes.

Below is the view for intermediate multiplication. The students get to see the correct answer for the previous question as well as the current question and the next question. If the student writes the wrong answer, it briefly appears in the answer box in red, then the answer disappears and waits for the next attempt. Students can choose to skip questions if they want.

After the student has completed the set of questions they are shown a graph of their times:

The above chart has been done by several people which explains why it is not in what would be expected from a students starting out.

As with other apps that start out on iPads, this app has now been made available on Windows PCs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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