Manga High math games

 

 This was probably the best thing I saw at the Spring Edsurge event. Manga High is the brainchild of Marcus du Sautoy, of Oxford and BBC fame. Each of the games developed around some foundational skill. The pictured game above has the player controlling a cannon that shoots out prime factors. A factor tree is displayed to the right. This is a good warm-up for factoring using the GCF.

This game has students using the geometric interpretation of factoring. The difficulty level scales up quite a bit, to the point where I and several of my top students began to tap out. We played this right before studying rational expressions, and it made the unit flow smoothly.

On the teacher side, there is an analytics dashboard and recommendation system a la Khan academy. They have about 10 free games on their website, and membership is roughly 4$ a student. I see this website having a lot of utility for middle school and 9th grade teachers who are charged with doing number sense remediation. My students loved the games, and I began to see dividends immediately.