Thursday, February 22, 2018

Reviews by Lab Llama: Cool Math Games

Some sites are old...some sites are brand new...others are glitchy...others run great! Who has time to vet them all?? 

Lord knows that I don't, but I want to share some llama love by rating the sites that I have had some firsthand experience using. I'm not paid (darn) and by no means are these reviews "official" but hey, who says they can't still be useful. 


Today's site of choice - Cool Math GamesIt is a flash game website that can be used by the computer lab teacher as a free time/game day option. Or at least, that's how it is used in my class. 





Price Point
This site can be used for free but also has an ad-free version that (as of February 2018) costs $6.99 a month. Are there a lot of ads....actually, yes. On the home page alone, I count 8. Yes, EIGHT. It will also occasionally run a 15 second advertisement before starting a game. 

Personally, I have not found it to be worth coughing up that much money for something I only use as a free time option. The ads in the free version of the site...I haven't encountered any that were outright inappropriate, and the kiddos are patient enough to deal with them so I haven't let that deter me from this site.  

Practicality
This site gets dinged a little on practicality because of the number of advertisements it contains.

Despite that, the site is well organized by skill (strategy, logic, numbers, etc.) and is also searchable by title. My students often get hooked on a specific game so having the ability to search by title comes into play for my classroom. 

Student Engagement
Holy VARIETY, batman!!! There are tons of options on this site. Other free time options get the "I'm bored" comment from time to time because there are fewer options, but that has not been the case with Cool Math Games. Check out some of the randommmm games that are the most popular on the site at the moment:



"There is No Game"??? lol I guess this site is more relevant than I am in some ways. 
I also appreciate that there are games that appear to female students as well without pandering to them. 

Reliability
I have not encountered a day when the site doesn't work. However, since the games are dependent on Adobe Flash, I have had problems where I have had to update Flash or have had browser settings where it prompts for permission each time the students go on (curses on you, required Firefox!). Since these are just regular lab maintenance things, I don't dock any points on reliability.

Academic Value
The great "free time" debate...is it academic enough? Should every moment of computer lab be tailored specifically to computer skills? I don't know where you fall on that topic, but here is what I have found:

Cool Math Games skills
- Critical thinking skills
- General site navigation (scrolling, recognizing ads versus real content [lol], dropdowns)
- Cooperative skills (some games can be played two player)

Final Score What type of llama lover would I be if my scoring wasn't llamarific!!

With a half point taken away for price & practicality we get a score of...
4 out of 5 Lovely Llamas!


I'd love to hear from you! Do your students use Cool Math Games? Have you found another game website worth recommending?
Please share in the comments below.

Llama love,

Sam