App Title: Alien Equation

Grade Level: 3rd - 6th grades

Cost: $0.99

Purpose: A 

As the old adage says, practice does indeed make perfect. Learning and mastering basic math facts is a necessary skill, evil or not, for everyone early on in their schooling.  However, mastering these necessary skills isn’t always the easiest of tasks for some students.  While some students seem to be born knowing their basic math facts inside and out and some even pick up on how to form and solve equations almost immediately, other students need plenty of practice. 

For those students and teachers looking for an engaging, more challenging way to not only test their mathematical expertise, but their ability to form equations as well, Alien Equation by Funner Labs, offers an interactive interface that is both fun and educational.  Designed to improve one’s understanding, cohesion, and fluency in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, Alien Equation offers three levels of play; beginner, expert and practice levels so students can feel comfortable and not pressured and develop at their own pace.

The storyline behind the game is based on the fact that the navigation computer on your spaceship has a virus and if you re-teach the computer math it will save the day rather than having it shut down with the inevitable destruction of your planet. The storyline itself can be interesting enough for students and draw them into the game.

Program Functionality: A

This mathematical game is compatible with the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.  It is user-friendly and easily navigated by students. The game begins with a brief tutorial that takes you through the basics of the game play. The game is played on a grid comprised of numbers and operators which you can move horizontally and vertically to completely form valid equations.  By moving the rows and columns you can align the numbers and operators to form these valid equations and each time you complete one your progress bar will fill up across the bottom of the screen, complete the progress bar and you complete the level. As you progress the board will also get larger and larger in that there will be more tiles available making more options available.

Each level introduces a new operator to the puzzle board and each time you complete a level the board will be updated with an additional operator until you have addition, subtraction, multiplication and division all available for you to calculate with. Filling your progress bar, along with the points you get each time you complete a calculation are your only targets. However as you get through the earlier stages of the beginner levels or immediately as you start the expert levels, viruses start to be introduced and they add an extra level of difficulty to the game. Some of the viruses prevent the tiles from being moved while other will get more and more aggressive and if you leave them untouched for too long they will eventually explode taking your computer and your spaceship with it. In addition to the difficulty levels, there is also a practice mode that allows you to choose which operators are used and allowing you to isolate certain ones if you want to focus on them.

Overall Educational Value: A

With such a progressive way of adding new challenges, offering a storyline as a ‘reason’ for them to practice their math skills, and being engaging, students are able to learn at their own pace and improve their skills while having fun at the same time.

Recommendation:

I recommend this app for both classroom and personal use at this time.

Classroom Use Examples / Ideas:

This application can easily be assimilated into the classroom as a way for students to practice the mathematical concept in a visual and entertaining way or use it as ‘homework for added practice.

Developer Website: Funner Labs
iTunes Link: Alien Equation
Reviewer Name: Cheryl Lykowski