Top apps to help adults learn maths Monday, December 3, 2012 - 17:54

Delegates at the joint NIACE and BBC Innovating Learning conference held at MediaCity in Salford on Tuesday 4 December, heard how technology is transforming the way adults learn. Ahead of an initiative in the New Year – Action on Adult Maths – NIACE wants to identify the huge range of apps available that help people and their families use numbers in everyday life.

Susan Easton, Lead Officer for Digital Learning at NIACE, said:

"The options for how, when and where adults learn have changed dramatically over the past few years, and those choices will continue to be more wide-ranging and innovative in the future. Technology is already used to teach numeracy in the classroom, but we want to know how people use it day-to-day. For instance do people use apps to help them plan journeys, to help them keep fit, to budget their weekly and monthly spend? However you use maths and apps, we want to know."

The maths app search will be complemented by an App Challenge where NIACE, in partnership with Horizon Digital Economy Research led by the University of Nottingham, is calling for app developers to create a whole new range of apps that will help adults improve their maths skills for everyday life.

Susan Easton added:

"We’ll be holding an app challenge, where teams of enthusiastic amateur and professional developers will work with learners and adult learning tutors to develop apps which really help boost adults’ numeracy skills - and the winners will receive some funding to help make that app a reality."

Carol Taylor, Director of Development and Research at NIACE, said:

“We want to engage and enthuse people about maths, as well as support those who may struggle with some aspects of numeracy. To coincide with our Innovating Technology conference with the BBC, we wanted to launch our maths apps challenge now to find out what apps people have used – in the classroom, as a family, in the workplace - which really engage and support them in learning maths. We know, from our Inquiry into Adult Numeracy, that many people felt that adults needed more innovative and flexible ways to learn maths. Apps are just one, but very important, way of doing that.”

For more details about taking part in the App Challenge or to share details of your favourite maths app, click here.