Peer Review

Kids Kount

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Jul 22, 2019 by Teacher Education

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

This is the English counterpart of the Dutch RekenWeb. It started in August 2000. The goal of the Rekennet project (mathnet) is to support primary school teachers in their task to teach realistic mathematics. The rekenweb also contains an ever increasing number of computer games for children, printable activity sheets for teachers to use in classroom, practical suggestions etc. The content of the rekennet is based on the suggestions of the teachers. Thus the rekennet creates many opportunities to reach teachers and to provide them with useful ideas and materials for their daily lesson.

Type of Material:

Collection

Math practice games

Recommended Uses:

Math practice in class and at home

A repository for teachers who want to publish games they've created.

This material would be valuable in a mathematics methods course for teachers or a refresher course for in-service teachers.

Technical Requirements:

Though the link takes you to Java/Flash games there is a link to a larger collection of html5 games. All of the java/flash games are present in the other.

Identify Major Learning Goals:

The purpose of the overall site is to provide practice games for math students and a repository for math teachers who make games. A larger Dutch collection exists, this is the english language counterpart.

Target Student Population:

Teacher Education, Professional Educators and K-12 math students

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

Some knowledge about how computer games work. Some of the instructions were limited.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:: The collection has games tagged by age and math topic. While it has potential to offer games about a broad range of math concepts, the collection is currently small and the concepts covered are hit or miss.
Concerns:: Instructions on some of the games are clear and on others not so. There are some english language errors.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

The math-based games facilitate critical thinking in young children

Math games of this sort are helpful for students who already have the concept and need practice. They may be helpful at habituating math facts.

Concerns:

It is doubtful that these games will teach math concepts. The sites primitive state limits its overall usefulness. The page you land on looks like there are only 6 games available. If you click around you might find 8 games or 9 games, and dozens of other lesson activities.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

The collection is set up with a number of filters, age, grade, math concept...

Concerns:

Several of the links go nowhere.

Some links take you to dutch language activities or activities that are in a combination of english and dutch. Navigation back and forth is difficult, as each page does not have the same options/menus/links. I found the site very confusing.

Other Issues and Comments:

Minimal instructions are provided explaining the use of the thinklets

It has been converted mostly from flash and java to html5. Some items have been recently added 2019. There does not seem to be a way to contact the institute or ask that your game be added to the repository.

It's a great idea, but not one that is well executed.

Creative Commons: