OLOfusion

What is OLOfusion app?

OLOfusion is all about teaching kids to tell the time and giving them practice in doing so. It contains varied exercises, games and puzzles that each provide guidance and practise in a different skill that makes up the broader topic of time.   

What we love about OLOfusion.

The difficulty levels in the app are set by the level of assistance that the analogue clock face provides. The different faces each have embellishments that help kids remember how to use them. This method works very well and will allow kids to develop gradually as the visual support is reduced. 

OLOfusion is one of the most activity-packed apps available that focuses solely on telling the time. Each activity supports the learning it aims to facilitate, and they last long enough to provide meaningful practice but not so long they become boring through repetition. 

An original feature in OLOfusion is the 'My tasks' option which is a simple task manager for kids to organise their schedule. As well as helping kids get organised, it encourages them to use their growing time-telling skills in a practical way which will inspire them to get better and show them the value of what they have learned. 

What skills does it improve?

This app covers all aspects of reading time from clocks, including:

• Distinguishing between am and pm
• Recognising times
• Converting between digital and analogue times
• Number order
• Time-based word problems

What age is it appropriate for?

The app is for any kids who are learning to tell the time. Such kids are most likely between the ages of 6 and 9, although this depends on their ability and the curriculum at their school. 

Is OLOfusion easy to use?

OLOfusion uses speech synthesis to assist in its games. While this sounds a little robotic, it works well enough, and synthesis helps keep the app's size and price low.  

Navigating around the app is easy as kids choose the type of activity and then the specific game to play. Adjusting clockfaces, tap-to-select, and drag-and-drop questions are intuitive answer mechanics that kids will quickly understand. 

How will students benefit?

There's a lot of variety in this app. OLOFusion's different game styles and various aspects of telling the time will help to keep kids engaged. They feel like they will suit a little-and-often approach very well, which is how many kids will best learn to tell the time. 

How will teachers benefit?

With its tightly focussed exercises, it is easy for teachers to use this app to provide practise after showing kids the relevant skill. Kids will be able to practice and get immediate feedback while teachers offer support to kids who need it.    

How will parents benefit?

In many ways, this app is designed more for home use than it is for schools. The app's reporting method, sending an email, works well for a single child but would not work if multiple kids use the same app.   

For parents, though, this is an easy way to make sure that kids are practising and to see how they are progressing. They won't have to set up a parent account or work out how to use a parent dashboard. 

What can OLOfusion improve on?

The app uses speech synthesis for its exercises. Offering this option on the overview screens and the game instructions would improve them for kids who struggle with reading. 

At the moment, the exercise section of OLOfusion only works for kids to practise, but with the addition of an option to disable timers, it would gain the ability to be more useful as an aid to explanations. At the moment, the timer doesn't allow parents or teachers to sit and discuss kids' responses. Other apps include such a feature as a 'training mode' or 'teacher mode' and would work well here. Other sections of the app don't have timers and work well for adult-led learning.

There are a few areas where the user interface could be improved as it is either a bit clumsy or unclear.

1. Using a custom keyboard rather than the device's built-in one would improve questions where players enter the time using the on-screen keyboard. Only numbers and am or pm need be present and to have a full keyboard with letters that needs switching to the numeric section is an unnecessary complication for kids.

2. The questions where players must put numbers into ascending order are not very clear at first. While a green line marks the position of 1, this is not obvious. The layout of the numbers in a 3x4 grid does not make it clear whether the numbers should run from bottom to top or top to bottom. This is a clock app, so placing the numbers in a circular layout would have made more sense.

None of these suggested improvements means that the app is poor in any way, but correcting them would make it work better.

How much does OLOfusion cost?

OLOfusion does not offer a trial version, but the full app is available as a single purchase. It is not the cheapest app for learning to tell the time, but it is one of the most fully-featured .

Is OLOfusion safe to use?

All of the content in OLOfusion is safe for kids, and it has a clear privacy policy. The app does not ask for any unnecessary permissions, and there are no advertisements in the app. 

Overall rating of the app.

OLOfusion breaks down telling the time into achievable tasks. It looks good and provides excellent practice. It does have room for improvement to make it simpler to use and increase the number of ways parents and teachers can use it, but that shouldn't put off anyone who likes what they have read of this app's features. We have awarded OLOfusion four stars.