Allison Zale & Christina Schweinebraten
Mobile App
MAT 326
11/16/12
1.
The mobile app we decided to review was SDPro Math by Abrotech. This app is a free app,
which is compatible with the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad with iOS 4.0 or later. This app has seven
categories that a player can chose from, which are Basic Math, Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1 and 2,
Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus, and Calculus. The purpose of this app is to review mathematical
subjects by being asked questions from the categories listed above. In order for this app to be
useful, the user must have some previous background knowledge with mathematics or the
questions being asked by the app will not result in anything other than memorization. The general
audience for this app is students and the company even expresses how their apps are specifically
designed for students. Futhermore, Abrotech is a company whose main focus is creating apps for
math and science. One can go to abrotechinc.com to find more information about this app and this
company.
2.
A weakness of this app is that the app only has a total of 238 questions throughout all the
categories. At first 238 questions seems like a large amount of questions, but if one plays this app
frequently, one tends to see a repeat of questions one has already seen before. If a teacher asks
their students to use this app as a review, because of the small amount of questions, students might
unconsciously only be memorizing the answers to these questions, instead of actually getting better
at these topics. The fact that there are seven categories is a strength; however, there is no geometry
option. If there were a geometry option, then most of the high school math subjects would be
accounted for. A strength of this app is there is a mark button so one can mark a problem they need
help with or are having difficulty with. Then one can go back to those problems later on and finish
those problems, or even go back to see if once they have reviewed similar problems they can figure
those problems out now. For teaching this allows students to save what problems they are having
trouble with and can then show the teacher to get help with them. This also allows the teacher to
know what kind of problems their students are struggling with. Another strength is the different
modes this app has. There are three modes: fun mode, one player challenge, and two-player
challenge. In the fun mode, one has an infinite amount of time for each question being asked. In the
one player and two player modes, there is one-minute allotted for each question being asked. It
gives the opportunity for one to challenge oneself or compete against another person. This allows
students to see math as a fun game and might even help students who do not like math, see
mathematics in a whole different light. One weakness about the two-player mode is the same
question is being asked for both players at the same time. A drawback to this is each player will
have to look at the screen at different times to hide his or her answers, but it makes sense to have
the same question in order for the competition to be fair. Another weakness is there are some
technical errors. For example, we found there was an error in selecting one of the question’s correct
answers. The correct answer was D and in the explanation it even said that the answer is D, but
when one clicks on D it tells one that they are wrong (see pictures below).
If a student is uses this to study for
their math class, they might think
they are doing a problem wrong if
they never checked the explanation
button. Another strength of this app
is for most questions there is an
explanation of why a certain letter
is the correct answer. This allows
students to see why maybe they
made a mistake in their thought
process and how to get to the correct answer. One draw back to this is that not every question has
an explanation and some explanations do not give a very good explanation to why the problem is
correct. For example, on most of the trigonometry questions, the explanation reverts to “see unit
circle.” Overall, SDPro Math by Abrotech is a great app for students or anyone who wants to review
different categories of math. As future teachers, we would tell definitely tell our students about this
app to use doing their free time or wanted to review math topics, but we would not use this app as a
main teaching method for our students.