7 ms·

Malawi app 'teaches UK pupils 18 months of maths in six weeks'

85 points by pinkyand 12y ago

pinkyand 12y ago
I wonder: In the article they mention that the reasons for such effectiveness are "rapid personalized feedback" and "entertaining content keeping kids focused". Those reasons could apply to many educational fields. So i wonder: are there any other apps/sites showing very strong gains versus standard teaching?
- dharma1 12y ago
  Would be good to see some kind of vetted ratings collected from a large sample size on which apps actually work better than others - there are so many apps out there and each will try to claim they work better than the rest.
- akbar501 12y ago
  > the reasons for such effectiveness are ... "entertaining content keeping kids focused" I'd be interested to see studies emerge on the value of entertainment in educational content as the child ages. In my direct experience with my own children, entertainment provides value due to engagement as mentioned in the article. But, entertainment switches from engagement to distraction around age 5 or so. My 2 year old definitely stays more engaged with the alphabet app and basic counting apps when they are entertaining. However, entertainment is highly distracting to my 6 year old. I've found at 6 she's more interested in how the learning actually applies to the real world, so she engages with educational apps as a means to an end. For example, she likes to write stories. So, she asked me to download spelling apps so that's its easier for mom and dad to read her stories. With all of that said, I'm a huge believer in the potential of technology to improve education. IMHO, education is no where near optimal.
  - pinkyand 12y ago
    Interesting comment. And i might have quoted wrong, it might speak of "engagement".
  - mcintyre1994 12y ago
    I think this could just be a question of implementation. For example, Duolingo's gamification is fantastic as an adult.
    - watwut 12y ago
      My personal experience is that Duolingo is fun for two months maximum and then it becomes an equivalent of any other exercises sheet.
- turingfail 12y ago
  There is the duolingo study: http://static.duolingo.com/s3/DuolingoReport_Final.pdf http://static.duolingo.com/s3/DuolingoReport_Final.pdf I would interpret its table 11 as emphasizing the need for entertainment or other focus retention for success within a school curriculum. (I consider duolingo good at instant feedback but incapable of retaining focus without significant external motivation.)
- e12e 12y ago
  I'm not aware of any studies/references, but AFAIK it's been shown that rapid feedback is very beneficial to most kinds of teaching (and anecdotally that seems to work well for me, and anyone I've observed/taught). As another anecdote, my dad spent some time teaching Norwegian (ie: native language, so substitute eg: English as appropriate) in primary school (ages 10 to high-school) at a small school (tiny municipality) -- and always corrected essay assignments as soon as they were handed in, so kids got them back ~1-2 hours after finishing. For that one class everyone had great progression in writing, spelling, grammar -- and perhaps most importantly -- enjoyed getting essay assignments. To the point that the teacher taking over the class(es) couldn't understand why the kids demanded to be allowed to write essays... As for "standard teaching" -- is there any such thing? Many students, single teacher teaching -- with low degree of interaction and freedom is pretty poor teaching. I'd guess it's also rather common -- but is it really the standard we want to attain?
ook 12y ago
https://onebillion.org.uk/apps https://onebillion.org.uk/apps
- DanBC 12y ago
  Holy moly - the "maths age 3 to 5" app is expensive. £15.99 for "all topics". That's $25.
  - bottled_poe 12y ago
    Or cheap, depending on what it is actually worth.
  - Silhouette 12y ago
    So these apps reportedly get a child the equivalent of 18 months of mathematical development in 6 weeks of short, fun sessions? In that case, it does seem the £15.99 price is off by at least an order of magnitude, but I suspect we disagree on the direction.
    - vidarh 12y ago
      For comparison, there are UK private primary schools that will cost you about GBP 12k/year that deliver far less measurable benefit (if any) than that, that are still wildly successful at attracting students.
      - makomk 12y ago
        The benefit of those is generally teaching kids how to pass the entrance exams for good secondary schools.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      If it works. The BBC don't link to this study. It's not linked on Dr Pitchford's website - http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/njp/research.html http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/njp/research.ht... There's a PDF called "unlocking talent" on the onebillion website, but that crashes iOS Chrome so I haven't been able to read it. It's not peer reviewed. It's not blinded. https://onebillion.org.uk/downloads/unlocking-talent-final-report.pdf https://onebillion.org.uk/downloads/unlocking-talent-final-r... I can find plenty of published research for stuff which is pure horseshit - brain gym - or for stuff approachig horseshit in the way it's applied - Omega 3; learning styles; a lot of "cures" for dyslexia. So far I have a press release from a company saying "trust us, our app works" with nothing to corroborate it. What do you get for £16? Sorting and matching Counting to 3 Lines and patterns Counting 4 to 6 Where is it? Counting 7 to 10 Patterns and shapes Counting 1 to 10 Comparing Add and take away. That's an under whelming list. It's the bare knuckle minimum you'd tolerate if you had a 1:90 teacher:pupil ratio. Tldr: give them the money because educating Malawian children is good, but for your own children buy a book and do it yourself.
dharma1 12y ago
downloaded the apps, will test these with our 4 year old over a few days. What mobile apps that effectively teach kids programming would you recommend? I have seen Scratch mentioned, and some Minecraft mods, any others that would actually work? The UK has an initiative to teach primary school kids programming, but I dread to think what the quality of teachers or children to teacher ratio will be.
- beefman 12y ago
  We like both Lightbot and Cargo-Bot http://light-bot.com http://light-bot.com http://twolivesleft.com/CargoBot/ http://twolivesleft.com/CargoBot/ Lightbot is easy enough for our 5-year-old. Our 7-year-old completed about half of Cargo-Bot (the latter half is challenging for us, both professional programmers).
- julius 12y ago
  If your kid likes wizards. This looks like fun: http://codespells.org/ http://codespells.org/ They claim to have tested this with kids at their university with great success (watch the video).
OoTheNigerian 12y ago
If they intend to reach a billion people especially in Africa I'd say Android should be the priority platform.
- coob 12y ago
  If you read one billion's materials, iPads are used as they last longer in the environment they're kept in and get better battery life. When you're charging for a day's use from solar, that matters. The apps are also written in a cross platform framework. If a good enough Android tablet comes along, it can be used. Their Maths age 3-5 app is available on Google Play. Disclosure: I'm familiar with the team.
  - OoTheNigerian 12y ago
    >If a good enough Android tablet comes along, it can be used. You have made valid points. However, the fact on ground shows that this a continent powered by Android in the smart device category. It used to be Blackberry but that is on the way out. People should be able to afford the device before thinking about how long the battery will last. And I see the apps are available on phones. There are great Android phones that last quite long. Do you know you need a credit/debit card before you can access the itunes store? How many people have access to that here? Can you give be a link to the Android app I cannot see it on the website.
    - mamcx 12y ago
      So the inner idea is that poor people must buy poor devices and higher quality is not for them. I have this discussion a lot with my customers about why give a more costly iOS device instead of android to their employers. iOS devices are more higher quality, more durable, more up-to-date in matter of software and have better app selection, quality and less prone to be invaded by virus and that kind of stuff. And yep, if you let people choose only for price them will NOT buy the best best best android device. Specially because somebody is cash deprived is why the one with most quality, most durable, more long-lasting life is the smart choose, because we don't have money for replacement (We, because I know what is be in that situation). So, if a charity wanna help poor people, is smart that they choose the best available option, not using the criteria : Poor people? Low-cost for them!
guard-of-terra 12y ago
Math is not measurable in weeks.
- DanBC 12y ago
  England has a common curriculum so you can measure maths in months. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Curriculum_(England,_Wales_and_Northern_Ireland) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Curriculum_(England,...
  - e12e 12y ago
    The only gripe I have is that they say the kids are using the apps for 30 minutes every day, for six weeks (presumably, that's 5630minutes, not 7630) -- but I don't know how much math kids that age get in school? Is it 45 minutes a day? Every other day?
    - desas 12y ago
      In general about an hour each day, some days might be 45 minutes. It will vary from school to school and year to year I think.
    - e12e 12y ago
      Hacker news asterix strikes again, eats multiplication sign. 5*6*30 minutes vs 7*6*30 ...
    - lutusp 12y ago
      Put spaces around your asterisks, to prevent their other interpretation in HN posts (i.e. markdown italic).
      - e12e 12y ago
        Thanks for pointing it out (for posterity, and new users) -- I really do know better, but I always forget, whenever I try to write some math in-line in a comment... now the edit-window for parent was closed.
hariharan_uno 12y ago
Not related to the app, but I wish people stop measuring education with time. In my opinion, kids must spend quite a bit of time understanding basic stuff. Information overdose reduces the quality of understanding. So, the metric shouldn't be "18 months of maths in 6 weeks". A child who learnt the same stuff in 18 months is able to comprehend advanced stuff in the later stages than a kid who learnt it in 6 weeks. Again, this is not a criticism about the app. We just need to give time for kids to learn stuff.
- robert_tweed 12y ago
  There's no evidence that is the case though. This app is highly interactive and provides immediate feedback, so the child knows whether they are doing things right or wrong. The fact that it's more like a game means it's much more geared to the way that children learn than just working through a bunch of problems from a book or on a blackboard. It also allows the kids to progress at their own rate: spending more time on bits they don't understand until they do understand them. Class learning tends to be subject to the lowest common denominator, or conversely some kids at the lower end of the scale get left behind. There's significant evidence that learning by interacting is the best way to promote retention. It's probably also fair to assume that the app itself does not simply promote rote learning of facts either, but rather understanding how the concepts work and repeatedly applying them to unfamiliar problems. That seems to me to be far more optimal use of the time and creates a solid foundation for going on to understand more advanced concepts later. Alternatively, why not simply spend 18 months working through even more problems on the app to get better and better? I suspect that the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty quickly and you don't get much benefit simply through longer exposure at the same level. Instead, you can just introduce more advanced concepts earlier and keep on learning. That doesn't necessarily result in information overload, so long as you are continually building on top of a foundation of throughly understanding the simpler concepts and continuing to use them. For example, once you understand addition you don't really ever stop using it and forget how to do it. Rather, you go on to learn about multiplication, exponentiation, etc. and hopefully, do so realising that they are all just fancy kinds of addition. I think it's much better if teachers can focus on ensuring that their pupils have that kind of understanding and are capable of applying it, than for example making sure that they can recite all the multiplication tables. Of course, how you should learn maths differs a bit depending on whether your ultimate goal is to be a greengrocer or a computer scientist. Hopefully we're mostly focusing on the latter now.
ddebernardy 12y ago
Immediately after high school, we got a "revision" class on maths. We did 12-years worth of it in 4 hours.
ern 12y ago
I have these apps, my kids love them,and they do get many concepts across very quickly. It's good to know that they are part of a bigger cause. However, if the apps described in the article are the same as those in the App Store, then some of the concepts are very simple (the early levels can be done by a 2 year old) so it isn't surprising that older children do very well after they are exposed to them. The later levels on number-lines and fractions are a bit more challenging, it will be interesting to see how well children do on those. Regardless, even though some of the exercises seem boring and repetitive to an adult, they do seem to have the knack of holding children's' attention.
doctorpangloss 12y ago
> And after 30 minutes, she told us, most of the children have had enough and want to go and play outside. Reassuring for anyone who, like me, would rather not have a child who prefers apps to apples. But why? Faced with straightforward evidence of better performance, even for UK children, why should we be relieved that the app fails at 30 minutes? We should be talking about making games that teach kids for hours! That little tablet is way more engaging than 99% of the experiences impoverished Malawi children are going to have. Perhaps sadly, the tablet is way more engaging that some large majority of experiences UK children will have too. It's obvious to anyone who plays video games that achieving that level of attention is possible. And with games like Civilization and Europa Universalis, you can certainly make a long-play game that teaches kids traditional educational knowledge. I hate the conspiracy idea that educators are opposed to this technology out-of-hand because it threatens them as an institution. And I'm relieved that there are researchers with government backing showing games teaching kids in rich Western countries. At some point though, parents will have to confront teachers to do what improves performance. The question is not, when will games be capable of improving educational performance? That has already happened, and the evidence will mount inevitably. The question is, when will we abandon the pastoral fantasy of today's schooling? When will parents have no opinion whether a child "prefers apps to apples," whatever that means? The dark-age Carolingians made the template for today's public schooling. If a magic book capable of delivering all the world's knowledge (i.e., an iPad) were available to them, don't you think they'd make a very different education system?
- beaner 12y ago
  You make it sound like they use it once and put it down forever. They don't. They put it down to go play (which, at that age, is another type of learning). Then they come back, maybe later that day, or the next. Haven't there been studies on this? The human brain is not good at absorbing information after durations longer than this. It has to have time to process information before it can build on top of it. This is why khan academy and duolingo are so effective, too - you consume little bites of knowledge, go away and process them, and then come back. Entertainment is not the same thing as learning. Videogames and movies are so completely different from the learning process. Yeah, you can learn from them, but for that amount of time not to be taxing you have to fill it with other stuff. Like a storyline and action and drama. They have passive elements which constitute most of their length. The constant force-stream of modern classrooms is what makes them so dull and tiring, and gives us stupid kids and disappointing graduates. I think it's pretty awesome that they get to focus for half an hour and learn at their own pace (the most critical part), then get to enjoy being kids for a while.
allegory 12y ago
I really don't like commenting on these threads but I had to bite here. I call bullshit on this. 18 months of maths is a completely vacuous measure of anything and this is pandering to teachers getting even more lazy and dependent on technology as a magic bullet. As a parent in the UK with three children at school, I can safely say that the problem is that mathematics teaching is just totally shit. The methods are totally ineffective and the fundamentals just aren't taught. It's about teaching the mechanics of passing tests, particularly at primary level which is about the SATs and nothing else. That's why this seems like such a wonderful headline and the BBC sensationalises it. Teachers buy in every technical measure and scheme that avoids introspection and looking at the real problem.
- pinkyand 12y ago
  With that kind of thinking you might like the site/book at betterexplained.com.
  - allegory 12y ago
    Yes I do indeed like that site and have purchased the ebook already! I have actually self-taught my oldest two their entire mathematical knowledge outside of school (bar that, physics and software engineering, I know little else) and they've done wonderfully compared to their peers because they understand the meaning and not just the method. That's the real tragedy of the education system here.
    - pinkyand 12y ago
      That sounds great. Did you teach them mostly what's on better explained? Also I wonder how would math studies look if we teach people the intuition, a bit of the formalism and lot of how to use numeric and symbolic tools - instead endless rote learning.
      - allegory 12y ago
        No. I actually went through the book "Mathematics, from the birth of Numbers" by Jan Gullberg (and Mathemtics for the practical man) and extracted material and wrote my own course. This was all done before betterexplained was brought to my attention. This was trialled against my children and a couple of colleagues who were interested. I've retrospectively applied some of the ideas on betterexplained to this rather than apply it directly as it's not really suitable for people so young and without some foundation. You can't just pick up that book and apply it without some formal knowledge. I've been meaning to write the whole thing up as it's about 150 pages of hand written material at the moment. Time rarely allows for such things. One of the key things I concentrate on is not teaching arithmetic but the relationships between values and the basic rules such as the commutative, distributive and associative laws (which whilst are important in arithmetic aren't understood thoroughly without abstract concepts first). The values themselves are only of consequence once you've worked out the relations. Basically it starts with algebra.
NKCSS 12y ago
Cool, I think this is the first positive article I've read about tablets at school. And if you want, you can get the apps for your child for free at https://onebillion.org.uk/apps https://onebillion.org.uk/apps
- skyshine 12y ago
  Shame they are only available for iPads and not androids. The app might be free but iPads are expensive, especially for poor families.
jacquesm 12y ago
This strongly reminds me of my favorite Derek Sivers post titled 'There is no speed limit'. If you haven't read it please do: http://sivers.org/kimo http://sivers.org/kimo
norganic 12y ago
Aside from the issue of the teaching methods being compared through measurements of time, can we discuss what, if anything is lost through this teaching platform? While it is not being suggested as a teaching replacement, does the lack of social engagement or the confusion on real world applications have any bearing on the way this material is stored inside these young minds? Perhaps if a portion of the lesson included participating as a group, or if the system switched from a lesson guide on the screen to a few remarks from the educator as a back in forth it may better incorporate both the advantages of technology and the advantages of a caring educator? I am curious to read more articles or research on such combinations if anyone can point me in the right direction. Thank you.

85 points by pinkyand 12y ago

I wonder: In the article they mention that the reasons for such effectiveness are "rapid personalized feedback" and "entertaining content keeping kids focused". Those reasons could apply to many educational fields. So i wonder: are there any other apps/sites showing very strong gains versus standard teaching?

dharma1 12y ago
Would be good to see some kind of vetted ratings collected from a large sample size on which apps actually work better than others - there are so many apps out there and each will try to claim they work better than the rest.
akbar501 12y ago
> the reasons for such effectiveness are ... "entertaining content keeping kids focused" I'd be interested to see studies emerge on the value of entertainment in educational content as the child ages. In my direct experience with my own children, entertainment provides value due to engagement as mentioned in the article. But, entertainment switches from engagement to distraction around age 5 or so. My 2 year old definitely stays more engaged with the alphabet app and basic counting apps when they are entertaining. However, entertainment is highly distracting to my 6 year old. I've found at 6 she's more interested in how the learning actually applies to the real world, so she engages with educational apps as a means to an end. For example, she likes to write stories. So, she asked me to download spelling apps so that's its easier for mom and dad to read her stories. With all of that said, I'm a huge believer in the potential of technology to improve education. IMHO, education is no where near optimal.
- pinkyand 12y ago
  Interesting comment. And i might have quoted wrong, it might speak of "engagement".
- mcintyre1994 12y ago
  I think this could just be a question of implementation. For example, Duolingo's gamification is fantastic as an adult.
  - watwut 12y ago
    My personal experience is that Duolingo is fun for two months maximum and then it becomes an equivalent of any other exercises sheet.
turingfail 12y ago
There is the duolingo study: http://static.duolingo.com/s3/DuolingoReport_Final.pdf http://static.duolingo.com/s3/DuolingoReport_Final.pdf I would interpret its table 11 as emphasizing the need for entertainment or other focus retention for success within a school curriculum. (I consider duolingo good at instant feedback but incapable of retaining focus without significant external motivation.)
e12e 12y ago
I'm not aware of any studies/references, but AFAIK it's been shown that rapid feedback is very beneficial to most kinds of teaching (and anecdotally that seems to work well for me, and anyone I've observed/taught). As another anecdote, my dad spent some time teaching Norwegian (ie: native language, so substitute eg: English as appropriate) in primary school (ages 10 to high-school) at a small school (tiny municipality) -- and always corrected essay assignments as soon as they were handed in, so kids got them back ~1-2 hours after finishing. For that one class everyone had great progression in writing, spelling, grammar -- and perhaps most importantly -- enjoyed getting essay assignments. To the point that the teacher taking over the class(es) couldn't understand why the kids demanded to be allowed to write essays... As for "standard teaching" -- is there any such thing? Many students, single teacher teaching -- with low degree of interaction and freedom is pretty poor teaching. I'd guess it's also rather common -- but is it really the standard we want to attain?

ook 12y ago

https://onebillion.org.uk/apps https://onebillion.org.uk/apps

DanBC 12y ago
Holy moly - the "maths age 3 to 5" app is expensive. £15.99 for "all topics". That's $25.
- bottled_poe 12y ago
  Or cheap, depending on what it is actually worth.
- Silhouette 12y ago
  So these apps reportedly get a child the equivalent of 18 months of mathematical development in 6 weeks of short, fun sessions? In that case, it does seem the £15.99 price is off by at least an order of magnitude, but I suspect we disagree on the direction.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    For comparison, there are UK private primary schools that will cost you about GBP 12k/year that deliver far less measurable benefit (if any) than that, that are still wildly successful at attracting students.
    - makomk 12y ago
      The benefit of those is generally teaching kids how to pass the entrance exams for good secondary schools.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    If it works. The BBC don't link to this study. It's not linked on Dr Pitchford's website - http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/njp/research.html http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/njp/research.ht... There's a PDF called "unlocking talent" on the onebillion website, but that crashes iOS Chrome so I haven't been able to read it. It's not peer reviewed. It's not blinded. https://onebillion.org.uk/downloads/unlocking-talent-final-report.pdf https://onebillion.org.uk/downloads/unlocking-talent-final-r... I can find plenty of published research for stuff which is pure horseshit - brain gym - or for stuff approachig horseshit in the way it's applied - Omega 3; learning styles; a lot of "cures" for dyslexia. So far I have a press release from a company saying "trust us, our app works" with nothing to corroborate it. What do you get for £16? Sorting and matching Counting to 3 Lines and patterns Counting 4 to 6 Where is it? Counting 7 to 10 Patterns and shapes Counting 1 to 10 Comparing Add and take away. That's an under whelming list. It's the bare knuckle minimum you'd tolerate if you had a 1:90 teacher:pupil ratio. Tldr: give them the money because educating Malawian children is good, but for your own children buy a book and do it yourself.

dharma1 12y ago

downloaded the apps, will test these with our 4 year old over a few days. What mobile apps that effectively teach kids programming would you recommend? I have seen Scratch mentioned, and some Minecraft mods, any others that would actually work? The UK has an initiative to teach primary school kids programming, but I dread to think what the quality of teachers or children to teacher ratio will be.

beefman 12y ago
We like both Lightbot and Cargo-Bot http://light-bot.com http://light-bot.com http://twolivesleft.com/CargoBot/ http://twolivesleft.com/CargoBot/ Lightbot is easy enough for our 5-year-old. Our 7-year-old completed about half of Cargo-Bot (the latter half is challenging for us, both professional programmers).
julius 12y ago
If your kid likes wizards. This looks like fun: http://codespells.org/ http://codespells.org/ They claim to have tested this with kids at their university with great success (watch the video).

OoTheNigerian 12y ago

If they intend to reach a billion people especially in Africa I'd say Android should be the priority platform.

coob 12y ago
If you read one billion's materials, iPads are used as they last longer in the environment they're kept in and get better battery life. When you're charging for a day's use from solar, that matters. The apps are also written in a cross platform framework. If a good enough Android tablet comes along, it can be used. Their Maths age 3-5 app is available on Google Play. Disclosure: I'm familiar with the team.
- OoTheNigerian 12y ago
  >If a good enough Android tablet comes along, it can be used. You have made valid points. However, the fact on ground shows that this a continent powered by Android in the smart device category. It used to be Blackberry but that is on the way out. People should be able to afford the device before thinking about how long the battery will last. And I see the apps are available on phones. There are great Android phones that last quite long. Do you know you need a credit/debit card before you can access the itunes store? How many people have access to that here? Can you give be a link to the Android app I cannot see it on the website.
  - mamcx 12y ago
    So the inner idea is that poor people must buy poor devices and higher quality is not for them. I have this discussion a lot with my customers about why give a more costly iOS device instead of android to their employers. iOS devices are more higher quality, more durable, more up-to-date in matter of software and have better app selection, quality and less prone to be invaded by virus and that kind of stuff. And yep, if you let people choose only for price them will NOT buy the best best best android device. Specially because somebody is cash deprived is why the one with most quality, most durable, more long-lasting life is the smart choose, because we don't have money for replacement (We, because I know what is be in that situation). So, if a charity wanna help poor people, is smart that they choose the best available option, not using the criteria : Poor people? Low-cost for them!

guard-of-terra 12y ago

Math is not measurable in weeks.

DanBC 12y ago
England has a common curriculum so you can measure maths in months. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Curriculum_(England,_Wales_and_Northern_Ireland) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Curriculum_(England,...
- e12e 12y ago
  The only gripe I have is that they say the kids are using the apps for 30 minutes every day, for six weeks (presumably, that's 5630minutes, not 7630) -- but I don't know how much math kids that age get in school? Is it 45 minutes a day? Every other day?
  - desas 12y ago
    In general about an hour each day, some days might be 45 minutes. It will vary from school to school and year to year I think.
  - e12e 12y ago
    Hacker news asterix strikes again, eats multiplication sign. 5*6*30 minutes vs 7*6*30 ...
  - lutusp 12y ago
    Put spaces around your asterisks, to prevent their other interpretation in HN posts (i.e. markdown italic).
    - e12e 12y ago
      Thanks for pointing it out (for posterity, and new users) -- I really do know better, but I always forget, whenever I try to write some math in-line in a comment... now the edit-window for parent was closed.

hariharan_uno 12y ago

Not related to the app, but I wish people stop measuring education with time. In my opinion, kids must spend quite a bit of time understanding basic stuff. Information overdose reduces the quality of understanding. So, the metric shouldn't be "18 months of maths in 6 weeks". A child who learnt the same stuff in 18 months is able to comprehend advanced stuff in the later stages than a kid who learnt it in 6 weeks. Again, this is not a criticism about the app. We just need to give time for kids to learn stuff.

robert_tweed 12y ago
There's no evidence that is the case though. This app is highly interactive and provides immediate feedback, so the child knows whether they are doing things right or wrong. The fact that it's more like a game means it's much more geared to the way that children learn than just working through a bunch of problems from a book or on a blackboard. It also allows the kids to progress at their own rate: spending more time on bits they don't understand until they do understand them. Class learning tends to be subject to the lowest common denominator, or conversely some kids at the lower end of the scale get left behind. There's significant evidence that learning by interacting is the best way to promote retention. It's probably also fair to assume that the app itself does not simply promote rote learning of facts either, but rather understanding how the concepts work and repeatedly applying them to unfamiliar problems. That seems to me to be far more optimal use of the time and creates a solid foundation for going on to understand more advanced concepts later. Alternatively, why not simply spend 18 months working through even more problems on the app to get better and better? I suspect that the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty quickly and you don't get much benefit simply through longer exposure at the same level. Instead, you can just introduce more advanced concepts earlier and keep on learning. That doesn't necessarily result in information overload, so long as you are continually building on top of a foundation of throughly understanding the simpler concepts and continuing to use them. For example, once you understand addition you don't really ever stop using it and forget how to do it. Rather, you go on to learn about multiplication, exponentiation, etc. and hopefully, do so realising that they are all just fancy kinds of addition. I think it's much better if teachers can focus on ensuring that their pupils have that kind of understanding and are capable of applying it, than for example making sure that they can recite all the multiplication tables. Of course, how you should learn maths differs a bit depending on whether your ultimate goal is to be a greengrocer or a computer scientist. Hopefully we're mostly focusing on the latter now.

ddebernardy 12y ago

Immediately after high school, we got a "revision" class on maths. We did 12-years worth of it in 4 hours.

ern 12y ago

I have these apps, my kids love them,and they do get many concepts across very quickly. It's good to know that they are part of a bigger cause. However, if the apps described in the article are the same as those in the App Store, then some of the concepts are very simple (the early levels can be done by a 2 year old) so it isn't surprising that older children do very well after they are exposed to them. The later levels on number-lines and fractions are a bit more challenging, it will be interesting to see how well children do on those. Regardless, even though some of the exercises seem boring and repetitive to an adult, they do seem to have the knack of holding children's' attention.

doctorpangloss 12y ago

> And after 30 minutes, she told us, most of the children have had enough and want to go and play outside. Reassuring for anyone who, like me, would rather not have a child who prefers apps to apples. But why? Faced with straightforward evidence of better performance, even for UK children, why should we be relieved that the app fails at 30 minutes? We should be talking about making games that teach kids for hours! That little tablet is way more engaging than 99% of the experiences impoverished Malawi children are going to have. Perhaps sadly, the tablet is way more engaging that some large majority of experiences UK children will have too. It's obvious to anyone who plays video games that achieving that level of attention is possible. And with games like Civilization and Europa Universalis, you can certainly make a long-play game that teaches kids traditional educational knowledge. I hate the conspiracy idea that educators are opposed to this technology out-of-hand because it threatens them as an institution. And I'm relieved that there are researchers with government backing showing games teaching kids in rich Western countries. At some point though, parents will have to confront teachers to do what improves performance. The question is not, when will games be capable of improving educational performance? That has already happened, and the evidence will mount inevitably. The question is, when will we abandon the pastoral fantasy of today's schooling? When will parents have no opinion whether a child "prefers apps to apples," whatever that means? The dark-age Carolingians made the template for today's public schooling. If a magic book capable of delivering all the world's knowledge (i.e., an iPad) were available to them, don't you think they'd make a very different education system?

beaner 12y ago
You make it sound like they use it once and put it down forever. They don't. They put it down to go play (which, at that age, is another type of learning). Then they come back, maybe later that day, or the next. Haven't there been studies on this? The human brain is not good at absorbing information after durations longer than this. It has to have time to process information before it can build on top of it. This is why khan academy and duolingo are so effective, too - you consume little bites of knowledge, go away and process them, and then come back. Entertainment is not the same thing as learning. Videogames and movies are so completely different from the learning process. Yeah, you can learn from them, but for that amount of time not to be taxing you have to fill it with other stuff. Like a storyline and action and drama. They have passive elements which constitute most of their length. The constant force-stream of modern classrooms is what makes them so dull and tiring, and gives us stupid kids and disappointing graduates. I think it's pretty awesome that they get to focus for half an hour and learn at their own pace (the most critical part), then get to enjoy being kids for a while.

allegory 12y ago

I really don't like commenting on these threads but I had to bite here. I call bullshit on this. 18 months of maths is a completely vacuous measure of anything and this is pandering to teachers getting even more lazy and dependent on technology as a magic bullet. As a parent in the UK with three children at school, I can safely say that the problem is that mathematics teaching is just totally shit. The methods are totally ineffective and the fundamentals just aren't taught. It's about teaching the mechanics of passing tests, particularly at primary level which is about the SATs and nothing else. That's why this seems like such a wonderful headline and the BBC sensationalises it. Teachers buy in every technical measure and scheme that avoids introspection and looking at the real problem.

pinkyand 12y ago
With that kind of thinking you might like the site/book at betterexplained.com.
- allegory 12y ago
  Yes I do indeed like that site and have purchased the ebook already! I have actually self-taught my oldest two their entire mathematical knowledge outside of school (bar that, physics and software engineering, I know little else) and they've done wonderfully compared to their peers because they understand the meaning and not just the method. That's the real tragedy of the education system here.
  - pinkyand 12y ago
    That sounds great. Did you teach them mostly what's on better explained? Also I wonder how would math studies look if we teach people the intuition, a bit of the formalism and lot of how to use numeric and symbolic tools - instead endless rote learning.
    - allegory 12y ago
      No. I actually went through the book "Mathematics, from the birth of Numbers" by Jan Gullberg (and Mathemtics for the practical man) and extracted material and wrote my own course. This was all done before betterexplained was brought to my attention. This was trialled against my children and a couple of colleagues who were interested. I've retrospectively applied some of the ideas on betterexplained to this rather than apply it directly as it's not really suitable for people so young and without some foundation. You can't just pick up that book and apply it without some formal knowledge. I've been meaning to write the whole thing up as it's about 150 pages of hand written material at the moment. Time rarely allows for such things. One of the key things I concentrate on is not teaching arithmetic but the relationships between values and the basic rules such as the commutative, distributive and associative laws (which whilst are important in arithmetic aren't understood thoroughly without abstract concepts first). The values themselves are only of consequence once you've worked out the relations. Basically it starts with algebra.

NKCSS 12y ago

Cool, I think this is the first positive article I've read about tablets at school. And if you want, you can get the apps for your child for free at https://onebillion.org.uk/apps https://onebillion.org.uk/apps

skyshine 12y ago
Shame they are only available for iPads and not androids. The app might be free but iPads are expensive, especially for poor families.

jacquesm 12y ago

This strongly reminds me of my favorite Derek Sivers post titled 'There is no speed limit'. If you haven't read it please do: http://sivers.org/kimo http://sivers.org/kimo

norganic 12y ago

Aside from the issue of the teaching methods being compared through measurements of time, can we discuss what, if anything is lost through this teaching platform? While it is not being suggested as a teaching replacement, does the lack of social engagement or the confusion on real world applications have any bearing on the way this material is stored inside these young minds? Perhaps if a portion of the lesson included participating as a group, or if the system switched from a lesson guide on the screen to a few remarks from the educator as a back in forth it may better incorporate both the advantages of technology and the advantages of a caring educator? I am curious to read more articles or research on such combinations if anyone can point me in the right direction. Thank you.