The Game I chose to review is Math Workshop. This program has eight math based activity rooms, including the “Rhythm Shop” and “Bowling for Numbers.” The software teaches basic math skills such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, estimating and fractions. Most of the games are drill exercises for the purpose of memorization. The program overall is a lot of fun, and would be appealing for students who do not always enjoy doing math. This program makes math an enjoyable experience.
The Student's Perspective
From a student’s perspective I found that this game would be very engaging and entertaining for children from ages 6-10. The program has cartoon characters, it is fun and I believe students would enjoy the animated behavior of the characters. There are lots of things for students to try (ie. play with the different shapes). While doing the fraction activities, the answers become animated and fly around the room, this makes it entertaining for students.
The activities also instill an element of competition if the student plays the games with another person. Many students may find this motivating and make them want to do better at the activities. Students may also feel pride in their accomplishment at the end of each activity. In the window patterning activity, students are able to create designs and print them off. Being able to see their complete work on screen as well as on paper further motivates students.
The Teacher's Perspective
As a teacher I believe that this program does have benefits to it. Each activity helps student practice and develop different skills. There are activities which exercise your skills in visual construction, detecting patterns, and solving geometric puzzles.
Math Workshop has four levels of difficulty. This is useful because it is a tool that children can use according to the level they are comfortable at. The teacher can customize the program's difficulty to match exactly the skill levels of the class. The program tracks each user's performance, by specific math activity.
One area of concern is that the activities in Math Workshop promote memorization rather than learning specific skills/techniques. Though this is not an ideal teaching tool, I do believe it is an excellent choice to help reinforce math lessons taught in class and a good activity for students to use during their ‘free time’ or ‘computer time’.
Another Review
I found a very short review for Math Workshop at: http://mathequity.terc.edu/gw/html/MathWorkshopReview.html
After providing an overview of the program, this review goes on to describe if the game is equitable and if it is in fact a good game. The review states that the game is not appropriate for children who do not respond well to the animations (for example the help button screams “Help!” Such animations may be distracting for some students. It also states that the program involves little for students who require explicit instruction or feedback.
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