MathBoard beat the rest of them

Ive just spent about 90 minutes and $10 downloading and trying out apps to help my boys (6 and 9) learn math. Many were just awful. This one is the one that I will keep and use. The problems are clear, the controls are robust, and theres enough history and statistics. I like how I can very carefully tune what will go into a quiz. I like the full screen nature of it. I like how I can have multiple "students", whose scores and histories will be different.

Im a bit of a nut about user interface, and out of all the math apps I tried, this is the ONLY one that allows logical use of the keyboard. On multiple choice questions, you can press "a" to answer "a". On fill-in-the-blank questions, you can type in "27" and hit enter. This is really valuable. Very few math apps allow ANY use of the keyboard at all. Many of their mouse interfaces are awful. This app gets it right.

If I have any criticisms, theyre mild. The settings are global to the whole app, not per-student. One of my boys is doing addition, the other is doing multiplication. I have to change settings each time one of them sits down.

Some apps have a game-like earning mechanism. Over time the student gets some points, tokens, etc. for doing lots of problems. I like this aspect in some games because I see my boys respond to it. They want to earn high scores and advancements. Likewise, I think its cool to have benchmarks and/or high-water marks in the stats. Things like "your average time" or "your best time" or "your best score" etc. Letting them compete against their personal best is good. This game doesnt include those, but it does include the main thing that I need most: math. And it gets the interface totally right.

PacoHope about MathBoard