Kosmic Math-Family
Written by Heather Leister
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Kosmic Math-Family is a space exploration game that will have your family practicing their math skills. You set out on a mission to explore the planets and along the way you need to complete math problems. With enough correct answers you can place your flag on the planet and move on, earning a higher rank as you go. As you move through the grade levels there are twenty levels of difficulty in the game. From what I’ve seen this app is much, much more than a set off flashcards for practicing drills. It works with you and adapts the problems you’re given based on how well you’re doing. If you’re struggling and having trouble it will adjust the problems to fit your skill level.
The Family version gives you up to five user profiles. Problems for the grade levels Pre-Kindergarten through 4th Grade are represented. While you are playing you can manually adjust the difficulty of the problems. You can also change the amount of time you have to answer a problem and the amount of time you have on each planet. You can view a report that gives your statistics and shows how you’re doing on the current planet as well as how you’ve done on others.
Kosmic Math-Family gives you the option of enabling data synching. To do this you’ll need to provide your email and set up an account. The App Store description says the account is included in the license for a year. Once you’ve done that you can login to the Kosmic Math website and view the statistics for everyone who has a user profile in the app. Their progress and statistics will be easy to track. When they finish a drill you’ll also receive an email showing how they did. If you have two iPhones or iPod Touches you can install the app on both devices. By enabling data synching on the second phone (use the same email to register) you’ll allow the data from one phone to be synched up with the other. This means your child can play on mom’s phone and then pick up right where they left off on dad’s phone. Plus, the progress from both phones will be synched up with the website data. You don’t have a limit to how many devices you can sync together, you’ve just got to use the same email to register them and they’ll all have the same users.
My one suggestion for Kosmic Math is to adjust the narration on the screen where you adjust the difficulty, time, etc. The instructions are helpful but they go on and I found them a little distracting after awhile. Perhaps there’s a way for them to play the first time you view the screen but not again after that.
I really like the fact that Kosmic Math adjusts to your abilities. My kids have all gotten frustrated at one time or another over flashcards. It’s nice to know that this app will keep things within their skill level so they can have some success. This is one of the more expensive math apps that I’ve seen but you do get five user profiles and it covers a wide range of math skills. It’s definitely something different than a flashcard card app that gives you random problems. It works with you and adapts the problems you’re given based on how well you’re doing. If you’re struggling and having trouble it will adjust the problems to fit your skill level. I like the fact that each user has their own setup, this means all of my kids can use the same app. Plus, being able to play on my phone and my husband’s is a nice feature. It’s only fair that his phone get used by the kids as much as mine does.
There is also a free version of Kosmic Math available in the App Store. It allows you to have profiles for up to four players. Kosmic Math-Educator is another option. It’s licensed for one player and is designed for use by tutors, teachers and schools. This version would allow teacher’s to track their classes progress in the game and see how they’re doing individually. It would also allow a child to play at school and then continue at home on mom or dad’s device for extra practice. How fantastic would that be to get an iPod Touch to use in math class? My kids would be in heaven!
Price when Reviewed: $7.99
Seller: Sloth Media, LLC
Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.
By Jerry A Ketterling on Apr 6, 2010
SlothMedia will adress naration voice over prompts in a future release. Meanwhile here is a work arround.
Voice prompts are currently set to play on each new screen visited and for each player. The current algorithm tags a page as complete if the voice prompt plays to completion. Thus, if you leave a page before that voice prompt has been completed, the game will continue to play that prompt each time that page is visited until the entire message has played once!
Users can avoid all voice prompts by disabling the voice prompt all together on their user profile. This can be done during setup of a user or it can be invoked by editing an existing user. To edit a user, select their name (press and hold) their name button-until the button responds. Release your finger and the user edit screen will appear. Here you can toggle voice prompting off for this user. This is also where you can reenable the prompts should you ever want to revisit the instruction again. Changing player icon avatar image and toggling voice narration on/off can be done individually per user and with no data loss. Changing a player name however is destructive to existing data-it will prompt you to remove and replace this user with a new user name.
SlothMedia shall post this into our Q/A section on the KosmicMath web site, and we will adjust our voice prompting feature in a future release.
By The iPhone Mom on Apr 6, 2010
Thanks for posting the work around…I’ll admit that I left the pages before the voice was through. If I’d finished it out completely it wouldn’t have been a problem. Good to know how to turn them on/off as well. Thanks for a great app!