Navigating the Edutainment App Minefield

With expert advice on how to make your kids fall in love with math. Seriously.

Warning: I repeatedly use the word “math” here. UK readers beware.

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I’ve been confidently riding the wild waves of technology for decades. But for the last 12 months I’ve felt like an amateur surfer staring at a skyscraper-sized wave threatening to thunder down upon me, the safe shores of Nazaré terrifyingly out of reach. (I really need to take a break from watching 100 Foot Wave. If only it were that easy.)

Maybe you’ve burrowed down the rabbit hole of ChatGPT, Midjourney and Sora. Perhaps you’ve cast an eye on its ascendancy. Wherever you’re at, it’s clear we’re in a new era of how technology will enable—and potentially replace—the work we do. My LinkedIn heaves with agency folks wondering if (or, more accurately, when) these products will achieve creative sentience. The technology ecosystem shifts beneath our feet. Google is broken¹. Apps like Perplexity and Arc are stepping in to reinvent search in a world where our daily bread has gone stale. Those in the know figured out how to hack Google a while back: just append the word “Reddit” to your search query. Try it once; you’ll never go back.

Mobile apps, a world I once understood intimately, present new threats. A few years back I heard tales of a calculator app that would allow kids to enter a “secret formula” (apologies to Leonard Cohen) that would unlock a hidden photo library and messaging app underneath. I’d put myself in the top 1% of “tech-savvy parents” out there, but wouldn’t bat an eyelid at my daughter asking to download a calculator app for her math homework. This shit is terrifying.

NOPE. NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE!

I’m no Luddite. I know the importance of the right app at the right time. If it wasn’t for Things and Notion I am 100% certain this newsletter would not be in your inbox. But what’s right for the tiny humans in our lives? YouTube Kids once promised a safe place for your kids to watch cartoons, but in my experience it seems my kids are only one tap away from getting sucked into an inescapable black hole of toy-opening videos. (Warning: don’t open that link with kids around. It’s NSFH.) And let’s not get started on the eerie world of ElsaGate. Kids’ games aren’t any safer: scummy in-app purchases mean you’re only one wrong tap away from your son wiping out your entire life savings trying to keep a spikey blue hedgehog alive.

What should we do? Throw our phones into the sea and get our kids employed as chimney sweepers? In a world where every mobile game is optimised for dopamine hits and loot boxes it feels like a necessary evil. But whilst launching your iPhone into the ocean will always be an option, there’s no reason to allow fear to close this door completely. Come take a walk with me into the wild world of edutainment apps.

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What the hell is edutainment? Let me answer your question by sharing a horror story. Early in my childhood, my best friend asked for a new Mario game for his Super Nintendo. He was expecting Super Mario All-Stars—a pixel-perfect recreation of Mario’s first four adventures, widely regarded as one of history’s greatest games on one of history’s greatest consoles. Instead, he unwrapped his perfectly wrapped rectangle to find the edutainment title Mario is Missing. I’ll lean on Wikipedia to explain how the game worked:

Luigi has to explore fifteen major cities, all accessible through doors in Bowser's castle. Each of the cities has had three items of cultural significance stolen, and these items are all being held by the Koopa Troopas wandering about. You have to stomp them, steal back the goods, and then gather information on those items by questioning the local people. Once you have your facts straight, you can return the items to their proper places after answering questions to prove their authenticity.

If this hasn't scared you off, why not watch a 100-hour-long playthrough? Or thanks to the power of the modern internet and web-based emulation you can play it for yourself. Either way, this picture should tell you all you need to know:

Getting real Lee Carvalho’s Putting Challenge vibes here

Mario is Missing left a permanent impact on my belief in edutainment. This instinct has rarely proved me wrong: most games I’ve played in this genre are terrible. I know what I’m talking about: I love video games. I have played a LOT of video games. And games like this are just bad.

But I couldn’t settle. So, I went searching for good apps. I have spent the last few years carefully dipping my toe in shark-infested waters, using my “+Reddit” hack to secure screen time for my kids that is “time well spent²” What did I find? Here are a few apps I’ve come to depend on:

• Math Tango. The kids love this. It’s $6 a month, which is what a Netflix subscription used to cost (or what you might like to chip in to keep The New Fatherhood going). Your kids will work on building a world, Sim City style, and solving sums will give them credits to level up their islands and worlds. Like Pokemon, it’s super effective!

• Reading Eggs. If you can move beyond the terrible aesthetic you’ll find an incredibly robust reading course approved by teachers and loved by kids worldwide. Similarly priced to Math Tango.

• Khan Academy Kids. A little tame, but 100% free and backed by leading educational research.

• Chrome Music Lab. Full disclosure here: this was a project created by a wonderful dad named Alexander Chen who I worked with during my time at Google Creative Lab. This site is almost a decade old and I still regularly use it as a gateway drug to introduce my kids to music theory. Too much fun.

• Monument Valley. I’m stretching here. This is more of a “game game” than the others on the list. But something something gorgeous aesthetic, spatial awareness … Just download it. It’ll cost you less than a decent coffee and your kids will love it.

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I’ve tried my best here, but I somewhat feel like I’m pissing in the wind—my kids are aged 9 and 4, both at a stage where instilling a love of math might nudge their lives towards a different trajectory. I needed help. So I contacted Dan Meyer, author of the excellent Mathworld newsletter, a former public high school math teacher, math education researcher, and father of two boys. Help us, Dan!

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TNF: What are some practical ways parents can encourage a love of math in their children?

DM: You’ve got to understand that your kids are soaking in numbers and shapes and patterns just like they’re soaking in letters and words. But kids use language naturally out of need. It takes a little extra effort on your part to get kids to engage in the math that’s all around them. So if you have young kids, engage them in counting the remaining eggs in the carton, counting the empty spots, asking “what if” questions (“what if I took another egg out?”). Build their number sense by asking them questions that engage their senses, their intuition. “Which bucket has more golf balls? Which hole is farther?” With older kids, there are some really good apps for helping them understand what variables are and how they work. Good resources right here:

• Tiny Polka Dot is great for younger kids.

• I love all of Christopher Danielson’s books.

• Dragonbox apps for older kids, especially Algebra 1.

• Scratch for creative thinking about variables in programming.

TNF: How important is it for parents to be involved in their children's math education, and what can they do to support their learning at home?

DM: It’s pretty well understood that parents need to read with their kids for kids to develop their literacy and love for reading. But parents also need to math with their kids. Let kids see you wondering mathematically, talking about numbers, shapes, and patterns you’re seeing. One consistent finding from research is that parents do a disservice to their kids by telling them, “I was never any good at math.” They transmit more anxiety, not less. Head far in the other direction by letting your kids see you as a curious math learner, aware of your limitations, sure, but eager to push through them.

TNF: In your experience, what are some common misconceptions or fears children have about math, and how can parents help address these?

DM: Learning math is just like learning anything—full of challenges. But in math people often attribute their challenges to themselves, and see them as unchangeable. You hear people say “I’m not a math person” in ways they wouldn’t dream of saying “I’m not a reading person.” or “I’m not a science person.” Parents will ideally help their kids understand that struggle is a necessary part of a successful process, and that math is for everyone.

TNF: What role do technology and digital tools play in helping children learn math, and what potential pitfalls should parents be aware of when using these tools?

DM: Lots of schools put kids on laptops in ways that isolate and evaluate them. “Put in these headphones. Watch this video. The device will tell you if you’re right or wrong.” I’m sorry but I hate it. My team and I are working on a K-12 math curriculum (conflict of interest alert!) that I hope your kids get to use someday. We try to use computers in math class as students use them in their everyday lives: to create and connect. In our work, you’ll see students create mosaics, turtles, robots, polygons, kaleidoscopes, transformations, water slides, card sorts, stories, problems for their classmates and share them with their classmates all trying to help them experience something joyful and personal in mathematics.

TNF: How can parents balance the desire to instil a love of math in their children with the need to not put too much pressure on them to succeed academically?

DM: Yeah, I feel this big time, personally, as I try to help my own kids get a good start in school. It’s no fun to feel stupid. But the answer isn’t more of the same kind of drill pages they’re likely getting in school already. Instead, make it playful. If you happen to be lucky enough to have time and energy to help your kids after school, ask them to pick five numbers and then tell you how much more they’d need to add to each one in order to get ten or twenty. Ask them which numbers were easy and which were hard. Why? See if you can add an element of choice or chance (roll some dice!) into the extra practice. That’ll help them stretch their math skills while also hopefully helping them find something interesting and personal in math as well.

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Thanks, Dan. I’m still wrestling with how my kids engage with technology. It’s a heartbreaking moment to watch your kids suck at Mario Kart, but nowhere near the pain you’ll feel when the day arrives—and arrive it will—when your child launches a perfectly timed Red Shell into the rear of your kart as you glide towards the finish line, and you turn to watch their face glowing as they take first place, over and over again in slow motion.³

No matter how comfortable you are with technology, your kids will certainly be twice as savvy. The only thing left to do is to sit back and enjoy the ride. And remember to delete each and every calculator app they ever encounter.

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Good Dadvice

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Finding the Five Hundred

It was a wild hunch, but it seems many of you liked the idea of “unlocking the commons,” where some dads pay to keep the newsletter free for everyone else. This essay has sat in edit limbo for a while (sorry, Dan) because I’ve been wrestling between making these app recommendations available for all or holding them hostage behind a paywall. Like I said last month, I’m tired of newsletters locking their best stuff away for those who pay. This feels right. Thanks to your support, we’re up to 320 dads. Including the generous dads who made one-off donations, we’re closer to 340. Here’s what two new subscribers said last month:

“Ask, and ye shall receive! This is more for other dads than myself, but keep up the good work.”

“I believe in keeping the commons open and supporting the amazing, healthy community of dads you are building.”

We’re getting closer. But 500 paid subscribers is the goal, which amounts to only 3% of y’all. Let’s juice the numbers this month. Here’s a link to a 33% discount for an annual subscription in April. You pay $40. I keep writing this for everyone. It’s a deal.

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1. Here are a few examples where ChatGPT wildly outperformed Google while I was writing this article.

2. Whilst still ensuring we keep some screen time free for good old co-op fun.

3. Yeah, that Mario Kart line felt a little too specific didn’t it. Still hurts.