Gorgeous. Mind bending. Fun.
Take this one on your next road trip or land flight. Stretch your brain. Fun for both kids and adults.
Educational Value and Excellent Practice for Improving Critical Thinking
Fun Way to Build Spatial Understanding of Flip, Turns, and Slides
Young children are being exposed to elementary geometric concepts at a younger age than ever before. Some attribute this to the new push due to "Common Core Standards", while others state the increased pressure for students to build their fundamental math concepts is a result of the United States less than stellar performance in the latest round of PISA testing. Whatever the actual reason is, there is no disputing the reality, or the need for our nation's students to both competent and competitive members of the global knowledge economy.
Symmetry Shuffle by Carstens Studios does an amazing job of introducing and fine-tuning both a child's skill and their understanding of spatial geometric concepts such as flip, turns, and slides. A student can choose between two different play modes "race" or "solve"; along with an option for "easy" or "hard "modes. There are also options for grid size and icons (used in the transformations). The only downside of the game I encountered -other than a difficulty in solving some of the actual puzzles- was in using the "arrow controls" whist on my iPad mini. However, once I moved onto a full-size iPad this issue was reduce to only a minor nuisance. I found the game play to be additive and I could feel the brain buzz as I was challenged with increasingly more difficult puzzles.
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As for the relevance to current educational goals and alignment with the current relating research, close my review with this excerpt:
Geometric and spatial thinking are important in and of themselves, because they connect mathematics with the physical world (Excerpt from "Progressions for the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics, June 23, 2012)
Young children are being exposed to elementary geometric concepts at a younger age than ever before. Some attribute this to the new push due to "Common Core Standards", while others state the increased pressure for students to build their fundamental math concepts is a result of the United States less than stellar performance in the latest round of PISA testing. Whatever the actual reason is, there is no disputing the reality, or the need for our nation's students to both competent and competitive members of the global knowledge economy.
Symmetry Shuffle by Carstens Studios does an amazing job of introducing and fine-tuning both a child's skill and their understanding of spatial geometric concepts such as flip, turns, and slides. A student can choose between two different play modes "race" or "solve"; along with an option for "easy" or "hard "modes. There are also options for grid size and icons (used in the transformations). The only downside of the game I encountered -other than a difficulty in solving some of the actual puzzles- was in using the "arrow controls" whist on my iPad mini. However, once I moved onto a full-size iPad this issue was reduce to only a minor nuisance. I found the game play to be additive and I could feel the brain buzz as I was challenged with increasingly more difficult puzzles.
---------------------
As for the relevance to current educational goals and alignment with the current relating research, close my review with this excerpt:
Geometric and spatial thinking are important in and of themselves, because they connect mathematics with the physical world (Excerpt from "Progressions for the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics, June 23, 2012)
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doesn’t have the educational aspect
While this app is neat in theory, from an educational perspective, it doesn’t provide much. The controls are a little hard to use and I didn’t like the timing aspect. (It can make a student feel like they didn’t succeed when actually finishing a game is success in itself). Additionally, there wasn’t really an education aspect. I would have liked it more if it discussed the types of translations a little more (they’re only on the side in very small type). They could even show the breakdown of the different types when they show the total moves (i.e. 21 moves, 7 were reflection symmetry, 5 were translation symmetry…). Overall, it’s a neat idea, but the educational aspect just isn’t there and it can be difficult to use.
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great concept but…
The concept is there but the functionality is not. The controls are difficult to use. Each move you make you must hold down on a very small button and rotate. It would be better if instead of having to hold down and rotating it the player could just click the button and it would be sufficient. Also, if the buttons were larger.
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Great fun & valuably educationally
I was looking for a game to help with my son's perception of reflective/ rational symmetry. This is really great & also kept me entertained!
