How It Works
About This Product
There are three main aspects of Math Commander: positive visual reinforcement, audio reinforcement, and a focus on the problems. Each of these aspects is covered in more detail below. Understanding these is not necessary to use the program, but may help make it more effective.
1) Positive Visual Reinforcement
One idea behind Math Commander is that a combination of positive visual reinforcement with a simple award system makes it easier for children to absorb some types of information. It is particularly evident with memorized facts, like addition and subtraction. It also uses a mechanism most video games employ, which is one of constantly rewarding accomplishments.
So the most important part of Math Commander is not the math, it's the reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is vital, and will greatly affect the speed at which your child learns. So the first thing you need to do is create a collection of images your child will enjoy.
For example, if your son really likes a particular toy, it's probably pretty easy to find a dozen or more photos of it online. If he likes a particular character in a TV show, finding a slew of photos with that character in them is also quite easy. Photos of favorite relatives are good choices as well. The more photos you can find, the better, but keep them in collections. By doing that, your child will associate that collection of rewards with a specific program on the computer.
To really customize this experience, follow the instructions in the file titled "Set Math Commander's Icon."
2) Audio Reinforcement
When most people think of math, they think of it as a visual experience, writing down equations and answers. In the real world, you are expected to perform math mentally, and it's best if the answers just pop into your head when you think of the question. This is one reason why flash cards are so good. The person holding the card can ask the question, and the person answering has to answer it aloud. That removes math from the purely visual side of things and makes it more of a mental process.
Math Commander uses Apple's excellent Text To Speech engine to ask the questions aloud, and read back the completed question. That in turn makes the entire learning /recall process that much easier for the student by tying the process of recalling this information to more than one of their senses.
If the user gets it wrong, you can notify him with a set of simple responses. This is a positive reward based system, so a simple "try again" is often sufficient. Math Commander lets you create an unlimited number of missed question responses, which will be randomly picked when your student misses a question.
3) Focusing on the problems
Your child will be able to concentrate on answers more easily if they don't have to perform a lot of busy work for every question. For example, if your daughter is asked to write her addition tables up to 100, she will likely spend some of that time concentrating on her handwriting, some of it concentrating on drawing the lines just so, and some on the math itself. And at that point, she's concentrating more on getting done quickly, and not thinking about the math.
She might even start noticing patterns, and writing the ones column straight down the page, and then fill in the tens column after that. This is a simple way she can get the work done faster, without having to do the brainwork. But it doesn't reinforce what she knows, or make that knowledge accessible to her faster. She isn't learning--it's just busy work. Maybe, after awhile, it will start to sink in.
Math Commander makes answering any math question a one-keystroke operation, with no mouse clicking, tabbing, typing a multi-digit number, or hitting the return key. One key does it all. Since the program is immersive, there's no way for them to click out of the app. It is pretty easy to stay focused this way.
With Math Commander, she would build instant recognition of the problem and solution, so that when presented with a particular problem, whether spoken or on paper, she would instantly know the answer. And since the questions are generated randomly, there is no way to avoid thinking about the problems, like when writing number tables.
How Math Commander Works
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
