What makes a good digital math tool?

During the COVID-19 disruption to education, the use of edtech tools surged. In fact, according, recent research, downloads of education apps in the U.S. increased by 130 percent. 

Within this surge, math saw the biggest jump in edtech tool usage. Math has historically been board-based in the classroom and paper-based at home. And while students had used digital tools like math games and at-home practice apps, these were strictly supplemental. Over this last year, however, as a result of COVID-19, teachers and students have had to adapt to using digital math-related tools, some for the first time. 

Since March of 2020, the usage of Texthelp’s own STEM application, EquatIO, has risen by more than 150 percent. …Read More

Video games are the perfect way to teach math, says Stanford mathematician

Video games are a much better representation system for learning mathematics than are symbolic representations on a static page, Forbes reports. If the technology had been available in 350BCE, Euclid’s Elements would have been a video game. All Euclid’s arguments are instructions to perform actions: draw an arc, drop a perpendicular, circumscribe the square, etc. It would be much more efficient, both as a communicative medium and for the student learning, if instead of writing instructions in words, the student was presented with opportunities to perform those ACTIONS…

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