Comments on: Hotmaths – usability challenged

By: zac

zac — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:39:52 +0000

Hi Don

Thanks for your comment.

I went back to the HOTMaths site just now and the load times were significantly improved from my first and subsequent trials.

For interest, I went back to the Solid/Nets example lesson and tried the “Show me” again.

(Above, I wrote:

The demo said:

Click “Show Me” to see solids unfolding to form nets.

I clicked and nothing happened.)

The same thing just now – nothing happened!

But I get it now (having had a look at the HTML code). That “Show me” button is supposed to load the widget in the right half of the screen – but the widget is already there in the right half, so for the user, there is a point of confusion where it seems the link doesn’t work. Hence my question about the usability…

Anyway, I want to give this a fair trial (this is, after all, why I came back to HOTMaths a few times when I first wrote this post in May last year. I was allowing for network congestion).

So yes, please send me trial details (I’ll email you separately) and I’ll give it a spin.

By: Don Colless

Don Colless — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 02:55:53 +0000

Hi Zac, I’d love to give you a HOTmaths Unlimted account to play with and some to use with students, or ask you to try Scorcher, our mental arithmetic skills competition provided as a free service to anyone wanting a challenge. You might also like to read a smaple of comments by a maths teacher at http://www.hotmaths.com.au/mediaFiles/HOTmaths_is_Hot_Stuff.pdf Please get in touch so that we can show you some of the wealth of ‘working mathematically’ resources being developed based on input by students, parents and teachers. It’s a pity your initial impressions weren’t so positive. That’s not the sort of feedback we get at all. I’ve been getting comments like ‘HOTmaths has changed the whole way I think about teacher mathematics’ and just last week… ‘my students love hot maths and the scorcher is a source of great competition between my unenthusiastic Year 12 VCAL numeracy students.’

Best wishes
Don

By: zac

zac — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:37:30 +0000

Thank you Margaret for giving your experiences with HOTMaths. I’m glad to hear that you find it useful.

The experience I had using the freely available demos in HOTMaths was not so good. Maybe the sections that you pay for work better.

By: Margaret loomes

Margaret loomes — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 05:06:26 +0000

I have been using HOTmaths with my students for the past couple of years and find it a fantastic resource. I use “widgets” in the classrom to demonstrate concepts and take the students to the computer lab on a regular basis for individual work as well.
My colleagues and I set some homework from the site and find that most of our students have no problems at all with using HOTmaths from home.

When a problem has arisen in the past, the “Contact us” section of the site enables both students and teachers to receive feedback from the site’s writers very promptly.

I teach Mathematics to boys aged 12 to 18 at a school in Sydney, Australia. This year we are using HOTmaths with our Years 7, 8 and 9 students. When more lessons are written, we hope to extend our use to our Year 10 students as well.