Personal Trainer: Math
© 2009 Nintendo of America
Now you can turn your child's Nintendo DS into a math learning aide. This title, one of a series of self improvement titles from Nintendo, puts thousands of math facts -- and their answers -- at your child's fingertips Developed by Japanese math teacher Hideo Shogakukan, the $20 cartridge combines a calendar based record-keeping system with timed sets of addition, subtraction, division and multiplication math problems. Because you enter your answers in writing, this is one of the few games where penmanship counts. You can choose to take a daily test, or fill in a grid with as many as 100 problems in one sitting -- ranging from counting to division equations. The better you do, the higher your score, which is saved along with earned medals. A single cartridge enables up to 16 other players to compete by downloading one of the quizzes, so you can turn a school bus into a rolling math contest. Other than recycling your missed problems (so they show up later in the set of problems for another try) and reporting your child's percent correct, there's no coaching or help for a struggling learner. This software is good for one thing -- machine-gun drill, with lots of problems in a short amount of time. Weaknesses are minor, but should be noted. All the instructions are presented as text and can be a bit lengthy, although it is easy to skip through; much like the Brain Age problems. There is also no summary of your work after a set of problems -- ideally you would get a list of the problems you missed, or a chance to work on just the missed problems if you like. Finally, we found the background music to be annoying. Fortunately it can be turned off in the preferences. With software like this, it's only a matter of time before we hear teachers saying "boys and girls, please get out your Nintendo DS." See the demo at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIx4BE2vRRw.
$20, Nintendo DS
Teaches: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division
CTR Rating: 90%