Computer games make maths fun in school

Computer games are just one way technology can transform potentially dry subjects into relevant and engaging experiences
Tom Barrett
Tom Barrett, assistant head at Priestsic primary school in Nottinghamshire, has developed maths lessons based on the Nintendo Wii. Photograph: Fabio De Paola


To help plan a lesson on the language of probability, year 5 teacher Tom Barrett decided to tweet. "What is the probability of it snowing where you are tomorrow?" he asked his 4,700 Twitter followers.

The answers were vast and different, he remembers. "I had someone in Australia using local slang, "Buckley's, mate!", to say "Not a chance!", to fractions and percentages. We did a timeline and put some of the responses on it, from "no chance" to "certain", while we explored probability, plus globalisation and language use."

Twitter is just one way in which Barrett, ICT subject coordinator and assistant head at Priestsic primary school in north Nottinghamshire, mines technology for his maths teaching. A prolific blogger, he also encourages his pupils to use games consoles and has developed a number of lessons based on the Nintendo Wii.

Barrett claims gaming is the simplest way to keep students' attention: "This is about switching learners on to maths," he says. "We often separate the two worlds the kids live in: home and school. Using gaming consoles and game space learning is still very niche in the UK, but it shouldn't be."

He says that he spotted how engaged pupils were by games consoles when many brought in their Nintendo DS one end of term. "We now have 30 of them in class," he says. "I use them with Dr Kageyama's Maths Training first thing in the morning, and in maths lessons."

Meanwhile, he uses Big Brain Academy on the Nintendo Wii to teach a lesson visualising and matching 3D shapes to 2D, while Wii Golf proves an effective way of discussing subtraction; the students take the distance left to the hole, then one student takes a shot, and the class works out how much further is left to clear. He says he can see at least a week of lessons in Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games for Wii, based on using decimals in swimming and running races, and angles and distances in javelin throwing.

"This doesn't take away from written teaching methods," he says. "But it engages the class in the actual task compared with the written method, which can be pretty stale and boring. It also helps them do the task for longer, and remember what they've learned."

Dan Sutch, senior researcher at Futurelab, an independent organisation that promotes the use of technology to make teaching more relevant and engaging, says good teachers are increasingly seeing the potential of gaming.

One game adapted by teachers with Consolarium, the Scottish Centre for Games and Learning, part of Learning and Teaching Scotland, is Guitar Hero, a video game in which players use a guitar-shaped controller to score points by matching notes on the screen.

Teachers use the game to get the class to pretend they are rock stars about to go on a world tour. They have to work out which countries to go to, which brings in geography, then look at the miles they need to travel and money needed to get there, which brings in plenty of maths.

"Great, imaginative teachers can take these games that are not developed for the classroom and make them work as a teaching resource," says Sutch. "This has been happening for years, whether it's a teacher picking up a leaf on the way to school in the morning to use in a lesson, or looking online to find new resources."

Barrett blogs regularly about his experiences of using technology in the classroom, using it to get his thoughts in order, get feedback from other educators and people in technology, and tap into ideas from experts. "Using networks, you can build great value into any maths lesson," he says.


Tom Barrett's blog on using new technology in education: