iRadar: Improve Your Kids’ Basic Math Skills With The Help Of MathBoard [iPad]

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Improve Your Kids’ Basic Math Skills With The Help Of MathBoard [iPad]

Improve Your Kids’ Basic Math Skills With The Help Of MathBoard [iPad]: "

If I had to choose which subjects I learned at elementary and middle school which proved to be really useful in later life, mathematics would definitely be one of them. We use basic math so naturally all the time – from counting how many days left to the weekend, to calculating how much money we have left until the end of the month – that we often forget the struggle we had to go through to learn it in the first place.

We all know that there’s no shortcut. The best – and the only – way to master math is to practice, practice, and practice and MathBoard for iPad was built to do just that, to help users improve their basic math skills using quizzes. This $4.99 app does it in style.

From One Quiz To Another

As a father of two little daughters – one in kindergarten and the other in early elementary school, I have first hand experience with the difficulty of regularly coming up with lots of math exercises to give to my children. I personally think the price I paid for the app is well worth the money. Not only does the app generate continuous flows of math problems, but it can also produce problems with different levels of difficulty. So the app will be useful for years to come, for all levels of students (including their parents) and the amazing thing is, children love using MathBoard on the iPad.

MathBoard’s interface is divided into several panes – the main pane displaying individual math problems, the “Result” pane displaying a list of student results for each problem, the “History” pane displaying a list of saved quizzes, and the “Settings” pane customizing the quizzes.

01a welcome screen

A quiz will start after you tap on “Play“. You will be presented with one problem at a time, and you can tap on one of the answers to continue to the next problem.

01b start quiz mc

You can use the lower part of the board to calculate the answer. Write the numbers using your finger and tap “Expand” if you need more room to write.

01c chalkboard 1

There are five different colors of chalk and one eraser you can use. Tap “shrink” to go back to the problem pane.

01d chalkboard2

To increase the difficulty level, you can choose the “Fill in the blanks” option instead of “Multiple choice” from the “Settings“. You can use the up and down arrows to choose numbers for your answer, or you can summon the keypad by tapping the small square to the left of the problem.

01e fill blanks 1

If you are stuck, you can use the “Problem Solver“. This feature will reveal the steps needed to solve the problem. But please note that every problem that is solved using this feature will be considered as a wrong answer.

01f problem solver

You can get more information on every step that has a small “i” next to it. Tap the “i” to reveal the information bubble.

01g solver2

You can stop in the middle of the quiz if you want to by clicking on the “x” icon at the top left of the problem pane.

01j stop quiz

After finishing one set of problems in a quiz, you will get a summary of your performance – including the number of correct answers and the time you needed to finish the quiz.

01h excellent

Then you can save the quiz for future reference.

01w save quiz

You can also play the quiz again. Choose whether you want to start a new quiz, replay the previous quiz, or just replay the wrong answers from the previous quiz.

01x restart quiz

Quick Look At The Settings

“Settings” is the place for you to customize MathBoard. Choose the operators that you want to use in the quiz – from the simplest addition and subtraction, to the more complicated ones like cubes and square root. Use this option to increase or decrease the difficulty level to fit the student’s competence level.

02a settings1

Decide how many numbers you want the student to solve in every quiz under the “Problems” option. Decide also whether you want the problems to be “multiple choice” or “fill in the blanks“.

The next part is all about setting up the number range and digit limit. Enable the “Allow Negative Answers” option for higher level students.

02b settings2

The last set of settings deals with Time Style (Elapsed or Countdown), Sound Effects, and LanSchool (if MathBoard is used within a school or personal network with LanSchool software enabled).

02c settings3