Education Week - December 2, 2020 - 7

taking away an opportunity that a student would
have in the classroom to do the counting herself. How
useful-or how much of a barrier-these features are
will depend on the goals of the lesson, Newell said.

Integrating Digital Programs
Outside of these tools, there's a constellation of
programs, games, videos, and apps available to
teachers-both through curriculum providers and
mainstream commercial distributors, like the Apple
app store.
If teachers want to assign apps or games for use
outside of synchronous classes, it's important that
they troubleshoot in advance, said Ann LeSage, an
associate professor of math education at Ontario Tech
University in Canada. " You should play it much longer
than you think is necessary, and you should make loads
of mistakes, like your children will make, " she said.
Teachers should also think about how the game play
or program use fits into their instructional plan as a
whole, said Wills. " It's a great data point to see where
kids are, " she said, which teachers can then use to
develop appropriate interventions for students who
need more support.
But not all games, apps, and programs are created
equal. While some are designed with input from
researchers and aligned to curriculum standards,
others are made by programmers with little education
background, said Dubé.
Dubé and colleagues at McGill evaluated the top
90 math-related educational apps in the Apple App
Store and found that many didn't include information
that could help teachers and families evaluate quality,
like whether researchers were consulted in the design
or whether the app was aligned to any curriculum or
educational philosophy.
Dubé holds that hosting platforms, like Apple, should
be doing more to evaluate and label educational
programs. For now, though, it's mostly educators
making those judgment calls. Experts in the field
suggested four considerations for teachers who are
looking to supplement their teaching with digital tools.
1. Understand limitations
Different apps support different kinds of
mathematical thinking and different moments in the
learning process, said Immaculate Kizito Namukasa,
an associate professor of mathematics education
at Western University in Ontario. Some are meant
to introduce concepts; others only supply practice
problems for concepts assumed to have already
been taught. Some are gamified, while others offer a
" sandbox " environment, Namukasa said, that allows
for self-directed exploration.
There's evidence that apps can improve students'
ability to tackle particular types of problems or
approaches to solving them, said Dubé. But it's not

Which Digital Math Programs Are Teachers Using?
This October, the EdWeek Research Center asked K-5 teachers, elementary principals, and district
leaders who oversee elementary math which digital curricula and programs they were using to
teach math remotely during the pandemic. Below are lists of the providers educators said they
turned to, and where applicable, the top-cited program from each publisher.
CORE PROGRAMS
z
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

15%

(GO Math!)

z Great Minds

(Engage NY/Eureka Math)

Curriculum Associates
z

(i-Ready)

z
Savvas

(enVision Mathematics)

z IXL Learning

SUPPLEMENTAL PROGRAMS
z IXL Learning

19%

clear that apps can improve mathematical ability
generally, outside of the specific areas they target, he
said. For that reason, he said, teachers should stick
to programs that are closely aligned with the goals of
their class.
2. Look for scaffolding and feedback
Well-designed apps don't just tell students whether
they've gotten an answer right or wrong, but offer
" progressive hints and scaffolding that would allow
the child to arrive at the right answer, " Griffith said.
This is important for learning, but also for keeping
kids from disengaging, she said.
The best platforms can tell when a kid is in a
" cycle of struggle, " continually putting in wrong
answers even with support, said Clark-Wilson. Those
platforms can then move the student on to something
else and make a note for the teacher that the child
needs more instructional support.
Experts also agreed that apps should allow for
students to start at different levels depending on their
abilities, and to level up, accessing progressively more
difficult tasks as they demonstrate understanding.

3. Prioritize authentic engagement
It's important that math content is integrated into
the gameplay, said Dubé. He highlighted DragonBox
Algebra, a pre-algebra app designed for elementaryage children, as an example of this design.
The app asks players to move boxes around the
screen in order to balance an equation, and a player
" wins " once the equation is balanced. " The game's
mechanics are the mathematical thinking, " he said.
By contrast, when apps include unrelated minigames as rewards or breaks, it can distract children
and turn their focus away from problem solving,
Dubé said.

z
Khan Academy

z Curriculum Associates

(i-Ready)

z
Renaissance

(Freckle)

z
Dreambox Learning

z
Prodigy

SOURCE: EdWeek Research Center
survey, 2020

4. Evaluate usability
Especially for very young students, touch-screen
responsiveness is important, said LeSage. Kids may
not be as accurate in their pointing and dragging
as the adults designing the technology, she said.
This can have instructional ripple effects, if the app
records a wrong answer for a student who knows the
material but can't press the right buttons. " When the
child is being limited because of a design flaw in the
tech, it becomes unusable, " she said.
Math Now: Problem-Solving in a Pandemic | 7

Education Week - December 2, 2020

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