Middle School Math 7th Grade
by Monkey in the Middle Apps, LLC
If you are familiar with what is available in the App Store as it relates to educational math games, many of them are focused towards the pre-school to late elementary years. If however you are a parent, an educator or both, that has middle school students or children then maybe you are in need of something more appropriate for your Apple device. Currently on the market is Middle School Math 7th Grade by new developers Monkey in the Middle Apps. As you travel through various locations around the world with an animated monkey, the object of the game is to guide him sideways, up and down ladders with the tilting magic of your Apple device. In order to get him safely down, it is your goal to answer a variety of algebraic expressions. Through your middle schoolers exploration, they might make a real world connection as Middle School Math 7th Grade bares a slight resemblance to the video game version of Donkey Kong.
Upon entering the application, you will notice that the main menu options are basic and to the point. There is not a great deal of flashiness that needs to attract the audience. In addition, when opening Middle School Math 7th Grade you will also notice that your Game Center app is queued up. Your achievements and leader board stats will be stored in your Game Center account as it relates to your individual mobile device. The initial download of Middle School Math 7th Grade is free and provides users with four mathematical topics to review: negative numbers as it relates to all operations (+,-, x, and /), absolute value and the orders of operation. Within each academic level there are also three levels of difficulty. Your achievements are presented numerically in banana icons within your Overall Ratings window. A note to the developers – might it be possible to store such things as: About, Leaders, Achievements and such as a separate icon that users could tap on as an “on needed” basis. By doing this, it would open the main screen a bit to present the Overall Ratings window a bit bigger. If over time, your middle school feels that they would like additional topics/questions to their Middle School Math 7th Grade application, there is an in-app purchase option of .99¢.
Middle Schoolers will be very quick to pick up on how to manipulate. Simply choose a mathematical concept from your ratings window and the game will begin. It is important to note that players are timed, as the clock appears in the upper right hand corner of your screen. With a tilt to the left or right of your Apple device, navigate the monkey to the ladder. As your jungle friend approaches the ladder, it will automatically slide down. Randomly while tilting and sliding down ladders, math boxes will suddenly appear with a numeric expression and four possible answers. Simply tap the correct answer, answers that turn green are correct and those that turn red are incorrect. With every correct answer, users will earn a banana token. A final grade report is then generated, sharing your time and the number of bananas earned out of the total questions attempted. If necessary, parents and/or educators can have grade reports emailed to them to explain where successes or difficulties may have occurred. This report is also important as it can guide classroom teachers for future follow up instruction for a small or large group. From the point of view of both an educator and a parent, Applicable2U does have some suggestions that we would love to see in a future update:
1) When an incorrect answer has been chosen, students should see some kind of consequence. If sending the monkey back up levels, then it is important to be consistent. An alternative consequence could be adding a particular block of time to your final score as a penalty.
2) When problems appear, students are not pressured to complete in a particular amount of time, however, some students may require a scrap pad to solve. It might be interesting to offer a notebook like icon which students could use as a calculator or to follow through with their step by step procedures in answering. Their finger or even an appropriate mobile device stylus could be used as a pencil. This would accommodate students of all learning modalities.
3) This is an educational math application, however, it might be interesting to add some level of challenges. Such challenges may include obstacles that the monkey would need to jump over, swing across or things to collect along the way. Although Middle School Math 7th Grade may be for young adults 12+, they still require some challenges along the way as they game for a reason. The goal is to keep the player engaged and challenged academically. With every wrong answer, supplemental questions of similarity should be presented. For those consistently getting correct answers, problems should increase in difficulty.
Overall, Applicable2u believes that Middle School Math 7th Grade has potential. Currently, they are reviewing suggestions by both parents and teachers on ways to improve their educational app. A component that we have yet to see by other developers is the ability to build and load your own question sets via HTML code that Monkey in the Middle Apps provides via their website. If you would like to learn more about Monkey in the Middle Apps, simply click here. To begin climbing down your ladders of algebraic expressions, simply click here to access Middle School Math 7th Grade as a FREE download from your iTunes library today!
Applicable2U 