The Syms Meets Schoolhouse Rock

A full disclaimer is certainly necessary right up front: I am terrible at video games. Anything newer than PacMan is beyond me. I don't get the key strokes, the movements of the characters make me dizzy, and I am generally more annoyed than entertained by almost everything about them.

By contrast, my son takes after his father. At five years old, Son scores in the 65-75% range playing the guitar in Daddy's Rock Band. He has great fun jumping around like crazy on the Dance Dance Revolution pad. He thinks Sonic Tennis is awesome. And, of course, he loves to play things on the computer if I let him. Noggin games are approved by me as not too violent for him. The one learning system game I set him up with a few months ago was a big hit.

So when a representative from JumpStart contacted me with an offer for a free trial, I was delighted to let Son explore another learning system/computer video game, particularly since he is on the verge of going to Kindergarten, and I figured honing some skills this summer might be a good idea.

Although my initial impression of JumpStart was not stellar, a little fortitude and some experimentation got me through the initial video-game learning curve. And now, I can whole-heartedly say that we LOVE this system in our house.

Because that there are all sorts of online games out there purporting to be educational, I think it's worth it to know what is good and bad about any given system, so I'm going to tell you exactly how we found it. The short version of what follows is that although there are some drawbacks to this system in terms of how intuitive (or not) the play is, the down-loadable JumpStart worlds absolutely cannot be beat for keeping children engaged in the learning that they are doing online.

You should know that there are games you can play online through JumpStart, as well as ones you download. The latter are much more involved, both in the structure of the games and the skills you learn. You can try out some things for free online, but the downloadable games (which are far better) require a membership.

Here are the PROS

* The (free) educational games on the JumpStart site have two sets of level controls. You choose a level for the content that corresponds to your child's knowledge about, say, addition, and then you also choose a level for the video game play that corresponds to how good your child is at gaming skills. I, for example, can rock all the highest levels in the reading games (duh, they only go up to third grade skills), but even on "easy" settings for game play, I still find myself irritated and befuddled by the video game tasks. I just don't like trotting around virtual worlds looking for stuff -- but that's not JumpStart's fault. And I really appreciate that they have figured out that just because a kid is advanced in reading, she may not be good at jumping barrels using key-strokes, or vice versa.

* The graphics are good, and the 3-D worlds are customizable, so you can build a character, paint the scenery, and so on, which makes the kids feel invested.

* The learning interfaces limit your child's ability to just play shoot 'em up. For example, one game asks you to fly through the hoops containing the correct answer and blast the incorrect answers with your jetpack. But you only get five "blasts" before you run out and thereafter can only seek correct answers. So you can't turn what is supposed to be a game about matching math sets into one that's about shooting asteroids (which my five year old totally would do if he could, since watching asteroids blow up seems cool to him, while the long term goal of staying on task so that he can accumulate points to buy things in a virtual world is not a concept he's ever encountered).

* It is extremely well-designed and thoughtful as a virtual world for young children. There is no violence (unless you count throwing pies at things violent), no innuendo, no danger of encountering any strangers online since each account is separate. The adventures are fun and engaging, and the play options are widely varied.

* The downloadable games have a whole series of units with carefully sequenced lessons that build upon previous knowledge. There are lessons in math, sets, logic, letters and reading that each involve a different kind of game, so that things don't get stale.

* A portion of the system is available for free, and it is also possible to sign up for a free trial of the subscription parts of the service too. This means that you can check out the whole thing, poke around, experiment, and really see if your child falls in love before you commit to a monthly fee. That is a huge bonus in my book.


Here are the CONS

* There seem to be glitches in the online (for free) games. In the first two hours of play, we encountered instructions to "follow the trail of yellow lanterns," spent ages grasping for the only yellow lantern we could find, and then finally found a trail of PURPLE lanterns that would lead us to the right place. That was annoying, but surmountable. Much more disheartening, however, were the errors in the learning games. Supposed to locate shields with the "fffff" sound on them, Son lost many points for blasting shields marked with the letter "m" only to discover that ALL the shields were marked "m," but that if you got close enough, the voice over would tell you that that shield was actually supposed to be the letter "d" or "f" or "p" or whatever. On an adjectives game I tried, all the shields were marked "ripe" although the voice over would tell me that actually some of them were supposed to read "shiny" or "eats" or "quickly" or whatever. Obviously, it is impossible to get the right answers if the game itself is displaying letters and words that don't match what it thinks it's displaying. We have not had these kinds of problems with the games we downloaded, but we have had them on multiple occasions with the games we've tried to play online.

* Nothing about getting around in this world is intuitive to me. Now, I think if you are a gamer, your experience would be completely different from mine. So I think the fair critique here is that this system is very video-gamey, which is to say that if you play other types of virtual world games, you will no doubt be able to get around because you are used to how these maps work, to assuming you are supposed to click people to get them to talk to you, and to locating items "by the tree," for example. But I, who have little-to-no gaming experience, found myself completely unable to navigate my way around the Storyland that was supposed to be for preschoolers. After 20 minutes there, unable to find any hint of the "letter trail" I was supposed to follow, I gave up. Probably, if my husband had been playing, he would have been able to figure this out. But what that suggests is that if your child does not have a parent who understands the assumptions and common moves that underlie virtual world games, then your child might have a frustrating time getting around in this one.

* You have to download the actual learning game worlds. The "Adventureland" that is obvious and easy to get to, and the map that you start with, lets you into arcade style games (car racing, etc.) and a (less interesting) learning game. All the others must be downloaded separately. It's not hard to do; it's just hard to realize that that is what you need to do, since the instructions at start up do not make that clear. Hence, my child got all sucked into arcade racing and other fun games before I could even find anything educational.

* The system saves your progress to your C drive rather than to its server. This is a drawback if you want your child to be able to play on more than one computer, since all his/her progress will only be stored on one. It also means that if your computer crashes, or you install a new operating system, all of your child's progress will be lost. Since it took my son over an hour just to get through the "training" that would let him into Adventureland to start playing a learning adventure, I would imagine that such a loss would be a disaster for a child who has been playing for months, amassing points, collecting stuff, and working through a curriculum.

* To move up from one level to the next in the system, you have to work your way through all the required tasks, some of which are educational lessons and others of which are video-game style tasks involving doing jobs or locating objects in the virtual world. There are nominal benefits in the gaming tasks, which are supposedly about helping your virtual friends, for example, but I wish the system had a smaller proportion of these hoops to jump through. I think Son spends as much time on these game parts as on the educational parts of each unit.


Here is the overall assessment

I think JumpStart is a great activity for children if you are looking for something engaging and safe online. It is a fantastic alternative to traditional video games in that there is no destruction, violence or mayhem, and there are great lessons that help reinforce math and reading concepts. If you go into thinking of it as fun, interactive games that may also result in your child learning something, then I think you will be more than delighted. At $7.99 per month, it costs less than taking your child to one movie, and it's far more educational. If you purchase it thinking it will be a serious supplement to your child's curriculum, then I would imagine some frustration with the amount of set-up time and the many possibilities for online play here that do not involve academic lessons.

Although I think that overall this system could be a little less game-y for my taste, my son ADORES it. He is excited every time he earns a new badge; he is able to work his way through the curriculum and stay engaged. This one has real lasting power, and I can imagine him playing it for months.

Should you get it? YES! But skip the online (free) games, which are annoyingly complicated and have a low learning-gaming ratio, and go straight to the downloadable ones, which are rich, interesting, thoughtfully designed as learning games. Have a little patience for the long download and set up/orientation process, and you will be richly rewarded in the end.

Math Was Never This Much Fun Back When I Was Young

My son just turned five and has deep and heartfelt longings to start Kindergarten. I think, if I could get the information out of him, that a large part of what he longs for is a day at school during which no one forces him to lie down on a cot to take a nap.

But we did have a very telling conversation a few weeks ago, when he was complaining yet again about getting ready for preschool, and I asked him why he didn't like school. Eyes blazing with indignation, he turned to me and said forcefully, "They shouldn't teach you what you already know!"

My boy, he likes a challenge.

I know that what I do with him at home doesn't make up for what is not being done for him at school, and yet, I do my best to come up with fun projects and challenging games, and to offer up a little bit of teaching wherever I can. He loves learning new words or working out little puzzles in his head. Back in December, our car trips were all about what my old math books used to call "word problems."

If Santa has eight reindeer who like apples, but he only has five apples, how many more apples does he need to get, so that each reindeer can have one?

Son loved this stuff.

So when a representative from DreamBox Learning contacted me and asked me if I'd like to try out their online math program (geared towards grades K-3), I jumped at the chance. I figured that no matter how good it was (or wasn't), it might provide some interesting distraction for my son. I had no idea what we were in for -- and I mean that in the best possible way.

Trust me, if you have a child somewhere in the range of 4-9 (though it's dependent on math skills more than age), you really want to know about this system.

Here is what I absolutely LOVE about the DreamBox design.

* There is a parent dashboard that tells you not just how much time your child has spent online, but precisely what skills she has been working on. It tell you what her progress is, where she is advancing, and provides you a graphic image of her abilities relative to average curriculum goals for the grade level(s) at which she is working. (She can be, for example, at a first grade level for counting skills and still at a Kindergarten level for addition.) All of this makes it very easy to see what conceptual elements of math your child has or has not grasped.

* The system is astonishingly responsive to a child's current knowledge. Although it's set up like a game, the initial tasks clearly set a baseline to establish what the child already knows. Then, the math tasks he is asked to do set accordingly. Son, for example, can count to 100. The system very quickly figured out that he didn't need to work on counting objects, and it moved on to higher concepts like recognizing how many objects are in a set if you don't have time to count them. (e.g. You know the "five" on dice because of the pattern of the dots, not because you recount them every time.)

In addition, as a child encounters a new skill, the system adjusts. One addition/subtraction game he played was too difficult, and he missed the first three questions, with two tries for each answer. So the game changed to make the challenge easier, while still working on addition/subtraction. For example, it set all the problems to add/subtract for numbers 10 and under (hence, he could use his fingers for help). It also offered him ways to get clues to answers that would begin to help him grasp the concepts without simply doing his work for him.

* There is just enough narrative to the system to keep a child engaged. The "gimmick" is that you have entered an amusement park and have to choose an area in which to play. There is a dinosaur area, a pirate one, a house, and a garden. Each area has eight games available. In the dinosaur area, for example, one game is to free a triceratops that is stuck in the mud. You do this by completing a whole series of math tasks, each set of which garners you one more tool to do the freeing.

The tasks are set against a backdrop of jungle and hungry pythons, flowers you can make bloom with enough correct answers, and other interactive pieces that keep a child engaged. I cannot stress enough that these are nothing like the worksheets we remember from school. They are graphic and interesting, varied and fun.

* You can move back and forth between different kinds of problems -- visual ones, counting ones, ones with numbers, ones with objects -- which seems to me to address different learning styles. And, again, the dynamic system adjusts to a player's skill level.

* There are very clear explanations and directions for the tasks. Potentially unfamiliar words are defined ("'Equal to' means the same as. Which number is equal to the dots you see here?"). Then, if the child misses several problems that are working on that concept, the definition will come up again as a gentle reminder.

* After an initial set-up of about 15 minutes, he was able to play on his own. I watched over his shoulder for more than an hour, fascinated by the game itself, but the directions were so clear that he didn't need my help.

* Games are very long, but the system saves your child's place automatically, so that when she comes back in an hour or three days, all the work she's done up to that point is still recorded. This is really important as Son has played for five hours and is just nearing the end of his first game in his first area, which means that there are potentially 31 other games he could play. That's a LOT of math. But because the games are dynamic and adaptable, I can already see that whatever he chooses for game 2 will pick up where game 1 left off, with him more advanced at some skills and a total beginner at others.

* Parents can actually log on and play the game to see how it works without affecting the child's games. Parents are reminded that it is counter-productive for them to give their children too much help solving the problems in the game, since the system bases the tasks it asks of children on how well they've already done. So if mom answers all the subtraction problems daughter can't, daughter will be given harder ones, rather than easier ones.

This is an intense, thorough, and long curriculum, which would be great if your child needed tutoring help in math, or if you wanted something to supplement a home-schooling plan. The one downside to this tremendous thoroughness is that, five hours in, my son is eager to try a pirate game. He's had enough of dinosaurs for a while. But he can't get into a pirate game until he completes this one. So he's taken a break for a little while.

I have nothing but tremendously positive things to say about DreamBox. It was certainly designed by a fleet of brilliant educators. There are obvious teaching strategies at work, clear goals being tracked, thoughtful sequencing of skills in all the games. On top of that, they have managed to make the games walk precisely the right balance between fun and challenging. Just as it gets frustrating, the game senses the child's uncertainty and adapts (it even notes when the pauses for answers are taking overly long). And there are moments that perfectly hit the kindergarten funnybone: for example, the serpent grows with every answer you get right, stretches his neck towards what he thinks is a flower, only to get a pie in the face. Bwahahahahahah! if you are five. (I don't know if the jokes get more sophisticated as the child moves up in grade level, though I wouldn't put it past DreamBox.)

And do you want to know the best part? I loved DreamBox so much that I asked if I could give some of it away to you, and they obliged with a free one-month subscription to DreamBox for one lucky reader who wants to try it.

DreamBox is really doing things right by offering ALL families a two week free trial. (Plans cost as little as $8.33/month, so it wouldn't break the bank if you got hooked.) Even if you don't win the month here, you and your child can try it out for two weeks to see if you like it. If you are already signed up for the free trial, and you win this giveaway, that will add another month. If you aren't already signed up for the free trial, then you will only get one month free. Still, in a month, your child could get hooked on math. I know my son is loving this.

He told me this is "even better than Noggin's game of the month" -- which is high praise from him. And I love that when he plays it, he is actually learning something.

If you have children the right age for this system, do yourself a favor and check it out. And if you'd like to be entered into the drawing for a free one month subscription, just leave me a comment below -- including a valid email address. Drawing will take place on Monday, March 9, with the winner announced Tuesday morning, the 10th.