Most teenagers would rather spend time updating their Facebook profile than do their maths homework. Your child probably has friends with the Twitter handle @Pythagorus but could not be bothered to calculate the 3rd side of a right-angled triangle. Uploading a video of the family pet playing Beethoven on the piano has much more appeal than converting fractions to decimals. Pinterest, Youtube, WhatsApp and SnapChat are all so much more interesting than maths.com .
In fact most 11-15 year olds that have access to computers and tablets will happily stay online for up to 3 hours per day. Try getting them to do 30 mins of maths homework! Even more challenging...try getting your teenager to do maths over the summer holidays!
Well, now you can introduce an extra variable into the online social networking mix. A frustrated father of three Facebook-obsessed teenage children has developed, in collaboration with Trinity College, a new software product for parents of teenage children.
Aftermath (www.getaftermath.com) has been built with parents of teenage children in mind. Aftermath is a software application that parents can install on their home computers (Windows only). Once installed, every time your teenage child attempts to access Facebook , Twitter or YouTube (or any site that you determine) they are first forced to earn their time online by correctly answering maths questions appropriate for their age.
The way it works is that any attempt by your child to access their favourite site results in them being redirected to the Aftermath Challenge game. This is a simple, but engaging, racing game where maths questions are placed on the screen and the racing car must be driven through a gate with the correct answer.
As your teenager demonstrates competence they get levelled up to more difficult questions. Each question answered correctly earns them a minute of time. It takes about 4 minutes to earn 20 mins of online time. At any stage your child can "cash in their chips" and proceed to their favourite site. Once there, their earned time starts to count down to zero. Once it hits zero they are kicked out of the site and back to the Challenge page where they must earn more time or remain locked out.
The maths has been developed by Irish maths teachers and geared towards maths requirements for 11-15 year olds.
This is not a product that your children will be asking for under the Christmas tree!!
It is currently FREE at www.getaftermath.com .
