Percent Bingo

A clever app designed to allow children to confidently and fluently convert between a range of fractions, decimals and percentages. 

Upon opening the app, children are able to choose between “play”, “options” and “medals”.  The “play” section leads to a Bingo board where children can either choose a variety of percentages as their potential answers or can have these auto filled by the app.  The concept is then consistent throughout the game: a value is displayed either as a fraction or percentage and the child must convert this into an equivalent percentage.  If this percentage is the same as one on their board, children should highlight it, otherwise click next and try again.  Once children have matched a line the game is complete and they can either play again or return to the main menu and view their statistics.  Although the game does not teach children how to convert between fractions, decimal and percentages it does have a hint option which offers helpful suggestions that ultimately guide them through the process of conversion. 

The statistics area displays an average for all the game played so far, including average time taken and accuracy.  Children can compare their overall games alongside their last level.  Within this area, there is the ability to completely reset all statistics, allow incorrect answers and switch between individual and classroom mode.  Within the options menu, there is also the ability to alter the game play slightly: make the board size bigger or smaller; alter the speed the Bingo balls are displayed and change the difficulty of the questions.  It would be nice to see both the options area and statistics area together so users can toggle easily.

There is also a “classroom mode” allowing the teacher to call out a question and have each child individually answer the correct percentage on their Bingo board, using their own device and app.  This introduces an element of classroom competition, which consequently increases engagement and therefore promotes learning.  Although a great idea, this section seems buggy: values were not displayed and therefore could not be selected.

The medals and achievements section is for the child that continues playing.  It lists a variety of achievements such as: 100% accuracy; number of games; times spent on the app; speed completed; etc.  In terms of learning, the developers report eight levels of learning from beginner to wizard with adaptive and personalised gameplay, however, it is difficult to see this within the app.  It would be nice for this information to be more readily available to the child so they can understand their progress, see what they have done and know what they need to do next.  Perhaps a list of the skills being taught would help achieve this. 

Overall, a great app for those children who want to practice conversions between fractions, decimals and percentages until they are able to fluently convert these. Further, the idea of playing Bingo to convert between fractions, decimals and percentages is a great concept, and now that the developers have this basic app, it would be easy to extend to different areas of Mathematics with more apps.