Okay, I'm hooked.
I'll freely admit that I've been playing Math games on the Mangahigh website for just over an hour now. The games are very engaging and they work great on the SMART Board.
Mangahigh uses game-based learning to help students aged 10-16 learn basic Math skills. A lot of people do not think game-based learning is the best method for instructions. I agree but I also think it can be a highly effective method for supplementing the learning process and increasing motivation for some students.
Let's check out just one of games called TransStar - Journey to the Core which helps students understand Geometric transformations by helping an alien travel through space using Stargates. The game goes through various levels (Sectors) and stages (Zones) using reflections, rotations, enlargements, and translations. It's really nice since you get three tries at each Zone and you get to see the result of your transformation. If you don't align the alien spaceship aligned with the Stargate after three tries, you will need to start over at the last Zone you completed. It's really quite fun.
In the image above, the student needs to avoid the orange arrows and use the rotation orbs to align the space craft in quadrant II to the Stargate in quadrant IV using a counter-clockwise rotation.
This site is a subscription-based service but you do not need to subscribe to play the games. You can actually register your school and do a lot on the site without paying. The pricing model is very expensive, especially if a teacher wants to sign up his/her entire class.
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