NumberShire 1: Home

I am a homeschooling mom and we've used a large range of curriculum and online learning tools. Numbershire is a big hit! An excellent balance of fun and learning, math skills are introduced incrementally, and the adventure continues each time they play. Each of my 3 youngest, aged 4-8 has an account and they all love it. The reward-based learning really works for them, and I like that it keeps track of each of their progress independently. I also like that it has a clear ending to each lesson, when the student is led back to their "house" to go to bed until the next day's lesson.

With all the fanfare about the developers working with the University of Oregon and the published results of the Numbershire pilot study I was hoping for a fantastic gaming and educational experience. There are a few fundamental issues that impede engagement with the learning material. The narrative of the game is so extensive that it gets in the way of children having fun with math. The story telling is so extensive that it becomes an obstacle for ELL and children with speech and language delays. My children attempted to answer the questions correctly but because of the design, they had to wait for their answers to be recognized until the long droning narrator finished his monologue. It was so frustrating that both my children closed the app. There is no option to skip levels should the child want to find more challenging problems to solve. The game is marketed as adaptive but when the child is forced to conform to the game play instead of the other way around, I’m not sure the investment in the adaptive technology is worth the effort. Did the researchers forget that children are intuitive explorers and that math is about constructing meaning of their world? Why impose such rigid rules onto small children? Data-collection is required to drive the adaptive engine which becomes more important than imparting joy in learning math. This is what I hate about data-driven learning applications. I downloaded the app in hopes to find supplemental math curriculum to support struggling students. I was totally hooked with the marketing messages being research-based. But in the end, the individual who should have the last say as to whether or not this app is “effective” should be the child. If the child can’t engage, then the designer needs to take that feedback and reiterate the design.

You can sense right away that the developers were working with professional educators to create this math learning tool. I bought this app for my daughter as I am a huge believer in game-based learning. You can tell she is being challenged when she plays, which is a good thing, but what I love to see is that the developers were very purposeful in creating a thoughtful story arch with fun incentives (winning pets and other prizes) that really help motivate and drive her interest. My main critique would be that it has a little bit of an overall linear and drawn out feel. If the child wants to "re-do" a level for example she has to re-sit through story lines that can be a little long in my opinion without the option of skipping ahead. Overall though, a very skillfully executed leaning tool. Engaging and educational. A lot of purposeful touches. Quite impressive.