World Maths Day

Was it just me or did anybody else have difficulties logging onto www.mathletics.com yesterday? At first I thought it was the Asus's not being able to handle the shockwave but no surely not. Then I wondered about the browser, I do remember a year or two ago firefox struggling with a few plug ins but that was a long time ago. As I roamed around the school I realised the windows and mac machines were having the same problems so I asked the ICT guys to check the internet and see if anyone was using up the bandwidth but no that wasn't the problem. So I can only conclude it was at their end and their servers couldn't cope with the load. It was a shame really because it's a great challenge to compete mathematically with others from all around the world. I had a free class subscription to mathletics last year and this was by far the best part of the site. I dare to say though that I opted not to pay the $20 fee per child to use the site this year. I think I would of happily paid $5 or maybe $10 but $500+ per year per class that's a lot of money. While mathletics had some good features like student support I couldn't help thinking the activities were just like worksheets on the computer and it wasn't long before the kids got bored. Quite frankly their are a lot more interactive virtual manipulatives out there for free. Okay so they are harder to find but who ever said life was easy.