Reviews of Maths Teaching Software

This is a collection of my personal thoughts on some maths teaching software. I have used the software to various degrees, either with my 5 year old son, Sam, or at school (Deptford Green - 11-18 secondary). I will gradually add to this collection as I get around to it. However, it will be much better if you have your own thoughts about either the software I have reviewed or other software. I will add your comments and new reviews to help this page grow and become better informed.

Maths workshop

This is a suite of six activities, based around the central theme of a workshop staffed by the entertaining Poly. Two of the activities are based on choosing parts of late design a turning them and fitting them together, when the design is complete, you get a very witty musical performance. There is also a nice extended version of the game Nim, a painting activity involving geometric tiles, and two number oriented games. One is a standard beat of the clock activity with arithmetic problems based around a bowling alley, the second is a clever machine or into which you must fit fractional parts to follow the rhythm of a tune. My five-year-old son loves this program and keeps coming back for more. He has become especially at get at the fitting and matching games and more recently had great fun with the fraction machine, the game of Nim and the bowling alley have not been so successful. This suite does not teach a lot of explicit curriculum content but is very successful at what it does. The format and the presentation are excellent and at roughly 20 pounds it seems a very good deal. (Back to top)

Thinking things through 1

Again, this is a suite of activities. They are or based on logical thinking problems, except for two parts which involve making up designed using different colored shapes which can be animated and set to music, both of which seemed not to fip in with of the rest of the package. The logic activities involve selecting an item from a list with a small number of different attributes. The situations involve curious cuddly animals or chickens in t-shirts. The program keeps track of your progress and the sets increasingly hard problems in each section. Again, my son does like this program, and has made good progress with the chickens. He also likes the moving shapes and can get mesmerised by them. The general look and feel of this program is not nearly as good as maths workshop, but the logic problems do seem to offer useful training. (Back to top)

The logical world of the Zoombinis

We have only just got started with this program and it would welcome comments from anyone who is an expert. (Back to top)

Carmen San Diego Math detective

The presentation of this program is quite magnificent. The scenario involves a fictional future world with a range of technological gizmos to find information, communicate and keep track of progress. It does seem to be a very deep program and I have so far only scratched the surface. When the mathematical content arrives, it seems to be vocabulary based, I saw a section with a very wide range of technical terms in geometry. (Back to top)

MSW Logo