Gaming

New Mobile App Aims To Hone K-12 Math Skills

• By Michael Hart
• 04/25/16

A new mobile-based electronic game system has been launched to introduce critical math skills to children. Using a series of games intended for students in grades K-6, Zap Zap Math takes children through space-themed math challenges designed to encourage players to win points at the same time they develop academic skills.

Zap Zap Math also provides parents with a learning progress dashboard, a portal for parents and teachers to remotely monitor how a child is progressing in each learning topic and helping them to focus on certain ones that require attention. Parents or teachers can log in to the dashboard on either a computer or mobile device and monitor their children's work in real time.

"Zap Zap Math uses a more effective learning technique than just doing math worksheets at home," Zap Zap Math CEO and Founder Wei Chong Ng. "Now students build their math learning on higher-order thinking, while having fun and improving their skills."

During the last five months that the game has been in beta phase, it has been downloaded more than 150,000 times, according to Zap Zap Math representatives. It has been featured as a "Best New App" on Apple App Store and featured in the "Made for Families" section on Google Play. It can be downloaded for free in both marketplaces in three different languages: English, Spanish and Bahasa Malaysia.

"When my students play Zap Zap Math at home, they come back to class with improved math skills and true interest towards math," said Julius A. Carebia, a sixth-grade math teacher at UCSI International School in Selangor, Malaysia, one of the pilot schools that has tested the app.