Think about this situation: you’re blind, or almost. When taking a walk, you have a white cane as your assistance. To avoid objects standing still it’s great. But when crossing a street, there’s not much the cane can do about cars in motion. Therefore, you’re guided by a ticking sound when crossing the street. The cars stops at the red light, and you walk towards the ticking sound at the other side of the road. But what if there’s a lot of traffic, making lots of sound?

”The solution is adapting the volume to the surroundings”, says Gustav, one of the programmers responsible of translating the idea of Number Bonds to an app. He talks about the idea of adaptive technology, something he hadn’t used before starting to work with Number Bonds by Thinkout. ”In the same way that the sound adapts to the surroundings, the speed of the rods falling in Number Bonds by Thinkout adapts to the learners ability. Amongst other things. Even the ”tutorial” is adaptive, since it only shows if the learner has problems starting the game play.”, continues Gustav.

Using adaptive technology isn’t very common in the edutainment (or education, for that matter) sector. Rather, the regular way is repeating the assignment, missing the chance of optimizing the learning curve to the student’s abilities. If a student needs time to solve the problem, let time be given! It’s one of the most important lessons from Professor Diana Laurillard’s research, on which Number Bonds by Thinkout is based. Adaptivity is one of the advanced features you can’t see when playing the game, but it’s what makes the difference.

”Since it isn’t to regular using adaptive technology, it wasn’t to easy to get it into the app. It’s one story to program adaptivity, but a totally different one to find the right levels. If we didn’t make the adaptivity, it would be yet another of those apps trying to bore the learner to understanding. I’m glad we made it.”, says Gustav.

There’s a lot of writing out there on adaptivity and the possibility to enhance learning by using it. Here’s a one year old example from Meg Wilsons (special educations teacher in Amity Middle School Orange in southern Connecticut and Apple Distinguished Educator): Breaking Down Barriers Between General Education and Special Education and here’s some other thoughts from Karla at Totthoughts: parenting in an digital era.

According to the articles, the students perform well on the national tests they have to take. And they appreciate that digital tools allow the students to get immediate feedback – does it sound like something built into an app we might like to talk about (wink, wink)? Teachers feedback is great, but it can only be immediate to one student at a time. We just hope, given the result of the research we’ve based Number Bonds by Thinkout on, that no matter if the feedback comes from a digital tool or a teacher, it’s positive and reinforcing success without punishing mistakes.

So, what good can the use of digital tools do according to the articles?

• immediate feedback to each student.
• kids don’t get stuck in parts of the assignments where motor skills aren’t yet as developed as their intellectual capacity.
• the possibility of developing in one’s own pace – doesn’t have to feel like you’re the only one in class not understanding (meaning: spend more time on learning and less on worrying about what others can or can’t.

To us, there’s also another aspect: the chance of using the teachers as the incredible resource they are. Given the right software in the digital tools, the teacher can, at least partly, leave the teaching behind and start focusing on facilitating learning. When students interact with tools that sparks their curiosity, the teacher can focus on the the moments when guidance is needed – and do it on an individual level.

The most important of it all comes from Maria Stockhaus, politician in Sollentuna Municipality. We can only agree with her when she says that it’s all about preparing the kids for the future!

*http://www.dn.se/sthlm/vi-tror-inte-pa-klassiska-laromedel and http://www.dn.se/sthlm/surfplattor-ersatter-skolbocker-i-sollentuna (both in Swedish)

The app enhances learning through stimulating curiosity and passion. By using positive reinforcement from feedback loops it gets really efficient. It’s years of research in pedagogy, technology and neuroscience boiled down to one neat little app where the child helps a space traveller through his voyage between planets – all while learning numbers without even thinking about it.

Don’t hesitate to send us comments or questions! Contact us.

With the launch of the web page, we’re closing on the launch of our first app – Number Bonds by Thinkout. More about that soon!