Smartick is an online Maths learning programme and unlike other apps, it uses artificial intelligence to adapt to each child’s style of learning. With only a 15 minute daily session allowed, it means that children won’t get bored, fed up, and encourages them to perform their daily questions in order to earn stars which they can spend at the end of each lesson on things such avatars and items for their online house.
Each day starts with a welcome and series of faces to see how the child is feeling along with the child’s own avatar that they can customise through their earning of stars.
It then goes into a series of questions which start off easing the child into a topic, breaking it down simply with pictorial questions if needed, then moving onto the same thing but in a different way. If a key pad is required, it will pop up in the corner of the screen, otherwise things can be dragged across the touch screen.
You are expected to let your child get on with this on their own which I did 100% of the time although I did watch over their shoulder a few times in order to write this review. The programme works intuitively and won’t move your child onto harder problems the next time if they struggled to grasp something this time. At the end of each session the child also gets a chance to retry the questions that they get wrong along with receiving extra stars of course!
The end result of each session is that the child receives a number of stars. This acts as an incentive for them as they get to finish the session and try to get things correct otherwise they won’t have stars to spend at the end. They can then use these to buy things to decorate their room, by virtual pets, presents for other players and clothes for their avatar.
What I particularly like about this programme is that I can log on to my online account and see how each of my children are getting on. But even better than that is that I receive an email everyday either reminding me that my child hasn’t yet done their daily session “This message is to inform you that Blake hasn’t completed today’s session yet.” Also immediately after every session completed an email comes in to let me know the kind of questions they have been working on along with their scores. I find this incredibly useful and interesting and it saves me having to log in and check for myself.
Seeing this also encourages me to get them to use the app as I can see the benefits of it and see that they are learning as they play, although it’s not strictly a game, they do actually enjoy answering the questions and have more fun spending their stars earnt at the end.
Smartick has been a fun learning tool that has had a lot of use between my children and I encourage them to complete their daily questions as often as possible. They don’t find it boring and actually enjoy using it, I think due to the short sessions and the fun way the tasks are presented. Smartick allows your child to move ahead faster than in school because it does not follow the national curriculum nor the Key Stage system so I’ll be interested to see how my children improve at school over the year, so far all is good and if they are happy to do Smartick then I’m more than happy to let them!
All reviews are my own and my family’s opinions and we received access to the product in order to write an honest review.
