mPower from TVO

Mpower.tvo.org

Mpower is a collection of math games that are linked to the Ontario k-6 curriculum expectations which help students to develop math skills in a fun way. The system is ad-free and free to use for Ontario educators and families and it runs on computers, and tablets. I assume it would also work on a phone but didn’t test that. 

TVO mPower’s goals are:

  1. To provide Ontario students with opportunities to practice important math skills and to foster positive attitudes towards math by making learning fun and engaging;
  2. To show students that math is everywhere by connecting math games to the big ideas in science and social studies; and, 
  3. To support students to develop 21st Century Global competencies by integrating skills such as metacognition, problem solving, creativity and citizenship. 

About the Games

The games are organized by grade and students are assigned to a particular grade. It’s not possible to assign students to multiple grades but they seem to be able to play games from other grades. 

The games have voice prompts but all vocalizations are also fully printed out on screen so it can be used without sound disrupting other people in the class. You can also turn off music, sound effects and voice-over from the game separately so students who might require the voice over don’t subject the class to the constant repetitive music loops. Unfortunately, The music seemed to come back on and I couldn’t turn it off again. 

Administration

Students need to be added into the system. It requires you to add first name, last initial and grade and you can arrange them into groups if you have a lot of students to manage. You can add them to the system manually, one at a time or by uploading a CSV file (typically from a spreadsheet). It creates usernames and passwords for each of the students to log into the system. I didn’t find any way to export the list but it does provide a facility for printing access cards which could be given to the students or print out a list of selected student accounts.

In Action

Students are assigned to a grade but when in the system as a student, I found that I ended up in some activities that were for other grades. It wasn’t clear how I got there or why and it wasn’t obvious how to get back to where I had started. Navigating the system was actually a little confusing. There appeared to be too many options for students to pursue and I can see that it might turn into a support nightmare trying to keep the students corralled and going in the right direction. I think it would work best in small group workstations where only a few students are on this activity or as a supplement for them to do when they’re at home. 

Unlike Prodigy, it’s not possible to constrain the activities that a student pursues and you can’t set students on specific missions to build specific skills. 

Assessment feedback

The system has an assessment tab for the teacher to review and it’s fairly granular. It’s broken out by each activity and provides feedback comments that are highly similar to the types of comments that are included on report cards. It also shows a graphical representation of the success rate of the student on the questions they answered. It doesn’t give the actual score but it’s representative enough to show whether the student is achieving or not. The assessment chart shows the learning goal from the curriculum expectations as well as whether the assessment is KU/A/T/C fro the achievement chart. 

The high-level view of assessment also shows the students in a table that shows whether they are developing, progressing well, mastering or if their participation in a section is incomplete. This allows a teacher to see at a glance how their students are doing in a particular area. 

Summary

I think the system has potential and I think I would try to pilot it if I had a small group to try it on. I’m most concerned with the fact that you can’t constrain the activities that they do and that I found navigation to be a little difficult.


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