Southern Methodist University tested its new app over Thanksgiving break last week with the help of the Dallas Zoo and dozens of eager kids.
Thanks to a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation, SMU has been working to develop an app called MathFinder.
“We got $2.5 million to develop and test this app at eight different sites throughout DFW,” explained Candace Walkington, associate professor of education at SMU, according to Fox 4 KDFW.
Partnering up with the Dallas Zoo meant that dozens of local students got to spend the day using the app while visiting different animal exhibits.
“[The app lets] them see that math is applied and it’s all around them. It’s not just on a piece of paper. It is in the way an elephant walks or in the way a baby hippo grows, and once they see math that way, that can be a game changer in terms of how they do in school,” Walkington told the news outlet.
One of the students testing the app was Ellie Chatfield, an eighth grader who attends West Dallas Community School.
“It is fun to get technology and wildlife and kind of put them together,” Chatfield said, per Fox 4, noting that she especially enjoyed learning how many steps the elephants take each day.
Tyson Sylvester, a fifth grader at St. Phillips School and Community Center, also spoke favorably of his experience using the app.
“My favorite thing was probably the hippos when we were learning new things. We were measuring them to see how long they were,” Sylvester said, according to Fox 4.
The team behind MathFinder plans to test the app at other partner locations, making adjustments as required before its official launch.
“We are going to keep working with more and more sites and more kids. We get lots of feedback from the kids every time we use the app, and we make lots of updates,” Walkington said.
Math skills among students nationwide have been found lacking, especially since the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Last year, a sample of 8,700 13-year-olds logged record-low math scores on a federal test known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, as covered by The Dallas Express. Compared to the averages seen in 2020, a nine-point drop was logged in mathematics.
Another initiative aimed at improving local students’ math skills was recently seen on two campuses in Dallas ISD.
As previously covered by The Dallas Express, teachers at James S. Hogg Elementary School and New Tech High School at B.F. Darrell have deployed LEGOs in their math lessons, hoping the familiar toy blocks will boost students’ abstract thinking skills.
Overall, the district’s student achievement scores have been lackluster, with only 41% of students scoring at grade level on the 2021-2022 STAAR exams. Zeroing in on math scores, only 39% of students scored at grade level that school year, according to the latest Texas Education Agency accountability report.
