As social networking meets the school curriculum, JOHN HARRIS discovers how educators are exploiting our competitive instincts to help kids learn maths.

My biggest surprise last week was when my daughter Eden asked me to do some maths with her.“You want me to help you with your homework?” I enquired.

“No, this is just for fun.” I followed Eden in the study a little suspiciously, I must admit, because in the first nine years of her life she had not demonstrated any inclination to use the words “maths” and “fun” in the same sentence.

I was relieved to discover that my littlest sweetheart had not uncovered her Dustin Hoffman Rainman gene, but rather an online arithmetic competition called World Maths Day (www.worldmathsday.com/)

In a combination of globalisation and speed chess, registered students from around the world play each other in 60-second mental arithmetic games.

Open to students, school- aged private individuals and homeschoolers. World Maths Day promised questions appropriate to the age of the registered player.

“It’s cool,” enthused Eden. “In fact, it’s quite addictive. A lot of the girls from my class spent half their lunchtimes playing.”

The ability of any form of maths learning to entice Year Four girls away from gossip and playground games caught my interest, so I accepted Eden’s offer to play a couple of games.

Each game starts with a full-screen map of the world, upon which three flags appear, generally (but not always) from nations other than Australia, showing a player from that country is about to compete.

The aim of the game is to answer more correct maths questions in one minute than the other three players: On one game, I competed against students from the US, the UK and Saudi Arabia.

While my 27 correct answers edged out Magnus B. From England’s Honeywell Infant School and Johnson F. from Team United States, Mustafa K. From the kingdom of Saudi Arabia kicked my butt with an astounding total of 48.

Wednesday, March 4, was dubbed World Maths Day - which, funnily enough, has picked up the acronym WMD. However, unlike the fanciful threat the launched Dubya’s Middle East foray, this WMD actually does exist.

Each year, students aged five to 18 from around the world are encouraged to compete against each other to build up a global total of correct answers that exceeds the previous year.

For the record, according to Wikipedia, in 2008, students from more than 150 countries correctly answered more than 182 million maths questions - smashing the inaugural record from 2007 of nearly 39 million correct answers.

This year, World Maths Day slamdunked last year’s total with 452,682,682 correct answers, calculated by more than two million participants from 204 countries. The 2009 world champion is Kaya G. from Team Australia, who contributed 129,106 correct answers.

Oddly enough for a numerical competition, World Maths Day actually lasts 48 hours - I suspect from 12am on March 4 in New Zealand to 11.59pm on March 4 in Hawaii.

World Maths Day is run using the Mathletics Game Engine www.mathletics.com.au/, which claims to be Australia’s most used educational website. The application is hosted by NSW company 3P Learning and delivered from a data centre in Chicago.

Participants in World Maths Day are dubbed “mathletes”. Based on Eden’s enthusiasm, the combination of global interactivity and short burst mental maths activity really does bulk up kids’ number muscles.

John Harris is managing director of Impress Media Australia. You can view his website at www.johnharris.net.au.

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