Mathletics - All the kids are doing it.

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Earlier this year, my dauighter Emma came home and told me about
this new thing she was doing called Mathletics. I had images of girls in
classrooms doing 100s of equations against the clock. She showed me what show me
what she was doing, and it was a remarkable Flash app which allowed her to do
maths exercises online, while competiting with the other girls in her class, and
her year.

She was really enthusiastic about this and each evening would spend 30
minutes on line doing these math exercises, so that she would be listed in the
top 10 of her year. It was so cool to watch her play online, while learning
addition and substraction. She even designed her own little avatar.

Then a few weeks later, Billy came
home and told me that *HE* was doing Mathletics in class too. Huh? Is
he competing against 8 year old girls too? Nope, he's competing againsts ALL
Year 7 students in Australia. Now he's spend 30 minutes each night to get into
the national top 10.

Then this term, Antony, or
as he likes to be know, 'Rigo, comes home and says
that he is doing Mathletics
too, and he is in Year 9.

WOW.

So, these Mathletics folks must have a good salesforce, because there are a
lot of schools and a lot of kids online.

I was intrigued about this, so I did a "view source" of the homepage and found the following

Mathletics is Australia's most used educational website!

It is the next generation in learning, helping students enjoy maths and
improve their results. Mathletics covers the full Kindergarten to Year 12
curriculum.

Benefits of Mathletics

  • Students love it, becoming highly motivated to improve.
  • Phenomenal improvement rates.
  • Used and trusted by more than 700 Australian schools.
  • Weekly report emailed to parents.
  • Less than $2 a week!

About Mathletics

The Mathletics Curriculum

Mathletics cover the Kindergarten to Year 12 Australian Mathletics
curriculum.

What do parents say about Mathletics?

We asked parents what they would say to other parents about Mathletics
and this is what they told us:

"It is fantastic, it makes maths fun. My son loves
Mathletics." Linda Hamilton, NSW

"It is very good and well worth the money. My daughter has
learnt things on Mathletics that she hasn't done at school yet so I think
it's a great headstart." Pauline Smyth, QLD

"My daughter has been on it now for 6 months and has come
from getting 25%-30% is now achieving 80%. It's fantastic and
affordable." Denis Rogers, VIC

"Definitely a fantastic piece of software and if your school
isn't using it then it should be." Susan Bainbridge,
NSW

How to get the most out of Mathletics

  • Take an active role in your child' s mathematics progress.
  • Encourage your child to use Mathletics 3 to 5 times a week.
  • Encourage a balance between the Full Curriculum section and Live
    Mathletics.
  • Take time to work together with your child. The Support Centre in
    each activity will help show how to solve a particular problem.
  • Encourage your child to do activities that challenge, rather than
    those he/she finds easy.
  • If the Course is too difficult or too easy, then change to a more
    appropriate Course.
  • Celebrate your child' s successes. Print the Certificates out and
    put them on the fridge!

Minimum Requirements

  • PC or Mac that is less than 5 years old
  • Internet Connection - Broadband preferred
  • Flash Player 8
  • Pop-ups enabled
  • Javascript enabled
  • Cookies enabled

Purchase

Affordable for Everyone!

Annual Subscription = $99

This provides a student with 24 hour, 7 days a week access to
Mathletics for 12 months.

I did a little more investigating and discovered it's a service developed in
Australia, by a company called Scaffold Education. Turns our
we're paying for the software and service in our school fees.

An interesting example of a
hosted application, with a rich user interface and with an element social
networking too. In fact, it's quite "Web 2.0", *AND* it's got lots of customers
using it. *AND* the server platform is IIS6 and ASP.NET - Cool!.

Why haven't we heard of these guys before??
Could this be a Aussie "Web 2.0" success story???

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