Knowledge Adventure Apps
Written by Heather Leister
|
Screenshots
|
Today I’m taking a look at two apps from Knowledge Adventure, the company behind the brands Jump Start and Math Blaster.
-MathBlaster Space Zapper - In Space Zapper players must help protect the space station by blasting away asteroids. To do this they’ll solve math problems and then shoot down the asteroids showing the correct answer. Problems can be focused on addition, subtraction, multiplication, division or a combination of the skills. Players will also be able to select the number range they want to work with in their problems. Finally, there are three different levels of gameplay – easy, medium and hard.
When it’s time to play the math problem will appear at the top of the screen and the asteroids begin hurtling towards the space station. There are two ways to control the blasters. The first it to turn the screen into a joystick. In order to control the joystick you would use your finger on the screen to maneuver the gun and a simple tap on the screen will shoot. Joystick sensitivity can be adjusted between low, medium and high settings. The second way to control the gun is to turn on “tilt and play”. When this is on a player can tilt the iDevice to turn and point the guns. Again, tapping on the screens will shoot the blasters. I found the joystick controls to be tricky and I could hardly hit any of the asteroids when I played this way. I had much greater success once I switched over to tilt and play.
Space Zapper certainly puts an exciting spin on math practice. I’d recommend the game for older children for a number of reasons, the first being the content and skills covered.The second is that it’s tricky doing the mental math and then acting fast enough to shoot down an asteroid. The app is universal and I’d recommend the joystick controls for the iPad and tilt and play for the iPhone. I think I’d enjoy the game more if I was playing on a larger screen.
Price when Reviewed: $1.99
-JumpStart Jet Pack - JumpStart Jet Pack covers a variety of educational topics in one app. It has thirty lessons and teaches over 65 skills with three levels of game play. The premise of the game is that players are exploring a mysterious cave. They have a jet pack which allows them to fly up, down and all around the cavern. Why do they fly? They must fly to collect the correct answers to different challenges. The challenges will be in either reading or math. It could be something like “Find the odd numbers” or “Find the two syllable words”. Before a player begins they choose whether they’d like to focus on reading or math, which level of curriculum they need and which specific skill they want to practice.
Players control the jet pack in one of two ways. They can turn the screen into a joystick (see Space Zapper above) or turn on Tilt and Play. This is a universal app and again, I’m a fan of tilt and play for the smaller devices.
I like the fact that JumpStart Jet Pack covers such a broad range of challenges. It’s nice to see reading and math together in one app and I enjoyed the jet pack-collect the answers concept.
Price when Reviewed: $1.99
Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.
