Now, Here is an App for Kids to Sharpen their Math Skills

YourStory.in, in conversation with Srikanth S, founder of Rega Interactive, developers of Math Tables Karaoke, an iPhone app that makes math fun for kids. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation:

Can you tell us about your app, Math Tables Karaoke?

Personally for me, math classes have always been so boring and many students tend to hate mathematics. Math Tables Karaoke is developed to address this pain point. The app is a combination of math tables and cool graphics to make it fun and interactive to grab kids’ attention. So, Math Tables Karaoke is an app developed for kids to let them learn math tables in an interesting way. And, we believe that gaming would be a major part of contemporary education.

Are there are any other apps in the market that addresses this pain point?

None that we are aware of. The game uses proven pedagogy of memorizing using the karaoke technique.

Tell us in detail about the features of the app.

Users can play the game in three modes; Learn, Quiz and Karaoke.

Learn Mode: The multiplication tables from 1 to 10 are displayed one line at a time with clear audio voice reciting the tables. The user is free to recite the tables along. Students can replay the table as many times as they need.

Karaoke Mode: It allows students to reinforce what they've just learned by reciting, recording and playing back the same multiplication tables from Learn mode

Quiz Mode: This mode contains three levels: "Beginners", "Intermediate" and "Expert". The difficulty of questions depends upon the level selected. This is a timed, multiple choice quiz that helps users to see what they've learned. At the end of the quiz, the user is taken to the scoreboard where they can see their score.

How much time did you take to code the app? We took about 2 to 3 months to develop the app.

Other than the current iPhone platform, which other platforms are you looking at ?

We are definitely looking at launching the app for all the tablets and smart phones soon.

Did you evaluate use of cross-platform toolkits like PhoneGap / Appcelerator / RhoMobile etc? Why did you choose to natively develop on iOS?

We needed the capability to record and playback besides a compelling visual experience, and iPhone qualified for this.

Did you use a specific “Text to Speech” engine/API on iOS or did you record your voices?

We are using the iOS API to record the voice.

How is the app priced currently?

The app is currently not free and is available at $0.99. We plan to monetize the app by porting to other devices and platforms as well. We have seen about 5000 downloads till date. We have achieved this completely through word of mouth marketing.

What features are planning to add to the app soon?

We are working on various forms of rendering math tables with music. We are working on a better Learn mode using Vedic rendering principles, better graphics, more tables and other techniques that one needs to memorize.

YourStory.in Technology Editor, Sriram V Iyer’s Take:

This is an interesting app, that targets a specific market – Kids who’d like to practice their math tables. The app speaks out the tables with an option of two voices (both female, one Indian and another American). It also lets you record your own voice while you recite tables, and play it back immediately.

There are some areas that can be worked upon. There could be a way to save the results of a test and review. In multiple choice questions, good effort has to be put to generate incorrect answers since they form the best part of challenging the learner. Sometimes the wrong answers are so way off that it actually helps the kid choose the right answer easily.All said, this is a better way to spend 40 Rs (0.99 USD) than a coffee at a upmarket place, especially if you have a kid at home who doesn’t like to do math tables. Recording and playing back the voice should definitely interest the kid to spend more time with math tables!

Do try out Math Tables Karaoke and share your thoughts by writing to us at [email protected] 

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