Algebra Touch

 

Algebra Touch is an app that has been around for a few years but the people who originally released it, have released an updated version that has some really nice additions.  In case you're never checked this app out, it is different than many other math apps because it focuses on teaching students how to do the process by actually having them do it.

Algebra Touch has the student use their fingers to combine terms, move terms around, or other movement so they actually do the process.  The old version had this facet but something new has been added which I really like.  I'll tell you about that later on.

When you open the app, you get a list of 8 topics that can be explored and practiced. Topics are divided into beginner, intermediate and advanced.  The beginning topics are like terms and order of operations, intermediate cover factorization and elimination, while advanced is equations, distributions, exponents, and logarithms.  Each topic has a certain number of subtopics to practice and at the end of the topic, there is a challenge practice for students to try.

 The topic on the main page, tells you how many subtopics it has.  When  you click on a topic, the submenu comes up so you know what you will be practicing. In addition, there is an introduction to give you a short description of what is happening.  Then you work work your way through each subtopic.  At the bottom of each subtopic is a create your own choice where students can input their own problems.  When you type in a problem of the same type, it allows you to solve that problem.  This means students can type in assigned problems, work through them, copy down the steps to show their work, and they are done.  

When you click on a sub topic, in this case I went to the like terms one, 

and chose the first subtopic.  I got a demonstration screen to show me how to do this and then it went to the first problem.  to do this I would place my finger on the -4a and move it over by the 19a so they are next to each other.  To combine the terms, you touch the + button and it combines the 19a + -4a to make 15a.  Then touch the + between the 12 and -10 to get 2 so the answer is 15a + 2.  It doesn't matter whether the terms with the variables are first or last.  In fact, the app does not make you put the variables first.

Now if the student has trouble figuring out how to do this, every problem has a video link at the bottom of the page.  If you look above, that little tab that say something like 0 of 6 which tells you how many problems in the section and how many have been done.  If you click on that tab, it rises and has an embedded link to a video so the student has video help available for every single problem including those in the challenge but not the do it yourself problems.

As far as I can tell this app is free and is available for the iPad and iPhone.  I love playing with it myself.  I do like that even if the students choose to use the create your own option for problems, they still have to work them out and that is awesome.  Give it a look and check it out.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.