Breakthrough

Today I had my algebra I take the 5th quiz in Mathtoons number skills.  Some of the problems required students to divide a fraction by a whole number.  I had several students comment that they didn't know how to do that.  This is really the first time my students have commented on their weaknesses.  The other thing that one of my students discovered is that many of the mathtoons quizzes from the individual apps are in the app called Ultimate Thump.  I'm going to go through the Ultimate Thump to see which of the apps it combines. 
I am beginning to see some good uses for these apps in all my classes next year.  I have to check through the two to three geometry apps to see which have quizzes on quadrilaterals.  The best time for the quizzes is after the warm-up and before the actual lesson. 
Our real life math problem had to deal with some thieves who stole 30,000 liters of diesel from a pipeline.  The theft was valued at $70,000 so I had the students calculate cost per liter, cost per gallon and how many gallons the 70,000 would buy based on the current price of $6.20 per gallon.  The students really were surprised about the amount it came to in US currency.

HUP Algebra free app

I chose this app over the summer because it has some nice videos included with it.  Unfortunately, it turns out my students cannot access the videos because they are through youtube and youtube is blocked by the tech dept.  Both the students and I were disappointed because of that. They learn quite well watching videos.  On the other hand, the program has some nice try it problems that can be checked.  If they make a mistake, the app tells them what they should be doing and they get a chance to rework it.  I really liked that students get a chance to redo it and are prompted in what to do.  The kids actually enjoyed using it and were really focused on it.
I have a couple other apps that do this type of thing and I'm slowly having my students use each of the apps to see how well they work in the classroom.  When they used ultimate thump, they ignored the pop up window telling them how to do it but when I made it a competition for most correct, they paid more attention to what they were doing rather than just going through it and choosing any answer.  These kids can be quite competitive.