Most children would rather play video games than memorise their times tables. But a new app developed by researchers at Edith Cowan University (ECU) means they can now do both at the same time.
The Numbeat app was recently trialled by more than 100 grade three students in four Western Australian schools with encouraging results.
Students who played for 30 minutes a day over two weeks showed a 5% average reduction in the time it took them to correctly answer maths questions.
Early levels of the app, which has similar gameplay to Angry Birds or Bejeweled, can be passed by counting alone, but as players progress counting will be too slow for players to complete the tasks within the time limit.
This encourages students to use higher order solutions involving subtraction, addition, multiplication and division.
Numbeat developer Professor Craig Speelman said the results were encouraging and showed that educational games have a role to play complementing traditional classroom lessons.
“The results show that educational games have a role to play in complementing traditional classroom lessons.”
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The App is for sale at the iTunes store or via here for $5.49.
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