DoodleMaths is a website and
application developed by Ez Education as part of a family of apps, that
includes DoodleTables, DoodleEnglish, and DoodleSpell which specialise in
teaching children between the ages of 4 and 14 about their times tables, English,
and spelling respectively. A further app called DoodleConnect is a parent app
that allows them to monitor their child’s progress within the other apps.
DoodleMaths, as the name suggests,
focuses on mathematics in general. The app uses an algorithm called Proxima that
takes in the student’s results and the national curriculum for the child’s age
in order to provide questions that give a suitable challenge (Doodle, 2019). However, if parents find that the
programme it progressing their child too fast, then the child’s teacher can
recalibrate the child’s results.
My experience with the app has
entirely come from my younger brother’s homework during Year 1 in primary
school. In my experience, the questions and topics set for him to learn through
the doodlemaths’ “New This Week” mode have been steadily increasing in
difficulty, but in such a way that he is building on what has come before, such
as one week’s topic discussing how to add 9, and then the following week’s
topic focusing on how to subtract 9. Each week he brings home a new certificate
and has managed to maintain a streak of 150 consecutive days. However, the app
does give students and parents some breathing room in this regard as if you
miss a day then you can catch up by completing two days’ worth of worth the following
day.
However, that does not mean
that the Proxima algorithm is fool proof. There have been a number of times
that my brother has logged onto doodlemaths and become upset as the class
teacher has recalibrated everyone as some parents and students felt that the
questions were getting too hard. In a review on the google play store, David
Winter (2019) commented along a similar train of thought, describing how his
son became disillusioned with the app and maths as he compared the number of
stars that he’d collected to his friends through the “social media aspects” of
the app. This is similar to Dunn and Darlington’s (2016) findings in regards to
teacher led differentiation in regards to decreasing student moral as whilst
the students are working on different topics at different times because of the
Proxima algorithm the feeling of collecting less stars that their classmates can
cause students to begin feeling worthless and lose interest in the app since
they aren’t progressing or doing well. Through a combination of low star
results, comparing themselves to their friends, and the app providing easy
questions, students could also fall into self-fulfilling prophecies where
because they are always given simpler work than their classmates, they begin to
see themselves as rubbish at mathematics and disengage from the homework
(Jussim, Robustelli, & Cain, 2009). The app does make up for this by having
a “tricky” tab, where any questions that a student has struggled with is stored
(on the student’s request) to be attempted later when they have furthered their
understanding or had the chance to ask their teacher.
The main mode of the application
is the daily question mode that begins with 5 questions a day, although as students
progress, this can increase to 6 or 7 questions a day. These questions increase
in difficulty based on how well students perform. After completing several of
these daily tests, the “New This Week” section of the app becomes available which
attempts to teach students a new concept. These small lessons are extremely
small in scope (such as a single lesson on how to effectively add 9), and so
can help students progress without throwing multiple new concepts at them.
However, an issue that I’ve encountered with these is that they appear to favour
lots of words over pictures, which while fine for older children with better
reading ages, but younger children who aren’t as confident in terms of reading
may struggle to make sense of these explanations without adult help. This idea
is further complicated as they use more complex mathematical terms such as “quotient”
within the explanations and questions, the meaning of which isn’t always common
knowledge, leading to parents being unable to explain a question to their child
whilst helping with their homework.
Overall, doodlemaths is a helpful
app that is able to enhance a student’s mathematical ability by encouraging
them through the use of games, stars, and certificates. However, the
application is held back by its ability to discourage students for which
mathematics does not come naturally as well as the complex vocabulary that it
inserts to be used with 5 year olds whose parents might not know the definition.
Bibliography
Doodle. (2019, August). Technology that 'thinks'
and sets children's work. Retrieved February 05, 2020, from Doodlemaths:
www.doodlemaths.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/fact-sheet-proxima.pdf
Dunn, K., & Darlington, E. (2016). GCSE
Geography teachers' experience of differentiation in the classroom. International
Research in Geographical and Enviromental Education, 25(4), 344-357.
Jussim, L., Robustelli, S. L., & Cain, T. R.
(2009). Teacher Expectations and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies. In K. R.
Wentzel, & A. Wigfield (Eds.), Handbook of Motivation at School
(pp. 349-380). New York: Routledge.
Winter, D. (2019, December 14). Review of
DoodleMaths. Google Play Store. Retrieved February 05, 2020, from
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ezeducation.doodlemaths.ks2&hl=en_GB&reviewId=gp%3AAOqpTOGKYIdkXvzIl-O3TiBpbDkYaky3Z0Fa1nHBlPKvxppLav-NpKJcUeE6ETKGgPM9rrih_8ev5th7tPvnIeM
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