Mathletics – Online Training and Competition Foreshadows Future of Education (video) by Aaron Saenz

Mathletics is another sign that the internet holds the future of education. Sydney-based 3P Learning developed the Mathletics program as a way to augment traditional K-12 maths education. At school and at home, students login to the Mathletics website to perform exercises with fun visuals and continuous feedback.


Photo: Singularity Hub

They can compete with classmates and peers all over the world to see who can get the highest scores in math competitions geared at their learning level. With the ability to set their own pace, see their progress, and strive to outperform others, children on the Mathletics program are encouraged to become engrossed and enamored with learning math.
There are more than 3 million students registered worldwide, with more than 10 billion correct answers recorded on the website. 3P Learning gives you a sneak peek into a typical Mathletics enabled classroom in the video below. Motivating, adaptive, and media-rich, Mathletics embodies the type of digital education that will one day replace our traditional systems. Go Math.

Countries all over the world are feeling the crunch when it comes to finding qualified workers in science and tech-based fields. We need more engineers, scientists, programmers…we need more mathletes. Yet mathematics is seen from a very early age as too difficult, boring, and inapplicable. Additionally, we tend to stereotype success in math to select demographics of children (usually by race and gender).
The truth is that math can be fun and life-changing to all students if it is presented in a way that challenges children correctly. Engaging graphics, constant feedback, tracking of improvement, self-determined pacing, reward systems, and encouragements to compete – these are some of the qualities of an educational system that will teach students to love math, and Mathletics really does have them all. If it was free instead of $100 per year (less if you buy in bulk), I’d be dancing in the streets with joy.
The kids who use Mathletics already seem ready to meet me there, judging by the following promotional video:

Bett Awards 2009 Primary Digital Content category winner




Everyday, more online resources are being created that could profoundly augment children’s education. We just saw Google place thousands of pieces of famous art in virtual museums that can be explored in exquisite detail. Gapminder is making global statistics more accessible through colorful graphs and user-friendly interfaces. At the same time we see more technologies that could change the classroom, such as a robot that lets students teleconference into school or a statistical method of detecting cheating. These innovations will hopefully push educators towards challenging traditional classrooms and taking the step to promote digital education. Mathletics is a great example of how this progress has already begun, but there is still much more that could happen in the years ahead.
The future of education could be radically different, and better, if we find the way to let technology inspire us to learn.
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Source: Singularity Hub